Yesterday's gone: With Super Tuesday over, Obama faces new challenges.

'Round About

Why do I love Obama?

by Kia Gregory

Are you voting for Hillary or Obama, and why?

It seemed like a simple question when I emailed it to a few friends last week. But the responses revealed two things. George Bush got elected, twice, because people are stupid. And I need new friends.

To put this election in perspective: We’re at war, our enemies are mounting, and we have a bad economy, a crappy education system, a shrinking middle class and millions of people without healthcare, meaningful jobs or hope.

Yet one friend is voting for Hillary because he says America doesn’t deserve Obama. (This is almost as ironic as people who said they weren’t voting for Nutter because he couldn’t win.)

Said friend also believes President Obama wouldn’t get any cooperation from the House and Senate to push his change agenda because of his pesky race. (And the highly polarizing Hillary would unite Democrats and Republicans?)

One undecided friend, a graphic designer, said: “Possibly Obama because we’ve seen what a Clinton is like already—good, but leaves more to be desired in my opinion.”

One of my poker buddies likes Hillary because she has “the backing of a former president who maintained decent national and foreign policy relationships. This would be a tremendous aid toward assembling a strong administration.”

Because:

As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone so eloquently put it, next to Obama, Hillary sometimes comes off like an angry drag queen.

She turned on the waterworks after (once again) being overshadowed by the coolest kid in school.

She gave Bush the green light to go to war with Iraq.

She keeps lying about what her vote meant.

I was nauseated watching her flip-flop on her immigration stance during MSNBC’s Philadelphia debate.

She was the first lady.

She can’t beat a Republican.

She’s proven she can’t control her husband.

Obama is the better candidate.

He just happens to be black.

He’s not running as a black candidate.

His blackness gives me the chance to participate in and witness unbelievable history.

He proved we’re ready by winning in Iowa, the whitest place on the planet.

He doubled up on Hillary in South Carolina.

Bill Clinton was not the first black president.

If we can reelect Marion Barry, free O.J. and draft Oprah, then damn it, we can vote for Barack Obama.

They tried to tag him as a Muslim, like there’s something wrong with that.

He transcends party, religion, race and class.

Hillary dissed the power of Martin Luther King.

Bill Clinton has lost his mind.

When I heard Obama speak at a journalism convention about the image of him and his wife Michelle and their two daughters on the White House lawn, I got goosebumps.

When he talks, I believe.

When she talks, I feel like she’s trying to sell me a timeshare.

As Toni Morrison said in her endorsement, Obama is “the man for this time.” “You exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates,” she wrote. “That something is a creative imagination, which coupled with brilliance, equals wisdom.”

I don’t believe he’ll get assassinated.

There’s such a word as “Billary.”

I loved his book Dreams From My Father.

Okay, I love him.

He has an authenticity that inspires me.

He’s willing to talk to our enemies.

He was against the war when such thinking was considered treason.

He was a community organizer, a civil rights attorney and a state legislator.

He is the audacity of hope and real change.

He reminds me that all things are possible.

And if he doesn’t win the nomination, for me, this election is over. As W.E.B. DuBois once wrote: “I believe that democracy has so far disappeared in the United States that no ‘two evils’ exist. There is but one evil party with two names, and it will be elected despite all I can do or say.”