It's Been One Week

Last Tuesday night, after Obama had enough delegates to secure the nomination, I decided to post a diary that would announce my intention to remain loyal to the nominee of my party, even though that nominee was not the woman I had supported during the primary process. The transition has not been easy for me.

Emotionally, it has been hard for me to think of myself as someone who supports Barack Obama. I was for Hillary for so long that it just became ingrained in me that I was against Senator Obama. I have felt like a stranger in a strange land, but I know enough about changing my feelings to know that to change them, I have to do new things. So these are the actions I took:

1. I signed up at Barack Obama dot com and made a $25 donation.

2. I've written several diaries at MyDD and even cross-posted a few of them at daily kos (more on this in a moment.)

3. I told my personal friends off-line what I was doing.

4. I pinned an Obama button to my gym bag.

5. On Saturday, I removed my Hillary bumper sticker on my car and replaced it with an Obama bumper sticker.

A lot of my Hillary friends have not been able to understand what I am doing, and I have become the object of their scorn from some of them who think I have betrayed Hillary. I was surprised and unprepared, so a couple of times, I mixed it up with them on the blogs. Learn from my mistakes: this is not a good strategy.

The Obama supporters at MyDD have been peerlessly gracious. Some of the Obama supporters at daily kos have been gracious, but there is still some latent stuff going on over there, so I think I really may stop trying to post diaries or comments at daily kos.

My friends in real life are just yellow dog Democrats. They were for Hillary, but they never embraced her cause the way I had, so they made the transition with less emotional baggage. They are pleased that I am doing what I am doing.

I am still in the process of my transition. I still am sad that Hillary has lost, and I have not made the whole transition to the new phase of the campaign, but I do know that if I want to change my insides, I have to change my outsides. I am acting my way into this new phase of the campaign, because defeating John McCain is the only thing that is important in presidential politics.

Barack Obama for president!