Funny Story…

When I posted the text and video of Obama’s Iowa victory speech last Friday I gave very little thought as to why I was doing so. It had just resonated with me and inspired me, and I wanted to share it. I also really liked the parallels I saw between his campaign (the message of change and hope, the example that an underdog can surprise you, the way he’s bringing together people from across the old political spectrum) and the campaign we’re running here. To illustrate those parallels, I linked select words and phrases from Obama’s speech to pages on this site.

So I was a little surprised to see that Bob Rae posted the exact same video to his site one day after I did, with the directive to “[reflect] on what it means for Canada.” It’s surprising because I’m not sure why he’d want to draw attention to the fact that new ideas beat out experience, that future thinking beat a politician from the past, that the candidate who everyone was sure was going to win is now, well

Then again, maybe, like me, he just got inspired and didn’t give it much thought.

6 thoughts on “Funny Story…

  1. isn’t he just another status quo politician – this is the democratic party after all in a 2 party state/dictatorship owned by big business. Reminds me a bit of Condoleeza Rice.

    I’d say Obama reminds me more of Bob Rae (representing one of 2 stale, old, dominant political parties owned by corporations, slowly loosing relevance and beholden to the ideology of neo-liberalism).

  2. A very good point. I was referring more to style and rhetoric than policy. I think you’re right unfortunately that the Democratic party isn’t nearly as different from the Republican party as we’d like. The fact that none of the front runners support equal marriage is a good example.

  3. And the Green Party is not that different from the Liberal Party and the Liberal Party isn’t that different from the Conservative Party. Hmmm…what’s left? Or should I say Left?

  4. the entire war in Iraq is run on 10 letter phrases, “if we don’t get them there, they’ll fallow us home!” (what are they Lassy?), “we use to think oceans could protect us!” no, you did, we knew our enemies had flying machines and floating things all figured out..

    its all political talk …of ‘hopes and dreams’..but then again that’s what works right? image, words, phrases, catchy ones, tones, negative ads (McCain learned that last time around), i mean how else did Harper win? so-called war on crime is entirely played on the public’s fear and the media’s constant coverage of a false crisis…all about maintaining that image

    granted, we all know the democrats will be at least slightly different

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