Unbiased: An Independents Journey to Supporting Senator Obama

I am not what anyone would ever consider a die hard Democrat. In fact I probably have voted Republican as many times as I've voted Democrat. To start this off on a 'good' note, I didn't vote for George Bush (either of them either time), but have voted for Republicans in local elections and did vote for President Regan.

With that out of the way, I'd like to share with you how I came to be supporting Senator Obama.

As a single mom of now three grown children, I've often voted more often by voting against one person versus for another person.  

I live in the state of Michael Dukakis (who for all his good/bad/ugly was helpful to me as a single parent by putting into play the "Welfare to Work" program - while I wasn't on welfare at the time, I was unemployed for a period of time and this program was effective (at least here in MA).  

As a resident of the home of President Kennedy - who shaped my life in ways that I don't think I ever began to realize until I became a young adult volunteer - volunteering was at the heart of President Kennedy's call to all of us to serve. And Serve I have - through good times (and very bad times) I've committed time out of my life each and every year for 35 years I'm proud to look back on what I did to help those in my community.

So, how is it that I came to support Senator Obama?  Well that journey was one that was particularly interesting - especially given that nearly everyone I knew was supporting Senator Clinton.  

I was originally intrigued with Senator Obama when I saw him speak at the Democratic Convention a few years ago and recall thinking to myself at the time (and expressing that to others) that this young man was going to be someone to reckon with.

I have a son in the Marine Corps - he's been in the Marines for nearly 15 years.  I wanted to go to bed at night and not wonder if he'd go back to the Gulf to fight unseen faces in battles that have lost their purpose - To clarify: This is the main reason I didn't vote for Senator Clinton and the key reason I could never vote for Senator McCain.

Health care - while Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both have health care plans there was a difference (for me) in how they approached it.  The notion that you MUST have health care really bugs me (not that I don't want to have it) - MA has put into place this nifty little thing - if you don't have medical insurance you're going to pay a penalty on your taxes - how cool is this: I don't have medical insurance because I can't afford it and you're going to penalize me for not being able to afford it...ok I see. Thanks but no thanks....

Gas Tax Holiday - first let me qualify this by telling you I do not drive so the gas tax while it doesn't impact me on the level where I'm filling a car up once or twice a week, it does impact my trips to the grocery store, the doctors office, the vet and other similar trips. You get the drift.  I've had many years of financial background - the gas tax holiday is a bad idea for more reasons than I can even go into if I want to work at all today.  This is another reason I didn't vote for Senator Clinton.  The fact of the matter is that Senator McCain seems to believe that this is a good thing....dah....we're not stupid...

Treating voters like smart people - I'm not a college graduate, I'm not an 'under 30' voter, I'm not a black voter - I'm a 50 year old working class white woman .... oh wait that means I'm not supposed to be supporting Senator Obama right?  WRONG.  I'm afraid that one of the things that turned me off so much about Senator Clinton was President Clinton's 'speech' about how voters that 'didn't know better' would be voting for Senator Obama .... Clearly I don't have the whole quote here but you remember the speech.  Senator McCain makes the assumption that you and I can't go online and find out how he's voted on such things as Energy Bills, that we can't find out how Senator Obama has voted in the past....sorry I'm over 50, I'm not overly educated, but I am capable of making rational decisions based on FACTS and not fantasy that your campaign is basing their strategy on. You lose Senator McCain - this 50 year old woman's vote - just for thinking I'm too stupid to do my own homework.

Values - I really love that Senator Obama doesn't hide his faith, his 'call to service', his love for his family and his pride in his children, his wife and his community service.  He let's people know that these are all admirable qualities in a person - any person. Senator McCain is a war hero - few of us will dispute that - but I can't condone his ill treatment of his wife and what I perceive as a lack of compassion from him.  I just can't vote for him based on the history I've seen from him in regards to his family. Just doesn't cut it for me.

Education - now you'd think with grown children that education wouldn't be a hot button for me - but in fact it is.  As part of my volunteer service I see young people day in and day out who are functionally illiterate. This bothers me more than I can tell you - in fact it has had an impact on my professional life as well.  I've been in the position of hiring people for positions and have been truly appalled by the grammatical and spelling errors I see everywhere. In some cases these are people who have college educations.  I write for a living as a freelancer and I spend about 1/3 of my time each day correcting errors in grammar, word usage and other things that I've always considered common sense.  It just isn't so.  I like the plan that Senator Obama laid out early on for dealing with Education.  I don't believe in standardized testing - from my own perspective I'm a terrible test-taker but I can spell, I can read, I can write a whole sentence and have it make sense to most people (not all sometimes I write something and go back and read it and say 'huh'?)...If you haven't read Senator Obama's Education plan you might want to do that - it's awesome!

While many have had issues with Senator Obamas 'Call to Service' I have had no such problem - I truly believe that everyone should be performing some sort of community service each and every month of their lives. Why? It's really very simple: No matter how bad a situation you believe yourself to be in, you're always going to find someone else who is in a worse situation - you may be the only person who can help that person raise up from the depths of despair.  Now I know that sounds overboard but trust me - for some person you are the only person who can help!  You can read more about my journey with community service in other diaries.

Some have had issues with Senator Obamas 'Faith Based Initiatives' but the fact of the matter is that many service organizations that you're familiar with are in fact 'faith based'.  You might be surprised to learn about some of them in fact you might even be shocked at some of them - read more here.  As long as the concept of separation between church and state stays intact I'm not only fine with Senator Obamas program, I'm 100% on board with it.

As a freelancer I do not reap the benefits of having my Social Security contributions matched by an employer. This has been the case for me for many years. None the less, I believe that it is important to keep the SS system intact and to also offer other avenues for those of us who are working to invest in our own retirement. I am very impressed with Senator Obama's commitment to honestly reviewing how we do business in regards to our retirement.

There are other issues that I have very strong feelings about - but these are the particular issues that drove me to support Senator Obama.  As you can clearly see I'm not one of those 'low information' voters that Senator McCain is counting on to fly in droves from supporting Senator Clinton to supporting him.  I'm a medium information voter - I don't depend on television or blog posts to form my opinions about the candidates, I research their records, I read their policies I make up my mind based on my own research and nothing that a television ad tells me is going to change my mind.

So share your thoughts with other voters who you think are 'low information'.  Remember, we might only convince one other person that the person we're supporting is the right person to lead us, but that's one person more in our column.    Have you changed a voters mind today without using the word 'old'?