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My 25th birthday was on the 3rd, and I got an awesome present: Barack Obama officially clinched the nomination for the Democratic party. It's been pretty much a sure thing since February, but it's nice to have him break the 2,118 needed to become the presumptive nominee. It's not "official" official (also known as "Facebook Official") until August at the convention, but Hillary officially conceded and endorsed Obama today, so it won't be going to the convention after all. She did however leave a very blatant opening for her running in 2012 if Obama somehow loses this year. Which ties into the conspiracy theory ideas floating around the Internet, that she stayed in it just to damage Obama enough to ensure he loses in 2008 so she can run again in 2012 on the "I told you so" platform.
Unfortunately it seemed to work. There's been many a news story about her supporters not following her directions and supporting Obama. It makes absolutely no sense to me why someone who supported Hillary would go and vote for someone who has opposite viewpoints on pretty much every issue instead of the guy who had 99% of the same policy. I think they'll eventually come around, much like Republicans have come around on John McCain even though they were far more badly fractured and had different viewpoints. It's still sad this had to be drug on so long though, I remember writing back in January about how the Republican side was a mess, but the Democrats had two great candidates that everyone would like.
I also think the idea of Hillary as the VP in the "Dream Ticket" scenerio will not and should not happen. It would not be a happy ticket to begin with, and would chase away all of those independents and Republicans who support Obama but don't like Hillary. Plus with the Republican Party already re-using Hillary attack lines in ads, it just makes it a very easy target. Not to mention Hillary honestly believes Obama will lose, and she would never accept the VP slot on a ticket she thinks she couldn't win on.
More realistically, some of the front runners for the VP slot are Tim Kaine, Governor of Virginia, Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas, and my personal favorite, Brian Schweitzer, Governor of Montana.
Yes, you read that right, Montana has a Democratic governor. He ran for governor with a Republican in the Lt Governor spot (which is exactly what is Obama's message), grew up on a ranch and has extensive ranching and farming experience, speaks Arabic (though I suppose that would just fuel the "Obama is a secret terrorist" rumors), and I LOVED his speech about how he got elected to office in Montana and how some voters *really* decide who to vote for. Plus he looks darn good in a bolo tie.
Of course for McCain to win in November, the public would have to ignore things like that his economic plan would either "either cause the federal deficit to explode or would require unprecedented spending cuts equal to one-third of federal spending on domestic programs". Where as Obama's balances out. Or a photo that should be it's own 30 second TV ad: Bush helping celebrate McCain's birthday on the morning that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.
And on a purely political viewpoint, sometimes I wonder about the McCain campaign. They scheduled a speech for June 3rd to air during prime time, when they knew the cable networks would air it and there would be lots of voters watching because of the finale of the Democratic race. But there was quite a stark contrast between McCain's speech and Obama's speech. Who on McCain's staff decided that a ugly green background would look better than a stadium of 18000 cheering people?
And on one final bit of political news, Obama addressed his campaign staff at his Chicago headquarters yesterday. One of the striking things about the video is just how young most of the workers are. It really is a youth movement, that we are tired of the world as it is and want to make it better. We see the debt, the social inequality, the civil rights encroachments, and the environmental destruction that have been dropped on our doorstop. I will live in a world that will see $8 gas one day, that will see rising oceans and social security and Medicare go bankrupt. My generation will have to deal with these things, and this is how we start fixing them. I particularly liked the end of his impromptu speech about how the "easy" part of the campaign is done and now the real works begins:
We don't have an option now. You know, when we were at the beginning of this thing, in Iowa, if I lost Iowa, it would have been okay. One of the other Democrats would have emerged, they would have carried the banner, we would have joined their campaign, and moved forward, and the country would move in a better direction. Because we we won, we now have no choice. We have to win. .... We're going to have to work twice as hard as we've been working. We're going to have to be smarter, we're going to have to be tougher, our game is going to have to be tighter. We are going to be attacked more viciously, we are going to have to respond more rapidly, and we are going to have to raise more money. I'm going to have to be a better candidate. Each of you what you do, you are going to have to do it better, longer, and probably without break between now and November 4. And we don't have a choice. We don't have a choice because if we screw this up, all those people I met, who need help, they're not gonna get help ... Now everybody's counting on you, not just me. And I know that's a heavy weight, but also what a magnificent position to find yourselves in, where the whole country is counting on you to change it for the better. Those moments don't come around very often, and here you are, five months away from having transformed the country and made history and changed the world. So we gotta seize it. So rest up a little bit, but come back ready to go, and fired up. Alright, I gotta go, cheers guys, I love you, let's go win the election.
Finally on some more personal notes, as I mentioned above, I turned 25 on Tuesday. Which means I can now rent cars for far cheaper and also get a discount on my insurance rate! I used to worry about getting boring as I got older, but I have quite a few friends in their early 30's and they're still fun and active, so it gives me an optimistic look at growing older. I was starkly reminded though that I'm no longer a kid when I went to the NASA space museum a few weeks ago and they had this really cool playground that I was way way way too old to play in. It had a huge slide though ::sigh::
Also that work project I mentioned in the last update has been eating up ridiculous amounts of time and sleep. I finally got the code done on Friday though, even though it meant doing some last minute bug fixes in the parking lot of the manufacturing facility before submitting the code to get flashed into the final product. I'll be able to share much more and have a ton of photos once FTF starts next Monday, but while it's been very stressful because of the deadline and very high profile nature of the project, it's also been a lot of fun and the result is really cool. I haven't worked this hard since Sbob for my senior project.
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