It’s Mardis Gras, and also “Super” Tuesday! What a weird day! When I went to bed last night I still had not decided who to vote for in the Missouri primary. Early in the race, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter, no question. I suspect that part of my support for her has always existed because I knew that so many people (especially, of course, the extreme right-wingers) hated her. That hatred, it seemed to me, arose partly out of misogyny, and so my knee-jerk response was to, in effect, oppose their opposition. I had some good friends who took to Obama right away, but I thought he was just too young, with not enough of a track record. I had gotten used to having a president of around my own age with Bill Clinton, and I liked that; but having a (potential) president younger than me seemed… somehow wrong! Kind of painful, actually!
Now, in the last few days we have all seen an amazing shift in favor of Obama. And I have spent some time doing some more reading in news and editorial accounts about both these Democratic candidates, and more critical thinking. I have to admit that, in the whole arena of “experience,” I can’t say that Hillary has Barack beaten by much, if at all. I just can’t buy into the idea that the time she spent in the White House, married to the president, legitimately “counts.” Granted, there is a long tradition in which wives of deceased office-holders take over the jobs left vacant when their husbands died, and some of them did very well, in their own right. For some reason, the first name that pops into my head, though, is Lurleen Wallace (she was married to George Wallace; see her Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurleen_Wallace ... ).
True, Clinton is a US Senator from New York, but that always bothered me a bit, too. New York? She isn’t FROM New York; how did she get to win a Senate race just after moving to the state? That made me a bit uncomfortable, at the time. What if George and Laura Bush move to Missouri in a few months, and Laura decides she wants to be a US Senator from Missouri? Wouldn’t that be terribly peculiar?
I began to think that maybe I was supporting Hillary Clinton mostly because she is a woman; certainly I found I was offended when NOW got all pissy about some endorsements of Barack Obama, with the apparent message that you MUST support Hillary Clinton because failure to do so is a betrayal of women, or feminism, or something ( see this
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/01/28/awesomely-awesome-now-nys-calls-teddys-endorsement-of-obama-the-ultimate-betrayal/ blog entry, about that!).
And then there’s Bill, roaring around. I liked Bill, I really did, but that was when he was president. If we elect Hillary, what would we really get? Just what kind of combo might this 8-years-later version of the Clinton marriage actually become, as president?
So, with all that, and facing a trip to the little Baptist church where I vote, I think I just made up my mind. I’m sorry, Hillary, because I wanted to vote for you; but I think what’s really going to happen is that I’m voting for Barack Obama. I hope to God I don’t regret it.
Happy Mardis Gras, everyone! And, GO VOTE!
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