I was with you from the very beginning. OK, well, not the very beginning. But in December of 2007, I helped organize the country’s first ever grassroots presidential forum — where folks from community organizations shared the stage with you and other candidates and asked all the questions. When that event started, I was backing another candidate. But by the end of the day, you had me.

“This idea of community values,” you said to the audience of farmers and farmworkers and families on welfare, “is not just the cause of a campaign for me, it is the cause of my life.”

And I believed you. Maybe because I wanted to believe you. Maybe because I needed someone in whom to believe. But I believed you.

Sure, I had friends from Illinois progressive circles who warned me that, no matter the rhetoric, you were a proven centrist at heart. They shouted and waved their hands. But I didn’t listen. I was enthralled and excited and brimming with hope.

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