Bored of the Board

According to its Wikipedia entry, “[h]erd mentality implies a fear-based reaction to peer pressure which makes individuals act in order to avoid feeling “left behind” from the group.”  “Jumping on a bandwagon” apparently refers to how causes or individuals become popular as a result of “herd mentality.”  Hmmm.

I’m considering the question because I have in my heart jumped on the Barrack Obama wagon. And it shocks me that I’d think to ally politically with the good people of Iowa. It shocks me more because I didn’t think he’d performed so well during the debate I saw a few weeks ago, and then finally it test my feminism, because I have longed for a woman to vote for as President.  I sat on the fence for months, refusing calls from fundraisers of all stripes, to see how the race developed. What’s changed? His ebullience at winning that race, the sheer emotional power it seems to inspire in African-American people and young people, and his formidable speeches.

The evening of his win:

Years from now, you’ll look back and you’ll say that this was the moment, this was the place where America remembered what it means to hope. For many months we’ve been teased, even derided, for talking about hope. But we always knew hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It’s not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it.

Next day, in New Hampshire:

They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed. They say, ‘We need to boil all the hope out of him — like us — and then he’ll be ready.’

Damn, that is some rhetorical genius, there.  He has in one stroke lifted hearts and reduced those who criticize him for inexperience to dried-up, old, self-aggrandizing crones.  The air around him is charged with  Kennedyesque youth and glamour, but with the advantage of being a brilliant, self-made guy. Hillary is reeling now, trying to simultaneously cast herself as having built a long political resume for change.  She can’t live on both sides of that fence, though, not with a real candidate like him in the race. Of course, he’s not without flaws. Of course he’ll have problems. But for now, he’s getting my check.

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