Barack Obama - Change We Can Believe In

I think it's about time we had a blog post about the Manchester Labour Students favourite American of moment - Barack Obama.

Obama isn't just the only man in the world to make serif fonts look good, he is also (hopefully) the next President of the United States of America. And regardless of whether you just have a fascination with US politics or a crippling addition to the West Wing or not, America’s Commander-in-Chief matters a lot here in the UK. The result of this election means the difference between staying in Iraq or not, our economy will be greatly affected by whatever the US economy does and the USA’s international relationships will be defined by who is in the White House.

Obama is one of the most gifted orators of our time and while some use it to attack his ability to bring about change, I think the reality is this ability to lift people through speech, giving people hope, provides the level of momentum needed to implement the level of change he seeks to bring about. Obama managed to survive wave after wave of negative campaigning, largely from Hillary Clinton, that would have finished any other candidate but he managed to emerge victorious in achieving the Democratic Nomination using positive campaigning.

“We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.” – Senator Barack Obama, 08/01/08, Nashua, New Hampshire

Our very own club Chair, Mike Joslin, has not only had the pleasure to be mentioned in a sentence in the Observer newspaper last Sunday but also has worked for the Obama campaign and met the Senator in the flesh. He will testify to the ability of Barack Obama and will always claim that he was in support from the very start.

This coming American General Election would be an absolute walkover if the Republican candidate was anyone else other than McCain. Obama is consistently ahead in the polls, however they do vary in the scale of the lead and in all cases the gap isn’t unclosable. And of course don’t forget the 2000 American General where it was proven that actually winning more votes than the other candidate doesn’t necessarily mean you win the election.

Now for the America voter they must sit through months of eye-watering amounts of money being spent on catching their attention and countless television ads where the man with the deepest voice available is employed to narrate.

And by the way, to any fans of the West Wing, isn’t this whole current setup remarkably similar to the Santos vs. Vinick race? Let’s hope the electoral outcome is the same.

You can count on Manchester Labour Students to be holding some sort of American Election Party on the night of 4 November 2008.