The politics of hope

Back then, when we could first cast our votes, we voted for JFK. We were excited to think we could do our part to elect a president, a young man, who asked us what we could do for our country.
Those were heady times and we young people were ready to join the Peace Corps or do whatever it took to make our country great. We started many non-profits, lived in communes, participated in Earth Day. Our hair grew long. The charisma of this young president gave so many of us hope for a future we couldn't even imagine. We trusted him.
When the Cuban Missile Crisis happened, my new young husband and I drove to Vermont from Providence where we were students. On that weekend, we took our savings of two thousand dollars and bought fifty acres of wilderness. We grabbed the brass ring. We were scared that tomorrow would never come and we would be blasted away by Soviet warheads. We stayed that weekend in some sort of hostelry nearby. I recall walking in the snow, hoping against hope that our young president would pull us through.
After the weekend we returned to our classes at Brown and Harvard, intact. Diplomacy had prevailed. Those hours and the aftermath of relief are still indelible in my mind. I look back and think how magnificent our young president was. This young president had wisdom.

Now, almost fifty years later, I have the visceral memory of wanting change so badly it hurt. In fifty years the world has changed into something we could not have imagined then. There are now some delicious possibilities out there. In the last election I worked so hard, as did so many others, to get the current occupant OUT. But it seemed that so many people had one issue (guns, gays, abortion) and those prevailed.

This time, we know that we are getting the current occupant out. His time is over. Now it is about change and hope and going on. This election is so much more full of hope than any others of recent past. I will not vote for an old white guy, especially an old white guy who will continue to protect the rich, and bend to the religious right in their fears of change of the status quo.
I will vote for the candidate who envisions a USA of possibilities, who sees this magnificent country as a place where every child can get the health care needed, who sees that we need to mend our fences in a global economy, who sees the need to protect our planet. I will vote for a candidate who knows the importance of safeguarding civil rights. I will vote for a candidate who includes all of us Americans of every color and class into the valuable fabric of our communal culture.
We have some good candidates, none of them republican, as far as I can see now. It is your responsibility to choose.