For those of you (Erin) who look at this blog… Here is what I would have written about over the last week had I had time.

- Our house almost burned down. For real, in a scary way. Not in a “oh, the stove flared up” way. More like a Holy Crap, Sarah call 911, go over and pound on the neighbor’s door and get them out, go turn on the water and hook up a hose and wait for the firetrucks to come. It was awesome.

- I love the new Nada Surf album

- I LOVE March Madness and I will neglect almost any responsibility that dares get in it’s way.

- Local mission trips w/ Middle School students

- Lost is still awesome. Seriously.

- It’s officially Spring… and we had an inch of snow this morning.

- I haven’t found a way to like Hillary again. In fact, everything her campaigns does seems to make me ill.

- Sarah and I watch Margot At the Wedding w/ high hopes. It blew.

So, Senator Clinton had a big night last night. What I hoped would happen, obviously, did not. I’m not going to talk about delegates, or spin, or anything. In fact, I’m going to try and fast a bit from this race- and here’s why:

I want to like whomever I’m going to vote for in November. I’m not going to vote for McCain- I’m just not. So, that leaves me with Clinton and Obama. 6 months ago I was pretty excited about both of them. Then, the more I learned about Obama- I threw my support behind him, and I felt great about it. Still do. However, the more this campaign has gone on, the more I’m having trouble liking Clinton. It’s the whole ‘fighter-win at any cost’ attitude that kept me and politics apart for so long.

I don’t want to hear her say “We have the momentum now!,” when a few weeks ago she said, “It’s not about momentum, it’s the numbers in the end that matter.” I’m sick of her accusing him of plagiarism- (then using a obviously scripted line to prove a point) and then basically stealing line for line from her husband in her closing remarks- DURING THE SAME DEBATE! I’m tired of her claiming she won Michigan- when Obama wasn’t on the ballot. I’m sick of her staff touting tons of foreign policy experience- then isn’t able to provide any examples themselves. And I’m sick of people pointing out to instances where the public couldn’t name any accomplishments of Obama- because 1) that just means they’re lazy and 2) they never follow up asking them to name any of her accomplishments.

So- I’m tired and this debate. Which is too bad- because this is the first time I’ve becoming involved in a real way. My wife said last night very astutely that she has lost interest. Not because she isn’t excited about Obama anymore, but because these are the very politics she (and I) avoided for so long, and they now seem unavoidable. My father is a huge conservative. The kind that listens to Limbaugh and watches Fox News 24/7. Which is fine. But it was exposure to that which caused me to steer clear of becoming involved. I didn’t want to carry around a walkman everywhere I went so I wouldn’t miss Bill O’Reilly’s next comment.

Obama made me feel like we could live in a happy, little political fantasy world. I was wrong. It isn’t all Hillary’s fault- everyone has dipped their toes into the waves of stupidity here. But I do feel she brought it there- and for that, I just don’t like her at all.

So- my plan is this: To stop paying so much attention to the campaign(s). To stop reading the headlines on msnbc and cnn. To stop turning the TV to the cable news networks when I get home at night. That way, maybe- just maybe, come November whoever is the Democratic candidate can look exciting and inviting to me. Maybe a 3-4 month political fast will be enough time to digest and dump the bad taste in my mouth right now. Maybe.

Maybe I’m caught up in a swell, and I’m only riding on emotion. Not sure if I care- but I’m all the way on the bandwagon. Yes, I know his policies. And yes, I know Clinton’s. Some of the small differences between their plans I go either way on. What it comes down to is what I believe Obama can do. I don’t think everything is going to change overnight, or even after 4 years- but I get excited and hopeful when I see Obama speak. It gives me the same feeling of hope and change I get when I think about Christians standing up and working toward justice for the poor and oppressed. When I hear the story of the inner city kids, I see it in the same heart for kids I minister to. No- I don’t think Obama is Christ- and maybe I’m a heretic. But I get a similar sense of hope and call in these words.

Here is a section from Obama’s Super Tuesday speech last night. (Transcript found @ NYtimes.com) It’s a little lengthy- but worth it.

“We can do this. But it will not be easy. It will require struggle and it will require sacrifice. There will be setbacks, and we will make mistakes. And that is why we need all the help we can get.

So tonight I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have yet to join this movement but still hunger for change. They know it in their gut. They know we can do better than we’re doing. They know that we can take our politics to a higher level. But they’re afraid. They’ve been taught to be cynical. They’re doubtful that it can be done.

But I’m here to say tonight to all of you who still harbor those doubts, we need you. We need you to stand with us. We need you to work with us. We need you to help us prove that together, ordinary people can still do extraordinary things in the United States of America.

I am blessed to be standing in the city where my own extraordinary journey of service began. You know, just a few miles from here, down on the south side, in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant, it was there that I learned what it takes to make change happen. I was a young organizer then — in fact, there are some folks here who I organized with — a young organizer intent on fighting joblessness and poverty on the south side.

And I still remember one of the very first meetings I put together. We had worked on it for days. We had made phone calls. We had knocked on doors. We had put out fliers. But on that night, nobody showed up. Our volunteers who had worked so hard felt so defeated, they wanted to quit. And to be honest, so did I. But at that moment, I happened to look outside and I saw some young boys tossing stones at a boarded-up apartment building across the street. They were like the boys in so many cities across the country, little boys, but without prospects, without guidance, without hope for the future. And I turned to the volunteers and I asked them, “Before you quit, before you give up, I want you to answer one question: What will happen to those boys if we don’t stand up for them?”

And those volunteers, they looked out that window and they saw those boys and they decided that night to keep going, to keep organizing, keep fighting for better schools, fighting for better jobs, fighting for better health care. And I did too. And slowly but surely, in the weeks and months to come, the community began to change.

You see, the challenges we face will not be solved with one meeting in one night. It will not be resolved on even a Super Duper Tuesday. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys who have so little, who’ve been told that they cannot have what they dream, that they cannot be what they imagine. Yes, they can.”