A Heavy Heart

Although I've ravenously read and privately discussed the presidential campaigns throughout the last months, I've been quiet here. After voting in the charade that is the Texas Democratic primary, though, I'm going to share my views in a hopefully succinct manner, after which I don't plan to write about it for some time.

Yesterday at Cuppacafe I read that Walt (Alison Kent's husband for those who are interested), who clerks a precinct in a heavily Republican area (although we live in different parts of Texas, I also live in a heavily Republican area), had written about the experience Democrats in Texas must go through to have their vote counted as presumably, your vote counted in other primary states. As a result of reading his blog, I got so fired up that I decided to devote today's blog to the topic.

When I came home from voting yesterday, I didn't feel good, and that's not the way a citizen of the U.S. should feel after exercising the most basic of rights guaranteed in our Constitution. Here's why I felt as I did: For my vote to have counted as equally as somebody voting in another part of the state, I would have had to live in that other part of the state...and I would have had to vote not once, but twice. And how is that one-man-one-vote?

Both my husband and I have degrees in politics and government; he graduated with special honors for his degree in government from the University of Texas while I have a B.S. in political science and a masters in public administration, both from Southern Methodist University. So we invariably talk politics a lot in our house. We don't agree on most of what we talk about, which can be frustrating, but this year we are more or less in lock-step. That may be a first, but it's not necessarily anything to write home about since I think both our votes yesterday were throw-aways.

Years ago, in my younger and more political days, I attended pro-choice rallies, escorted women at Planned Parenthood, and even became an alternate delegate for Michael Dukakis at the Texas Democratic State Convention (incredibly boring, btw, and made worse in that the actual delegate wouldn't give up even a moment for me to get onto the floor). But since just about every candidate I've ever voted for lost, with the exception of Bill Clinton, some of my enthusiasm waned as the years went by. So when my husband asked if we were going to caucus last night - a toughie considering we were expecting a long-distance hour-long phone call at roughly the same time - I told him no, that while it would be cool to actually be on the same side for a change, it was wrong that we needed to go in that we'd already voted.

Here's how it works in the Texas Democratic primary: The primary is open, so that you needn't be a registered Democrat (or Independent) to vote, but how much your vote counts depends on whether or not your precinct went Democrat in the previous presidential election. Also, the primary isn't an end to it all; there is a caucus after the poll closes, with the delegate count similarly allotted.

I grew up in California and know a lot of people in other states. To vote in a primary, they simply go and vote (and where I grew up, voting was at a school or somebody's garage. It was never in a church, which is where I go to vote. That alone is enough to set me off...and it has before on this blog, so I'll not get into that one again). Now, it's true that delegate allocation in California isn't the most straight-forward, but at least voters are not required to prove their worthiness as voters by coming back to vote again. Why isn't once enough?

Of course, that's not the only reason why I came home yesterday with a heavy heart. I think we Democrats are well on the way to showing once again that we can pull defeat out of the jaws of victory. If any party can, it's us. I'm thrilled that a brilliant and powerful woman is running, and feel proud that a brilliant and charismatic black man may win the nomination. Unfortunately, the Republicans hate Hillary more than anyone but Bill, and to be honest, I worry that even though the U.S. is more sexist than racist (woe to black women everywhere!), racism - or a bullet - will do Obama in at the end. Leaving us with a man I might have voted for eight years ago, but who now has caved in to the religious right, caved in on torture, and will be an even older man in a year than the 71 years of age he is right now.

I didn't know who I was going to vote for until Sunday, when my husband and I sat at Starbucks and went over the whole "Obama never held oversight hearings on the national security subcommittee he chairs" story. At that point I decided that no matter the hope - and the fresh view he brings to things (look at his modern view on renewing relations with Cuba, as opposed to Hillary's old-fashioned view, which remains in lock-step with a view held since the 60s) - I didn't see enough "there" there. True, he'd run a better campaign, which didn't reflect well on Hillary's ability to manage, but after eight disastrous years of Bush, I think we all know that a strong political campaign means diddly when it comes to actually leading a nation.

Then too, I'm angry about the sexism that plays/played a role in the press's coverage of Hillary's campaign. Just this morning I read in Maureen Dowd's Op Ed piece in the NY Times that "Hillary doesn’t make it look like fun to be a woman." Granted, Dowd was quoting somebody else, but about what man would that phrase ever have been uttered? "Obama doesn't make it look like fun to be a man." Huh?

I hope I'm wrong in believing the lowest common denominator will win out in the end. Frankly, I'm starting to think a parliamentary form of government might be able to actually get things done, as opposed to the gridlock we've had since Newt and his merry band of mooks came into power in 1995.

But that, folks, is another topic.

(BTW, I debated about whether or not to make this blog entry password-protected. In the end I decided against it. If that pushes away people on a different part of the political spectrum, so be it.)

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

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