Who speaks to the heart and from the heart anymore? Few. And who sees good and believes they can achieve it? In government, this is absent for the most part. That is why comparisons to Great people who have moved us deeply in the past reflect from your path as a matter of regular conversation. Let Senator Clinton demean and minimize it by calling all you are a "speech from 2002." She only discloses her own smallness of vision with this pettiness. She places herself next to Bush, who also derided your message as inconsequential and typical. But really, could we expect anything different from the Old Guard than for it to deride the Changing of the Guard as unnecessary and of no value?

I mostly wanted to say please don't respond to the Clinton campaign as people are waiting for you to do with their breath held fast. Continue to be original in your campaign, speak to the People, believe in what it is you bring. Do not stoop to the level of the attacks being leveled against you. The Clinton machine is now spewing smoke and winding down like an unrusting berserker, making frantic eyes and farting noises and threatening to tear down the very walls as it falls. I beg you to gracefully dispatch it, and not to feed into the frenzy or just stand aside as it self-destructs, even.

People soak up the media as we look to be informed, and the mainstream media (as I perceive it) is a pack of hungry and bored wolves half the time. So do not let the Clintons dominate the papers and TV and Internet with fatty, oversalted, Rovian treats. Give the lupine crew their meat. But let it be sustaining, and well-made, and tasty, and bearing no poison. Because it is true that the core message of your campaign (as I understand it) would seem to inherently eschew the typical and nasty types of tactics. And it is true that acting in step with that core message is critical to the strong support you now have and continue to grow. I'm not saying smart or aggressive politics are or could or should ever be absent from any realworld political campaign! Truth squads that can combat disinformation rapidly should never be lacking from such political battles, for one example. Nor should an army of threadwatchers. I am not naive. and I'm certainly not saying pull a Gore and refuse to contest obviously shady deals. On the Left, nobody that I know of is happy about that one.

But let Clinton and her employees gnash their teeth and hiss and throw everything in their path. It shows, trust me. And we have to recognize that even her run as a woman is inspiring, though her politics and message...not so much. (To me.) Just as Bill Clinton irretrievably hurt his wife's appeal to many by getting ugly with the first African American Presidential candidate after so much talk of his "blackness", nor do you want to stain your appeal by tarnishing what is a historical precedent on her end. It's not an imperative to vote for her, but definitely good cause to respect her.

Clinton-partisans may cheer the Clintons attempt to come back into power just because it's them, and there's nothing really wrong with that. Nothing more or less invalid than those who want the Clintons far away from la casa blanca simply because they are the Clintons. But I do not think most of us enjoy the ugly smears and the chopping at the knees that the Clinton campaign is doing lately. Even at the expense of their own party! I personally think the Senator is hacking away at her own roots, and wonder where she thinks she'll be standing when January '09 comes and the Clintons are still living in the same house they are now. I wonder how much Clinton is poisoning the well from which she must by necessity drink. I don't know enough about politics to say, but I do personally know people who were initially supporting her, but have since have recoiled. And I do not think most of us support these ugly shows of powerlust.

I know I will not. I will not. I will not support that, not from her and not from you. That's not what moves me. We've had naked powerlust for eight years. I'm begging it to cover its pimply ass, ugly knees, and stained feet.

The reason I and some people I know have responded to your campaign and suddenly discuss voting and such when before many of us so much as spat at the entire mainstream political charade is because you bring something different. For those who can't see it I do not speak, nor to them, tampoco. I can only say there are many shapes in many stories of people who cannot see something that draws many others to a person who intends to bring great change. And I do believe you mean to, and I do believe it is possible. And I do think belief, while not an answer or a plan, is an essential component to any success. And the spitting upon belief an essential component of a wasted arsenal, and a boring and backlogged mindset. Naysayers' inability or non ability to see means little in all of that. That is how things operate and it does not mean there is not something very real transpiring. Just the bringing of that Something New (and as Ratatouille reminds us "The New Needs Friends,") and just the courage to stand behind that in and of itself is inspiring. It tells one that something could actually change in the world and what we have come to just know as The Way It Is, and we might break away drastically from the mire into which we now sink a bit deeper as a nation, and every day.

It's not just me or people like me, it's people who are apparently very little like me who want to see you succeed. And that, too, is what is really inspiring. The differences in these numbers, the numbers of young people, the numbers of Democrats and of non-Democrats. And it would be best, and and important victory, if this inspiration you have helped foster remain whole and not become subsumed in the angry, ugly, typical political process. This is the guidance you need to demonstrate. People are watching.

That is, even if you were to fail in your bid (which I don't feel you will), the message of hope and a new politics that you now champion resounds and will remain and will remain a lesson. And a reminder. It should remain a haunting standard of comparison. Bob Marley died years ago and never sat in an oval office with a red phone at 3 am, and he has changed the hearts and lives of millions, and will continue to. It is not because he ignored the Rwandan genocide, it is because he saw something beyond the bloodied and brokedup walls of the concrete jungle and he spoke of it to us. Because we see plenty of stained and scuffed and unmoving concrete, are always in need of the songs of the sky. Die without that, die still walking.

I denounce and reject the disgusting and small and sad accusation that embracing hope and embracing change and embracing a person who manifests such a message and embracing the people who also see that message as an important one is in ANY way childish or infantile—unless it be in the sense that the very young are not calmed nor confused by calculation pretending to be empty authority and cold competency. (Do these women look childish or infantile? Not to me. They look happy, hopeful, and engaged in the political process.)

But we know how they come for those who come with sway. (Especially when they sway certain crowds too often kept at bay.)

Dear Barack Obama, just so it is clear, I do not rely upon you to change my life or change my heart. Never once have I considered that the job of a politician. I do not think you are The One anymore than The One repeats and reappears wherever my eyes will fall, because I, too, am The One, and she is The One, and the one is everywhere and the One is all. I would not join even an Obama fan club let alone a cult, and I will still help or not help in my everyday and local life whether or not you are in the White House. This letter is not about blind adoration nor my personal capitulation of anything. I will remark upon and reinforce such a message and motion that you speak of and for wherever I see it occurring. On the corner, in the street, in a classroom, in an auditorium, by a river, in a valley, in a penthouse. (Especially in a penthouse.) It doesn't have to be you. But the message needs to be true.

So please let the Clintons sink as low as they like. Let their nastiness show itself and continue to (embarrassingly) expose itself. Remain "above it," and continue to remind us of the good to be done, and the justice to be sought, and the change we can make and the Hope we most definitely need to get us there.

And tell Kevin I said gracias.

Peace (and Justice)
and LOVE AND SOUL!

—Nezua