And they will in 4 years. This is the time where progressives need to start grooming primary candidates for 2028. Not during the 2024 general. We need some young, viable progressives (who aren’t going to Fetterman as soon as they win) to start campaigning now.

Democrats were never going to give up the incumbent advantage, and I’m legitimately surprised by how the media has been acting like it’s a weird situation. It’s giving people this impression that pulling your current leader (of both the party, and in this case, the county) and running someone else in their place is a viable strategy in US presidential politics.

If you want young, progressive candidates, now is the time to start bringing them to the forefront…

Note: apologies in advance for the biography that nobody will probably read… But I swear it’s related! You could probably skip to the " TL;DR part, but ehhh c’mon

Not to tell my life story, but it relates and ended up typing up more than expected…

I have this very vivid, formative even, memory from 2004 of sitting down with my conservative, Republican, Evangelical Christian parents (basically just “lower taxes and stop abortion” days of conservatism, and the “you can’t read Harry Potter” Christianity) and watching both party’s conventions.

This was to be the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in, and I was taking it seriously. Up until that point I was still just mimicking my parents political (and unfortunately, religious as well) views, so I remember that we were supposed to be happy, etc, when we watched the RNC, and boo/ridicule the DNC. And for the most part, embarrassingly, I did those things.

It was almost like watching WCW. I even remember mimicking my father’s sports-like taunts we made towards the Democratic party when he saw that Zell Miller (some old racist conservative who, I guess never got the memo that the Dixiecrats left the party, and was somehow still a Democrat at the time) was a keynote speaker for the Republicans. I’ll say that again, one of the main speakers at the 2004 Republican National Convention, was a registered Democrat. Imagine that happening now, it would be like Rand Paul speaking at the DNC. Yeah he might openly disagree with the leadership of his party, but he would never do something like that unless he officially left the party. And even then…

“Well it’s over,” I thought. The Democrats really must be as bad as Fox News, and my dad, are saying, if their own party members are giving speeches in support of the other guy. I ended that night still thinking the GOP was clearly the only real option here…

Then a week later or whatever, we watched the DNC (on Fox News). It was a different time, but I do give my parents credit for making sure that we watched both conventions since it was my first time voting and they really wanted to drive home how important it is to be informed. They were not quiet about whom they thought I should vote for, but they wanted it to be clear that voting is deeply personal, and that the decision is ultimately mine to make.

Anyway, we watch the DNC, and for a lot of these speakers, it’s the first time I’ve ever even heard of them. I was aware of Ted Kennedy because my dad used to “joke” about driving a car off a bridge, but had never actually heard him speak and even in his advanced age I remember being a bit like, “now hold on…”. I had always been told that liberals were terrible people, but a lot of the stuff he’s saying (in a silly voice/accent) was actually kind of making sense to me.

That’s when I learned the term “bleeding heart” when my dad used it as a derogatory. And it just didn’t make sense to me… We were an Evangelical Christian home, I had been raised on those exact same values. How is caring for others a thing to ridicule?

Anyway, finally getting to my actual point (if there ever was one). I was watching these speeches, and kind of thinking to myself, “this sort of makes more sense, and aligns more closely to my values that the things I heard at the RNC,” but cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing, and it doesn’t help that we’re watching it on Fox News).

So we keep watching, and next up is some young, unknown state senator from Illinois with a weird sounding name. Barack Obama. And holy shit, I was enthralled the moment this guy opened his mouth. I know hindsight and that everyone says this and all of that, but I KNEW this guy was going to be President some day. He was just in his element, and everyone could tell immediately.

He didn’t single-handedly undo the 10+ years of religious trauma that was keeping me as identifying as conservative, I’m embarrassed to say that I ultimately did not vote for John Kerry that year. But I definitely credit that speech as being one of my first major “wake up calls” that conservative ideology is rotten, and my misunderstanding of a single issue (abortion) was being used to elect awful people

And it was not only based on the quality and content of the speech (which made everything at the RNC look like Four Seasons Landscaping), but based on the fact that this previously completely unknown guy got a keynote (possibly even the keynote spot, I forget) slot at the DNC. You could tell that the party knew what they had with Obama, and within 4 years, he was goddamn President.

(TL:DR of sorts follows despite it just being the end of my comment):

So what I think I’m trying to say, after telling my life story that nobody asked for, and probably won’t read, is that we need to be looking for our “next Obama” (using this simply out of convenience, I don’t want another Obama) now. Like 4 years ago even.

We need to be grooming progressive state senators, community organizers, etc. and we need to get them on the national stage, and into the American consciousness ASAP. This is the time to be doing this for the next election (hopefully we will still have them).

I apologize for this crazy long message nobody asked for lol. I will probably not proof read so sorry if something doesn’t make sense…

It was kind of just coming out of me and may even have helped me process how much of an effect that 2004 DNC Obama speech had on my change/growth as a political person.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk.