From today’s NY Daily News:

CONCORD, N.H. – Twenty-year-old Max Nichols sums up Barack Obama’s sales pitch in one word: “Amazing.”

“He definitely has my vote,” said Nichols, a college student who plans to vote for Obama.

“He’s younger than the other candidates, so we relate to him easier,” said Nichols, explaining the 46-year-old senator’s appeal to young voters. “He seems to take a stance that is more similar to young people’s stances on change. Obviously, the younger generation is always wanting a lot of change.”

Gimme my change, please!

Well, it’s understandable in a twenty-year-old, placing one’s hope in something as undefined as change. Those times they are always a-changin’, as we know.

Hillary may have been “making change,” as she says, for thirty-five years, but Obama deserves credit for already having made one significant change, simply by winning a presidential nominating caucus while being a black man.

Yesterday I found myself treading on dangerous ground, discussing the current primary election goings-on with a close relative who is a Democrat and is extremely liberal (Noam Chomsky territory when he feels like it). He is currently very high on Barack Obama, clearly enough seeing him right about now as MLK, JFK and RFK all rolled into one. He posited that he had seen or read of Republicans who were saying that they too liked Obama and could vote for him. (Obama himself is talking up this kind of, er, “coalition building.”) Well, I’m dubious, to say the least, as to the nature of any Republicans who can see themselves voting for someone who intends to pursue policies at direct odds with what Republicans generally stand for, but I didn’t make this point. I did say this, and I meant it: I think that many, many people — most certainly including Republicans, and definitely myself — are happy to see a presidential contest in a nearly all-white state being won by a black candidate. It is very good to see a page being turned on this subject (although far from the final page), and to see the racial part of “racial politics” becoming that much less significant. I also said — while neither expecting nor receiving any agreement — that some credit for the turning of this page should also be given to President Bush, and to the black individuals he appointed to the highest possible positions in his administration. We will soon have had eight years in which the Secretary of State of the United States has been black — previously completely unprecedented. First Colin Powell, and now Condoleeza Rice have occupied this most responsible and high-profile job in the United States government (and this is to say nothing of the diversity amongst the rest of George W. Bush’s appointees). Breaking that barrier — albeit an invisible one — that kept black individuals from the highest appointed positions in government has made it, I believe, that much easier for this latest breach of an invisible barrier, the barrier that supposedly kept blacks from being viable presidential candidates. I am very glad to see Obama blowing up that barrier.

My liberal relative, audibly overjoyed with my expression of something positive about Barack, has probably put me in the column of “Republicans who will vote for Obama.” Well, maybe … if Ron Paul wins the Republican nomination.

Hmm. Well, on consideration, no. The chance to see President Paul trying to run the country would be too hilarious to miss. (Talk about “making change.”)

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