Now Is the Time

Those one or two people who use an RSS aggregator to read my blog may have noticed a post I made in favor of John Edwards a few days before Iowa. I pulled that post from the site a few minutes later, having decided not to put a political endorsement on a blog that has a link from a couple internal web pages at my company. Which is, of course, another example of Democrats obeying scruples that Republicans simply don't have: for example, Stanley O'Neal, when he was CEO of Merrill (before being exposed as an unimaginably incompetent fool who had no idea how his company was losing tens of billions of dollars in businesses that he boasted about building), pressured more than a hundred Merrill executives into donating $2,000 each to the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in 2004.

But anyway, screw that.

If you are a Republican, now is the time to stop reading. If you are a Democrat, now is the time to give money to Barack Obama.

I won't go into all the reasons I think Obama would be a better President than Hillary Clinton. The fact is that a vast majority of Democrats think either one would be a fine president. But ...

Barack Obama has the best chance of beating John McCain. Besides all the usual arguments - lower negatives and higher positives than Clinton, better ability to connect with people, Clinton's unique ability to unify the Republican party and get the Republican base to the polls - the surveys are clear and consistent: Obama always beats McCain, Clinton always loses.

We need a candidate now, or Obama and Clinton will tear each other apart all the way until the convention, while McCain raises money and appeases the conservative base. Obama is clearly the choice of the people, with 11 consecutive primary wins, including this week's 17-point win in Wisconsin - the type of heavily-white, old-manufacturing state where Clinton should do well. Our best hope is for Obama to deliver a knockout blow by sweeping all of the March 4 states. Anything less and Clinton will probably fight it out to the end. And to do that, he needs your money now when he's deciding how many television ads to buy in Ohio and Texas.

Barack Obama is our best chance at a presidential win in November, a landslide in the Congressional elections, and a better future for our country. I just made my second $500 contribution to his campaign. If you are planning to contribute anything at all in this election cycle, now is the time.