http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2008/01/declaration-request-promiselead-lobby.html

UU bloggers need to take a hard look a the fellow there for… if maybe that’s trolling but I think it’s open your eyes a bit before you get excited about a man with some very murky friends.

This is a conversation about why so many UU bloggers are pro-Obama. Stay on topic.

Rezko is cutting a deal with Fitzgerald as we speak and Rezko will talk to avoid life imprisonment. That means talk about the deals in Iraq.

Once that gets out into sound bites, I think Democrats will walk from Obama fast, just as Obama walked away from reform in Illinois with his Todd Stroger endorsement.

We just didn’t realize Auchi was involved with that one too…

Cheak Nibras Kazimi in Talisman’s Gate. What a mess Democrats have brought upon themselves for 2008.

I’m old enough to remember Bobby Kennedy–though not to have been able to vote for him. I’m struck by the fact that both I and my father (who campaigned for RFK) find a similarity between the two men. So did RFK’s widow, Ethel, when she endorsed Obama.

I’m not supporting Obama because of that–it’s an observation about him that for me came after I decided to support him.

He’s offered a governing vision rooted in actually being inclusive, not just talking about being a unificator and asserting that he is. Can he do that? There’s really only one way to find out. But a range of Republicans have reacted to him very positively–to him, not to specific policy proposals–and independents do as well. Remember their reactions to his speech at the 2004 convention? They wanted to adopt him. Yet he had not come out supporting neocon policy, greed, or theocratic values. He’s presented himself (legitimately, I think) as a leader of or for the people-powered political movement that woke up with Howard Dean. But Obama never allowed himself to be framed as angry.

Hillary, like it or not, comes with political baggage of the 90s. The simple fact is that the GOP will see a Hillary administration through the lens of fighting the 90s all over again. They’ll lose and lose badly if they do so, I think. Public views on equal rights for BGLT have changed a great deal, and people really do want a health care system that works and includes everyone. But the battle will be sharp and polarized, and the GOP machine created to spew hatred of Clintons will be dragged out and revived.

Which isn’t to say that they’ll go along like lambs with Obama. But I think that his personality and their being unwillingly charmed–but charmed nonetheless–will be a huge aid in making major social changes with less tumult and turmoil.

Neither candidate is perfect (none ever are). Neither has the wealth of experience one might really want–an objective that I think is akin to the first trap our UU search committees can find they’ve fallen into, wanting someone who for starters has all the virtues of, say, Jesus.

Both will do fine, I think. Both are capable of performing the job.

The question then is more one of style and how they will be perceived and experienced at home and abroad.

There, I think, there’s a vast difference.