Unemployed, Dog-Loving Woman For Obama

Recent sidebar updates notwithstanding, I'm not the most political person in the world. Oh, I do my research and I have my opinions, and there are times (such as now) when I'm even a bit of a political news junkie. But I've never volunteered to work for a candidate, never made a phone call, stuffed envelopes, or gone door to door on a candidate's behalf. I'm way too shy for that, and far too averse to conflict and confrontation. My last letter to a newspaper (comments fields aside) was probably when I was in elementary school. My last day going door to door over something even vaguely political was for a job I quit after one day circa 1979. As for cold calling, I'm still haunted by the trauma of those 1975 calls involving Emmet Kelly Jr. (I'd link to that story, but Google doesn't like my blogs any more and won't find anything in them that's more than a year old.) I don't even like blogging about politics unless I happen to be in full rant mode. I don't want to be pushy, and annoy you, my readers. Also, I tend to get upset for a day or so when someone leaves a comment that implies I'm going straight to hell because I'm pro-choice or pro-immigration or pro-tolerance or whatever.

But when I gave a smallish donation to Barack Obama last month, I ended up with a MyBarackObama.com page, scoring my commitment to the cause on the basis of all these extroverted activities I could never do. I've written a few blog entries over there, the latest of which I wrote a week ago, intending to repost it here. But the news this election proceeds with dizzying speed, circumstances change daily, and the entry is so last week that it's not worth importing at this point.

Really, blogging is about the only thing I can do even semi-comfortably on Obama's behalf, and on behalf of us all. Even that is something I can't do all the time. As much as I care about the constant lies about Obama emanating from anonymous emails, ignorant and mean-spirited commenters on news sites, sanctioned and unsanctioned attack ads and from the Republican candidates and their proxies, I don't always have "something to say" about it, as Paul put it a week ago. I am out of work at the moment largely because of the mortgage crisis and all that has happened to the economy since then, and I'm certain that John McCain is not the person most likely to help make things better. But that's all I have to say on that subject, at least for tonight. That's not where tonight's rant is leading me.

I said before that blogging for Obama was pretty much all I can do to help get him elected, but aside from the actual voting, there's one more thing. In the past year I've made about three donations to the Democratic Congressional campaign fund, or whatever it's called, one to my particular Congresswoman, and three to the Obama campaign. Being unemployed, I can't reasonably fork over any more virtual cash for a while. But I can enlist your help, from those of you who agree that the election should be about issues, and on the issues, Obama is the candidate with the best chance of leading us out of the numerous messes GWB et al. have gotten us into.

The Obama website encourages donors to set up something called a personal fundraising page, and tonight I went ahead and did that. You can see a donation thermometer thingy on my sidebar; click on that (or the one to the left of these words) to get to my fundraising page and make a donation to the Obama campaign. I have no idea whether any of you are willing to help me with the with the $500 goal I set, but maybe a few of you will kick in a little. I hope so, anyway.

The text on the page is my own, except for the first sentence in each paragraph. I'm not a fan of canned text, written in the first person by someone else as supposedly coming from me. Still, I think I managed to adequately merge their message with my own.

With some hesitation I ended up with a "Women for Obama" page instead of being less specific. I have misgivings about this. As far as the issues are concerned, it shouldn't matter whether I'm male or female, black or white, living in New York, Ohio or Arizona. But I went with the women thing in solidarity with the recent NOW endorsement of Obama, and to remind folks that just because Sarah Palin is female, it doesn't mean that other females have to vote for her regardless of her policies.

And no, you don't have to be a woman to donate.

Thanks. Tomorrow I'll write about something else. Probably.

Karen