We Thought We Were Making a Difference

It's almost a year since I climbed aboard a bus in Austin and rode for almost 24 hours up to Cleveland to spend a week going house-to-house, head-to-head, asking people to vote as early as possible and for the only candidate worthy of their vote, Barack Obama and then, on Nov. 7, 2008, to sit in the Cadillac Cafe, surrounded by hundreds of other "fired-up" volunteers and some local political figures, to watch our candidate move steadily toward victory. It was a wonderful experience and for the first time since the assassination of JFK, I knew that our political system could work and that all of us had a stake in the political process.

After the long ride back to Austin and a return to "business as usual" the glow of victory and the sense of real accomplishment burned on and we waited for our victorious leader to call us back to arms, to fight the good fight and expand our sphere of influence. We would not accept eight more years of the same old stuff in Washington- the lobbyists and the crooked politicians were going to have to make career change- or so we thought. Now we know. It was all just a dream a "smoke and mirrors" pony show put on by the real leaders who are now ensconced in the White House calling the shots.

The naive, idealistic volunteers have no place in the Obama machine now. We've served our purpose and are now relegated to the landfills with all the rest of society's "disposables". We never sought power or individual recognition, just a chance to "make a difference" and messieurs Axelrod, Emmanuel and the others knew that from the very beginning. We were just "warm bodies", "cannon fodder", in the political struggle and now the real generals are left to plot and execute strategies to expand and strengthen their own political power.

Where does President Obama stand in all of this? Will history see him as another "Bushie", dangling from Cheyney's strings (read Obama dangling and Axelrod/Emmanuel the string pullers)? Or is Barack Obama actually the Ringmaster?