Obama and hope

Yesterday, I explained why I’m supporting Barack Obama for president. Well, Patrick Nielsen Hayden endorses Obama for the same reasons, but he expresses his thinking more eloquently and in more detail:

I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against the right-wing frames that Obama sometimes (sometimes craftily, sometimes naively) deploys. Because I think a Hillary Clinton candidacy will be another game of inches, yielding—at best—another four or eight years of knifework in the dark. Because I think an Obama candidacy might actually shake up the whole gameboard, energize good people, create room and space for real change.
Because he seems to know something extraordinarily important, something so frequently missing from progressive politics in this country, in this time: how to hearten people. Because when I watch him speak, I see fearful people becoming brave.
That’s not enough. But it’s something. It’s a real something. It’s a start.

(Via John Scalzi)