Congratulations, Mr. President-elect!

A delayed congratulations to Barack Obama, for winning a resounding victory as President of the United States. I did not vote for him, as I followed Eugene Debs' saying that "I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don’t want, and get it," and voted for Cynthia McKinney instead.

Most of my motivation in voting for Cynthia was that I felt she was the best candidate for the job. However, another of my motivations was simply that she is the candidate of MY PARTY, and, DAMMIT, I support the nominee of my party, especially one who is devoting her time, money and effort to run. I have been a candidate for a commonwealth-wide office twice. Running for political office is difficult. It puts a strain on your life and can put a wedge between you and your family. As such, I cannot, in good conscience, turn my back on my own party's nominee.

For a Green-Rainbow to say that they won't support our nominee because we need to make sure Obama wins Massachusetts, as if there was any doubt about that, well … it makes angry. I'll still love them and work with them, but it makes me wonder whether they will have my back. As Utah Phillips has told us many times:

They were the people working down at the bottom, in the forest, in the mines, in the wheat harvest. Old Jack Miller, who ran the Citizen's Center up in Seattle, Washington, once said, “When we started in the forest, we spoke two different languages, and most of us had never been to school, and we couldn't read or write. We lived in our emotions, and we were comfortable there. We made decisions in our lives for which there is no language. We made commitments to change, to struggle for which there are no words. But those commitments carried us through fifty or sixty years of struggle. You show me people who make the same commitments intellectually, and I don't know where they'll be next week.” And then he added to that hardest of all things, he said that, “We, speaking all those languages, hardly speak to each other. Armed only with our degradation as human beings, we came together and changed the conditions of our labor and the conditions of our lives. You young people, with all you've got, why can't you do that?” Now, that's a very serious charge to lay at our feet.

That said, I am proud that the US finally elected its first African American President. Took a far too long.