I used to be heavily involved in various “third” party efforts — I was a huge Nader and Green party supporter in the late 90s, up through 2004 pretty much. Since then I’ve slowly become disenchanted with that scene. Why? Most of the time, we see third parties using the small resources that they have achieved, to bring their issues to the mainstream — an important effort, and arguably part of the process of legitimizing a multi-party system, but to me it just didn’t seem like a focused and efficient movement. I think the #1 focus should be opening up elections, primaries, and the party and voting system, so that it won’t be hardwired to allow for only 2 parties.

Well, guess what, that is what CUIP is doing. I spoke at length with the volunteer who called me, trying to fully understand their mission and activities. My main problem is that their name suggests that they want to “unite” “independents” into a single “party”, which to me is just silly and pointless. The volunteer sufficiently convinced me that their name is a historical artifact, and that this is no longer a goal of theirs.

As some evidence of this — if you go to cuip.org, you are redirected to independentvoting.org, their new identity.

Head over to their website and check out their FAQ and activities, in particular their Open Primaries campaign.

His stance against the war

Obama was against the war before it began, has criticized the war since then, and is now running a campaign centered around ending the war. All the way through he has spoken the plain truth about it: (a) there was no compelling evidence that there were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (b) we should have been focusing our military efforts on quelling terrorist networks (c) we need to work on improving our reputation and relationships with other countries and cultures in order to not incite terrorism in the first place.

His meta-policies

Reading Obama and Clinton’s policies side-by-side, one will discover that they are pretty similar. I happen to think that Obama’s are presented much more clearly and intelligently on his website, and smack of greater sophistication and detail, but it is arguable that this has more to do with audience targeting than with the quality of the goals and final details of the policies themselves.

What really impresses me about Obama, and sets him apart from Clinton, are his “meta-policies”, if you will; his policies and goals about government.

Obama wants to make our government more transparent, more accessible, and more accountable. To this end he has done the following work while in the US Senate:

• Introduced the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2007 on a website maintained by the Office of Management and Budget (http://www.usaspending.gov/).
• Put together, with Russ Feingold, the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act, which amends parts of the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995. It strengthens public disclosure requirements concerning lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.
• Introduced the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, a bill to criminalize deceptive practices in federal elections, including fraudulent flyers and automated phone calls, as witnessed in the 2006 midterm elections

(Not all have passed. Click through to see current status of each piece of legislation. Descriptions lifted from Wikipedia and slightly modified.)
Now, during his campaign, he has an incredibly impressive set of policies on using technology to improve government transparency and accessibility. I could give you an overview, or I could just direct you to Lawrence Lessig’s fantastic piece on why he supports Obama, which mostly addresses technology and transparency. In a nutshell: Obama wants to make government information and information as easy to access as your favorite blog. On top of that, he has the most sophisticated position on Net Neutrality. (quick definition of Net Neutrality: not allowing the phone/cable company to charge you more to access some websites vs. others, which is what they want to start doing.)

Previously mentioned here: this fantastic lecture Obama gave on  government accountability, transparency, and ethics.

His style of politics

Obama has run an extremely long and beautiful grassroots campaign. He has established an extremely impressive network of paid staffers in most (all?) states. He has engaged his supporters using accessible and innovative online tools. He has the best website, by far.

He has not accepted any lobbyist contributions. (see extensive discussion of this topic here).

He has been able to spool up and sustain an enormous, million-dollar-a-day, grassroots fundraising machine.

Only 10 percent of Clinton contributors did not donate the legal maximum $2,300 for her primary campaign. In contrast, only three percent of Obama donors gave the maximum. The rest of the cash came from small sums from many more people. (source)

He has completely refrained from what, to my understanding, most people would call “negative” campaigning / mud slinging. As of a couple weeks ago, the Clinton campaign can’t say the same…

That’s why Obama is such a different candidate to me. I’d love to hear what folks out there think about the differences (or lack thereof) between the two candidates, if I am buying into hype, or if I am missing some important points.

Good stuff. I myself am not aware of how cut and dry that is though (no Al Qaeda in Iraq until after the war began). Anyone know of a report/study/article that demonstrates this?

ObamasResume.org aims to put together a simple and complete description of Barack Obama’s career, which will be useful for Obama supporters to show their Clinton supporter friends. Anyone may edit this wiki.

The content is a little sparse right now — but that’s why it’s a wiki! Head on over and help me fill it in, so that we can start sending it around to our well-meaning-but-tragically-uninformed Clinton-supporter friends in Texas, Ohio, Vermont, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Missouri.

http://yeswecanhas.com

Let me know what you think, tell all your friends, and most importantly: submit images!