Disappointment....

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/04/22/us/politics/politics-us-obama-disenchantment.html

This story reminds me of some things from the last election, so I'm going to put it out there. I was never a Barack Obama supporter during the election, even though I support my Democratic president now. I didn't have anything against candidate Obama personally (this includes his biography, his ethnicity, his youth); I just wanted more. I wanted someone with an aggressive--not conciliatory--style of politics, who understood that conflict has a place in democracy. I wanted someone who had some battle scars. I wanted someone to continue LBJ's Great Society and War on Poverty and and fight to win.

So, in the early stages of the primaries, I supported John Edwards. I didn't like him in 2004, when I had the (sadly correct, DING DING DING) feeling that he was too slick by half. But in 2008, he was talking about taking the fight to the insurance companies, really fighting them; he was talking about poverty being a problem in urban and rural America alike; he had Elizabeth and her dedication to a real healthcare plan for America. Then, even before he utterly disgraced himself and devastated his wife and family by not keeping it in his damn pants, he was out of the primaries. He just had no momentum. I was sad, but it wasn't exactly unexpected.

I then decided to go with Hillary. Yes, she and Bill were practitioners and pioneers of Democratic Centrism; they wouldn't identity themselves as liberals. But you know what, Obama isn't a liberal either. He never sold himself as such, even though his supporters wanted to see him as one. He and Hillary were quite close on most issues. So why did I go with Hillary, instead of supporting the person who would become the first black president of the United States?

I supported Hillary because she is a tough lady, who'd been in the trenches in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s. She'd been called a bitch, a ballbuster, a frigid wife who drove her husband to marital affairs, a Lady MacBeth. She had been called a traitor to feminism for sticking with her husband during the Lewinsky scandal. Yet she was still in it, giving as good as she got, and then some.

More than that, I supported Hillary because she was a qualified, WELL-QUALIFIED woman, who'd paid her dues, and had fought the fight. She would pursue a feminist agenda, and defend choice, because if she didn't, she'd have to answer to her own. She was a uniquely high profile female candidate, when there are none others on the horizon. I knew that if Hillary didn't make it this time, we wouldn't see a female presidential candidate from a major party (and please, don't even bring up Palin; she doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence) for 20 years. I wanted little girls to know that they could be proud feminists AND be president one day.

And during the campaign, the amount of misogynistic vitriol spewed at Hillary was unbelievable. Commentators on MSNBC would say about her, "man, she reminds me of an angry ex-wife!" For young women (3rd wavers, perhaps), she was the candidate for "dried up gray haired old feminists", who had the temerity to demand that the Democratic party to prioritize their agenda. There was so much eye-rolling about 2nd wave feminists and those old biddies' refusal to move on from the 1970s in ladyblog land. Look, I didn't and don't have a problem with a woman supporting Barack Obama. There were different compelling reasons for doing so. I DID and DO have a problem with women justifying their preference by slagging on Hillary, and by extension, on the generation of women who argued with their families, who marched, who protested, who voted, who went back to work, who demanded respect in the workplace, who broke into the ivory tower, so that their daughters and nieces and granddaughters wouldn't have it so damn hard when it was their turn. And in the end, Hillary lost the primaries. She didn't run the best campaign; she took her lead for granted. But she suffered more than she should have because of her gender, and still she stuck it out to the end.

For the most part, Hillary's supporters went to Barack Obama. Certainly the Party was telling them to, and to stop making such a fuss! But there were a few who formed or identified with groups like PUMA (Party Unity Means Authority, or Party Unity My Ass), who refused to budge. Some of them even made noise about supporting Sarah Palin, which is unreasonable and insane. There are a lot of issues that are important, not just "women's rights", like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, healthcare, education, national defense, etc. When the ultimate choice is between a moderate Democrat and conservative and utterly craven Republican, the Democrat is still going to be the better choice. But I think in the back of these PUMAs' minds, they knew that, if they didn't make some noise, women, a major Democratic demographic, would be forgotten and taken for granted.

And they were right. Sure, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed, but that guarantees a woman (or any person receiving discriminatory pay), the right to sue, which is great. It doesn't actually mandate wage equality. But that Stupak Amendment to the (watered down and insurance company-enriching) healthcare bill, denying any federal dollars to abortion access or coverage, making it more difficult for many women to buy health coverage, or to pay for the abortion that is still their right to obtain? That came from a Democrat, in a Democratic congress, in a Democratic bill, with a Democratic president. Abortion rights groups and pro-choice Democrats were outraged, but when NARAL-Pro Choice America endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary, when Democratic voters were yelling at Hillary and Chelsea to go iron their shirts during rallies (oh, bitterly true story), the fight for reasonable abortion access had already been conceded. It had been conceded because a lot of women voters in effect said to the Democratic party, "you know what, put other interests ahead of ours as women. It's okay. Us girls, we'll wait our turn for representation in the highest office in the land (even though the UK, Iceland, Germany, India, Israel, Pakistan, and Liberia have all had female heads of state). Don't mind us. Oh, those (old) shrews making all that noise? We're not here with them." And you know what? Fine. If getting out of Iraq was your top priority? Fine. If electing a president of color was what you cared passionately about? Fine. But those priorities and the choices made based on them, they have consequences.

So there's some disappointment now, and there should be, about a lot of things. But if the disappointment is with women's rights not getting enough respect, there's plenty of blame to go around. I don't feel let down by Obama personally right now; I was disenchanted a long time ago with my own party, in the heat of the primaries and their aftermath. And as happy as I am genuinely am that America elected a black Democrat president, I know that I don't have much in common with a black woman investment banker from Wall Street, or with a Latina woman doctor, or with a lesbian soldier in Afghanistan, or with a white woman in rural Appalachia. I don't share their experiences from being black, brown, or white (even though I'm yellow), from growing up in different parts of the country, from being rich or poor, from working in different jobs, or from having children. I share their gender, and that gender is still waiting for equality.