The 2008 theme of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign was summed up with the word "change." As a field operative for his campaign in the state of Florida, it was essential we bought into the premise with all of the doe-eyed naiveté that early-to-mid twenty year olds could muster. And buy in we did. We believed every utterance about how the work we were doing mattered and how we needed to "be the change" we were seeking.
Out of the gate there were quite a few political moves Barack Obama made that certainly made us feel as if we worked for the right person who backed the right causes. Obamacare passed despite it feeling a bit dirty due to partisanship and the vitriol that rocketed back and forth between the opposition and the defenders of the legislation. We all understood that some battles are won with blood so we took the win, along with our wounds, and cheered victory on the field.
Despite other victories, the wounds began to mount over the years and the wins seemed smaller, more compromised (like the immigration executive order), and always less pure to the ideals for which the bleeding-heart, idealistic youth inside us fought. The President also seemed to wear the strain of each battle and appeared weary before our eyes.
Perhaps that is what happens when you hang your hopes on one man and treat your president like an NFL quarterback--giving him all the credit as well as all the blame for every legislative achievement and/or failure, depending through whose eyes you are watching.
As someone who fought for the changes the President did champion, it was particularly disheartening to hear week after week how a Republican Congress would attempt to defund and block the bills, how the Supreme Court was likely to rule components unconstitutional.
Then came one of the best weeks for progressive ideals in a very long time.
All at once victories rolled in. Some were direct actions of the President's agenda, upheld. Others occurred because the President made the right decisions in his selection of Supreme Court Justices.
The week's tally includes:
- A 6-3 Supreme Court decision that upheld federal funding for the healthcare exchanges.
Each of these results uphold the idea that people should be decent to one another. Take them at their face value and one tells that everyone deserves a chance to have their health issues cared for. Another recognizes the right for love, marriage, and the rights that go with marriage, to be offered to all people, no matter who they love. The last allows for people to not be discriminated against when attempting to find housing.
The common thread here is compassion for one another. For good measure, the President was able to remind us of empathy, of common decency, at the eulogy for Reverend Pinckney. On the heels of a racially-motivated massacre in South Carolina, the President was able to open up his own humanity for display when he sang the words to Amazing Grace in front of a nation torn by senseless tragedy.
The staffers from the state of Florida keep in touch. You build friendships when you are in the trenches for a cause or a set of ideals. As emails of congratulations rolled in from people that worked so hard back in 2008 and were feeling rejuvenated with the recent march forward, one email came in that caught my eye.
The email was from the Obama campaign's State Director of Florida, Steve Schale.
The subject line read, "This is what we fought for."
It certainly is.