Voting

I guess I'd just like to encourage everyone to go vote on Tuesday, no matter your affiliation. However, if you're on the fence about who to vote for, let me offer my opinion and some of the reasons that I voted for Barack Obama.

When distinguishing between the democratic candidates (now mainly just Hillary & Barack), you must be picky because they agree for the most part on the big things. However, the little things can make all the difference. Let me just say that one of the main reasons I like Barack is his ability to inspire my generation. We've been labeled as politically apathetic when it comes to participating in government (which I think is not true), but for some reason Barack Obama has been able to energize more people my age than most politicians. This is an amazing feat, I think.

Also, most people cite Barack's "lack of experience" as the #1 thing that takes away his status as "ideal candidate", but I definitely look at this as a good thing. I would just encourage you to think about where "experience" has gotten us the past 8 years. Let's also remember that he is a senator. I know this is not the same as president, but it's not like he's never had any political experience. He's just not in the "in-crowd" of Washington so to speak. This, I think, is his biggest advantage. America absolutely needs change and I think he is the only candidate capable of unifying republicans & democrats in order to make this change.

As far as the issues go, you can look them up and compare between Hillary & Barack.

On the war in Iraq: Both Hillary & Barack want to end the war in Iraq, yet Hillary has never made any promises to bring our troops home. Barack outlines removing all our troops from Iraq in about 16 months of his taking office. Don't get me wrong, Hillary wants to remove lots of troops, but I've never seen her be very specific about this and that worries me.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of all the reasons that I voted for Barack, but it's at least an introduction to some of the things about him that influenced my vote.

At the very least, though, I think we can all agree that it's time for a change. It's time for America to move past this "rule-by-fear" government that we have now and once again become a picture of hope & democracy instead of an image of war & greed for the rest of the world.