Maybe I'll Flip a $@#! Coin

Tell me about it baby. Like Traister (first link), I still do not know who to vote for. Unlike Drum (second) or Pollitt (third), I'm haven't decided to vote for Obama, although like both of them, I've wavered for a long time. But I'm still not decided yet, and I have to vote tomorrow.

I agree with Pollitt about this:

I'm with her on health care mandates, and with him on driver's licences for undocumented immigrants; both would probably be equally good on women's rights, abortion rights and judicial appointments. But on foreign policy Obama seems more enlightened, as in less bellicose.

Add in that Hillary really *does* have a well-established history of caring, passionately, about children and families in a way that I think is extremely important and that this country really, really needs. On the other hand, Obama has a more detailed economic plan that talks about small business (as opposed to big business). He doesn't say anything about needing to get back to regulating Wall Street and the banks and the energy companies and the other big money assholes, which worries me; on the other hand, Clinton's statements on the economy look purely like an after-the-fact reaction to the subprime mortgage meltdown.

I disagree about this:

Much as I would love to pull the lever for a woman president -- a pro-choice Democratic woman president, that is --I realized [when Obama won Iowa] how deeply unthrilled I was by the prospect of a grim vote-by-vote fight for the 50 percent+1 majority in a campaign that would rehearse all the old, (yes, mostly bogus or exaggerated) scandals and maybe turn up some new ones too. I wasn't delighted to think success would mean four more years of Bill Clinton either, or might come at the price of downticket losses, as many red-state Democrats fear. Democrats have nominated plenty of dutiful public servants over the years -- Humphrey, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry . They have always lost (or in Gore's case, not won by enough to not lose).

I was excited when Obama won Iowa, too. I think, though, that it wasn't for the reasons Pollitt cites--which surprise me, really, because I think all those reasons are rooted in sexism, for reasons I'll explain in a second--but because it made me feel like it was a horserace. And I think that's all to the good, having two (formerly three, alas) excellent candidates on our side. And frankly politics can be kind of exciting, the more so when there's a good argument going on about stuff that's actually important.

But I have a personal problem. I really, really resist and resent "practical" compromises that are based on bigotry. And I think that 99% of Clinton's negatives are because she's a woman (and a feminist), including the "four more years of Bill Clinton." Historically, women achieve power (even in representative democracies, but well before representative democracies: think of Queen Elizabeth, for instance) on the coattails of their fathers or husbands. Benazir Bhutto and Corazon Aquino were, respectively, their father's daughter and their husband's widow. One might argue that this isn't true of Thatcher and Merkel, but I would respond that both England and German are more feminist than we are: both have reasonably well established welfare states and haven't spent 200 years drinking the KoolAid of Rugged Individualism the way we have. Also, both are more conservative than Clinton.

Which gets to the other thing. I cannot get past the feeling that my hesitation about Clinton is a version of the old dictum that "a woman has to be three times better than a man to be considered his equal." Basically, Obama and Clinton are on a pretty even footing for a lot of people. But Obama's just More Exciting! He has that Special Something--momentum, charisma, whatever--that puts him over the edge with folks who, like me, have been wavering. It seems to me that (unless you never considered Clinton because of her votes on Iraq and Iran, which okay, fine) the tiebreaker is intangible, that it's that "likeability" thing. And my gut (and lots of research about unconscious prejudice in, say, hiring) tells me that "likeability" has a lot to do with prejudices that we don't even realize we have. Hillary's "shrill"; her crying is "manipulative"; we don't want "four more years of Bill," she's "less electable," she's "not trustworthy." All of that really means, "she's a woman, and we've never had a woman president before, and I'm just . . . not . . . sure . . . ." I firmly believe this.

Or, as Traister says,

Who am I to turn up my nose at her because she's imperfect? I always figured the first female president would be a Thatcher-style Republican -- how can I complain about a Wellesley-educated Democrat who once resembled the Second Wave women who fought for my ability to control my own reproduction and get paid as much as my male colleagues?

Amen, my sister. She's imperfect. ZOMG!!!! When have we *ever* had a Perfect Candidate to vote for? Is Obama perfect? Why is it that Clinton, the woman, is the one whose imperfections seem so, so difficult to excuse? Because it's true: a woman has to be demonstrably better than a man to be seen as his equal. Whether it's concert musicians trying out behind a screen, studies sending out identical resumes with differently-gendered names on top, studies in which teachers deliberately call evenly on boys and girls only to have the boys blow up about how the teachers are "giving the girls all the attention" (or studies showing that teachers who *think* they call on boys and girls evenly, in fact, don't), we know that we hold women to higher standards. And I'm certain that we're holding Clinton to a higher standard than we have held any Democratic nominee within *my* lifetime, anyway.

