Obama

[cos]

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is election day in 24 states, including: Massachusetts, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Kansas, Arkansas, and other states where few of my readers live :)

I'm not gonna have a chance today to write a real post about why I endorse Obama, so here are some links to explain or illustrate why I support Obama.

• xkcd's endorsement of Obama
  
• Obama's speech on religion and politics to a religious audience. Long but excellent, watch the whole thing!
  
• Because it works! - Obama's conflict-resolution approach
  
• Former president of Chicago's NOW chapter on why she switched to Obama (short video)
  
• Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters (Andrew Sullivan)
  
• Endorsements from the Boston Globe and from Blue Mass Group
  
• The Choice - why progressives should choose Obama over Clinton
  
• Edit: Lawrence Lessig (EFF board member, founder of Creative Commons, Stanford Law professor) endorses Obama in this 20min video
  

Geek, Tech, Open Government

• Obama plans to have a Tech czar to "ensure government officials hold open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans".
  
• Obama supports Net Neutrality - and understands why.
  
• xkcd's endorsement of Obama
  

War

• Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war
  
• Obama's 2002 speech on Iraq
  
• Get Your War On artist David Rees endorses Obama for his opposition to cluster bombs in civilian areas.
  

Rule of Law

• Obama's views on presidential power & the Constitution
  
• Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees endorse Obama en masse
  
• Judge him by his laws - "Consider a bill into which Obama clearly put his heart and soul. The problem he wanted to address was that too many confessions, rather than being voluntary, were coerced -- by beating the daylights out of the accused. Obama proposed requiring that interrogations and confessions be videotaped."
  

Comments

[cos]

Well, you're in Colorado, which is a Super Tuesday state. The main job of a campaign on election day is to get its already-identified supporters to the polls. As many wise campaigners have said, "it's not the candidate who has the most supporters who wins; it's the candidate who has more supporters who go to the polls and vote."

I have known cases where candidates with clearly more supporters have lost elections because their voters didn't turn out at high enough a rate. That's especially a risk for Obama, because he wins heavily among under-25 voters who have no habit of voting and turn out at dismally low rates, while Clinton wins heavily among over-65, many of whom never miss an election no matter how small.

On election day, the campaign doesn't need your help persuading anyone nearly as much as it needs your help reminding and bugging and asking and even pleading with identified supporters to get them to actually vote. If you can lend some time making phone calls or going door to door, that's where it's at.

But, do remember to ask your close friends and relatives. You have more influence on them than anyone, and you could still persuade them. Find some good links or passages that you think will matter to them, add a little bit of your own, and email each one individually, tonight or early tomorrow. Your parents and close relatives, especially.

After your state's primary is over, then there will be other things to do, but other than sending something to people you know well, right now it's all about getting out the vote, not persuasion.