I find incredibly fitting that forty years later before another critical California primary the last of the brothers Ted Kennedy and JFK’s daughter Caroline would endorse Obama. If you haven’t yet had the chance to watch Caroline Kennedy’s ad please do so, it should make any democrat proud.

And this time, it is not just a dream. This hope is real, young are turning out and voting in numbers never before seen. In Iowa voters 29 and under made up 22% of caucus goers the same percentage as those over 65 and 4 points higher than those 30-44. Young people were among the most likely to vote. So far as I know this has never happened before in any election at any level anywhere in my lifetime.

It’s not just young people either, Independents and more than a few moderate republicans are turning out in droves and changing their registration so they can support Obama. That is a winning recipe for November and for the chance to actually govern. Consistently I hear from independents, greens, republicans, and people who have never voted that Barack Obama is the one politician they like or the one democrat they could support.

Recently I was in Reno canvassing for the Nevada caucuses. I was in charge of making sure people in a 6 block by 6 block neighborhood went and spent 2 hours in a local library for Obama. I went and knocked on doors in the snow, talked to people in the street and left door hangers in the dark. There were 316 registered democrats in the precinct and they expected 40 to show up. 181 people caucuses there, more than half of them under 25. For many of them it was the first time the voted in their lives and a quarter were independents and republicans who changed their registration to caucus for Obama. The caucuses started 20 minutes late because so many of them (more than half) needed to register.

This is how we win in November, Obama has shown an incredible ability to win among voters and in areas democrats do not normally compete in. He can build up the party and the country instead of tearing down the other side. He uniquely understands this moment in America and the lessons of the our past. I hope all of you will join me in voting for him this Tuesday

Hello Cal Dems, Eric here (or if you prefer President Pro Tempore). I decided it’s about time I started posting before I graduate. I was just thumbing through the SC exit polls and I discovered something incredible, for the first time Obama won convincingly on electability and his supporters almost universally believed he was the most electable.

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In doing research for my Linguistics paper on the metaphors used to talk about blogs (wee!), I came across this really interesting article that none other than Berkeley’s own Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the Kos of Daily Kos, wrote for The American Prospect about a year and a half ago. Kos reflects on the time he spent in the army right after high school, and why he switched from being a presinct-captain Republican to a card-carrying Democrat. It struck me as incredibly poignant, especially with an election nearing, as people are evaluating their own beliefs in choosing a candidate to vote for. It’s a short article, so you should definitely check it out!

P.S. How meta is it that in the midst of writing a paper about blogs, I should be compelled to post one of my own? Oh, academia.

First of all, I would like to welcome all newcomers to Cal Dems and especially all the eager freshmen who are showing such an early/heartwarming interest in this campus’ greatest club – Cal Dems.

More to the point, the 2008 White House scramble is an attention grabber. Like most recent elections, choosing a president has been a horse race pimped out by the media. Needless to say, it’s harder and harder to choose my bling-adorned candidate.

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From the Sept 25 1970 issue of the Washington Post, an excerpt from “The Post-Southern Strategy,” by Kevin Phillips:

The fulcrum of Republican appeal is more or less the “social issue”—law and order, permissiveness, campus anarchy, racial engineering. . . . The [Nixon] administration cannot build a lasting new GOP coalition until it can articulate a positive philosophy and program to replace liberalism’s failure to meet the needs of Middle America.

I’d say the GOP has done pretty well since then, capturing the South and the White House for the greater part of the last half century, the Congress since the nineties, and packing the Court with conservatives.

Last November’s midterm election was a clear repudiation against the GOP and President Bush; not a clear endorsement of the Democratic Party (in spite of our substantial gains and present majority in Congress).

We have a prime opportunity to discern ourselves from the GOP, not simply as their antithesis, but as a viable replacement that serves the needs of most Americans. Of course, the terms of Democratic party building today are different than those faced by Nixon. Still, what kind of “positive philosophy and program” does the Democratic Party have to replace conservatism’s failure?

And more importantly, how will it generate a lasting Democratic majority coalition?

A recent poll finds increasing approval of Congress, in contrast with still-abysmal ratings for President Bush and discontent with Iraq.

Will money win you the race?

• Tonight’s debate, Cal Dems vs. Berkeley College Republicans! The topics are immigration and healthcare. 7pm, 2060 VLSB.
• Former Senator, vice presidential nominee and ‘08 presidential hopeful John Edwards is visiting Cal this Sunday! He’ll be speaking to students at 2:30pm at the YWCA on Bancroft. For more info see the Facebook event.

With the 2008 presidential campaign just barely begun, it’s entirely fitting that, already, things are getting nasty. While some (yours truly included) are waiting for a Lewinsky-size scandal to rock American politics and finally wake the nation up to something called the government and its workings, for now we’ll have to settle with yet another irritating billionaire stirring things up—in this case movie and music maverick David Geffen.

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