Redford Speaks Out On Obama and the Fate of the Democratic Party

It's more about what he said than who he is

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Saturday, July 12th 2008 at 7:25 PM

Regular readers know I like to throw a few political pieces in the mix every now and again and when I get back to weekly recaps once a few new page redesign efforts are out of the way and not taking up most of my time the majority of my comments will be found there. However, this little blurb of news coming out of the Irish Times caught my eye as Robert Redford was in Dublin, Ireland speaking at a public interview in Trinity College in advance of his conferral with an honorary degree by the university today.

Among other things, the 71-year-old actor/director spoke out about the upcoming Presidential election and said he was looking forward to a "regime change" in the U.S. saying, "Yes. Where my country is at the moment, I'm not confident of anything. I'm hopeful. I think Obama is not tall on experience . . . but I believe he's a really good person. He's smart. And he does represent what the country needs most now, which is change."

This is nothing new, but the next quote is rather interesting:

I hope he'll win. I think he will. If he doesn't, you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye. I think we need new voices, new blood. We need to get a whole group out, get a new group in."

I wish he had expanded on his statement because that whole "you can kiss the Democratic Party goodbye" is quite a powerful one. Personally I wish we would kiss the whole idea of party politics goodbye and have people running simply as people. The Independent party is trying to do that, but with Ralph Nader as their continuing mascot they aren't going to get very far although Lou Dobbs would like to think otherwise.

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