Obama

Obama looks like he has a good chance at winning the Democratic nomination, and I'm all for that. I expect that if he wins the nomination he will win the general election as well, which I would also like to see. Now, I'll note here that I don't expect him to do a whole lot as president. Honestly, I expect him to get very, very little done, for a number of reasons and this is exactly why I want him to get elected.

Right now Obama is campaigning on a platform of "Hope" and "Change," and while I don't think that he is being dishonest about his campaign, I don't think he, or most people, realize the level of change that this country is going to need if it is going to survive. There are the economic problems, the environmental problems, the social justice problems and the problems of foreign policy. The younger generations are profoundly dissatisfied with the current political order, primarily because the current order has no solutions to the problems of the world except band-aids and promises.

The high water mark of radical politics in the recent past was the late nineties, after eight years of a Clinton presidency. One of the prime contributors to that was that people were profoundly frustrated with Democratic politicians telling them that they would make progress and then seeing regressive policies enacted, from welfare to trade issues.

It isn't clear what exactly Obama intends to change, but we can be sure that it will not be enough to fix the problems of the United States, or the rest of the world. And the radical organizations of the left will benefit. As an anarchist, I think this can only be a good thing considering the increasing currency anarchist ideas and organization methods enjoy today. If Obama is elected it could be the push that is needed to get us past the roadblocks, psychological or otherwise, put up post-September eleventh.