Of course, many of those problems apply also to African-Americans. I realize that. And although I think Traister is wrong that

frankly, Obama can be comfortably looked at as an exceptional black man, not as a harbinger of what's to come, whereas Hillary will stand in for all those pushy broads coming to take your jobs, college admissions letters, and your seats in Congress,

I do think that--for whatever reason--Obama just has not had the baggage of "omg a black man!!" the way that Clinton's had the "omg a woman!!!" problem. Maybe he'll get it in the general election, or maybe it's that Clinton is not just a woman but an actual avowed feminist, or maybe it's that Obama just hasn't been around long enough for the bullshit to start to pile up in our subconscious. Or maybe, you know, being a white woman myself, I'm just a lot more sensitive to Clinton's gendered "negatives" than I am to Obama's racialized ones.

Except. I was going to say that I feel like Drum is right that

while I still like both candidates a lot (which is what's kept me on the fence for so long), I guess I finally decided that Bill Clinton was right: voting for Obama is a roll of the dice.

Traister, likewise, says that Obama provides "a nimbus of vague hope," in contrast to Clinton's "steel-solid track record." But now that I've gotten to that part of this post, I'm thinking that that "roll of the dice" thing might be Bill's smarter (and he is pretty smart, you know) version of the "Obama just doesn't have enough experience" meme, which I *do* recognize as racist. He hasn't been in the U.S. Senate as long as Clinton, but he was in the Illinois State Senate before she was elected. Other than that, he and Clinton have similar backgrounds; law degrees, advocating for admirable causes. He taught Constitutional Law for a year, correction: ten years. Thanks to Joe in comments for pointing out my error (link is to Obama's CV! Hee), which seems promising, to say the least. Clinton's got the first lady experience, which both her campaign *and* her detractors are making a big deal over (and which I see as basically supporting my contention that women don't get this far without daddy or hubby going first, and therefore irrelevant as regards my voting decision). He's not inexperienced--unless you reflexively (and hopefully unconsciously) assume that any black man on an equal footing with white men (and women) is probably "unqualified," as all the anti-affirmative action bullshit arguments do.

But this feeling that I have (and I'm not the only one, based on comments I've seen around the blogosphere and heard in person--comments often coming from people who support him, by the way) that Obama is a good *speaker* but, you know, what, specifically, does he plan to *do*?--that feeling might also be a version of the "unqualified" argument, now that I think about it. Maybe my subconscious is thinking, "Oh, he's a flashy performer (and you know, the blacks, they're *good* at performance and public speaking! Just look at that Louis Armstrong or that Martin Luther King Jr.!), but you know, that comes naturally to them, so it doesn't demonstrate any *real* commitment." After all, my perusal of the candidate's respective websites--and their performance in the debates, based on what I've read of them (because I haven't actually watched the debates), suggests that he's got *at least* as much specific policy wonkage as Clilnton does. And, in fact, they're pretty similar on most things, with respective strengths in different areas.

I've actually said a couple of times that I'm going to vote for Obama. I know that most of the people who I think of as on my side are supporting him. But whenever I say that I do, too, it makes my tummy hurt. I just don't know if I can walk into the booth tomorrow and *not* vote for Clinton. I don't like not knowing who to vote for, the day before the primaries. I don't like the worry that part of my hesitation about Obama might be racist, or the knowledge that part of my hesitation about Clinton is sexist. I don't feel, as Traister and a lot of other feminists seem to, the need to protest about how I'd never vote for someone just because she's a woman--after all, we've *all* been voting for someones just because they're men for a long time now, and a lot of Americans are going to be doing it in this election too. Voting for someone because she's a woman is not the same thing as voting for *any* woman, any more than voting for someone because he's a man (as we've always done) means that we've always voted for *any* man. I'm cool with the idea that some women (and men) want to vote for Clinton because dammit, it's about time; I'm cool knowing that some blacks (and whites, and browns, etc.) want to vote for Obama because, dammit, it's about time.

So I'm just going to keep in mind that however I end up voting tomorrow, the outcome is gonna be a good candidate that I can unconditionally get behind. And dammit, it's about time.