I FALL IN LINE -- PERSUADED BY HILLARY AND BILL

For those who don't follow this blog enough to know, The Sage and I are fiftyish lifelong activist Democrats. The Sage, my hubby, is often quoted here but doesn't participate in posting, but I often reference his wisdom. But here and now, as Big Tent Democrat often says, I speak for myself only.

I now declare that I'm ready to fall in line (reference: Bill Clinton has said, "Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line.").

We have five grown free-thinking children, two sons and three daughters. My youngest son (27) has been an avid Obama partisan who has been totally disillusioned by his actions since securing the nomination. My oldest son (32) remains an Obama supporter. Two of our daughters are partisan Republicans, the third (the oldest) is apolitical but leans towards our (her dad's and mine) judgments.

I have been telling my acquaintance for the past several weeks/months, and on this blog, that I haven't "fallen in love" with Obama. I have serious problems with his character, his experience, his electoral tactics. I am a serious Hillary supporter who, surprisingly, started as an Edwards advocate until the debates, at which point I switched my loyalties. Hillary, I began to perceive, was clearly, the most knowledgeable, the most passionate, the most viable candidate to confront the Republican juggernaut.

I was incredibly moved by her speech last night. She pointed out so vividly the choices with which we are confronted. And as I've so often said, I cannot vote for the reactionary John McCain. Tonight Bill sealed the deal for me.

I have no illusions that Barack Obama is going to champion the issues most dear to my heart. I am seriously disillusioned by the DNC and its machinations during this election cycle. I am, indeed, furious at the DNC, its obvious efforts to distance itself from the most successful Democratic political and governmental legacy in the past half-century (the Clinton years),and have seriously contemplated changing my voter registration to Independent. I have been seriously insulted -- but that is not a personal thing, that is a challenge to the DNC -- by the meme that the Clintons are passe. Excuse me? The only successful POLITICALLY and actually successful GOVERNING regime in recent Democratic history?

Why, I wonder, are so many influential and powerful Democrats so eager to erase the Clinton legacy?

I feel completely empathetic with the old Gandhi meme that he would have embraced Christianity were it not for Christians. Similarly, Obama's supporters and the DNC have given me a disgust for their leaders and my party. But we cannot afford four more years of Republican rule. So I will cast my vote for Obama, but it will, in reality, be a vote more AGAINST the Republicans than in favor of BO.

WOMAN'S WORK IS NEVER DONE

Oh, that Marie Cocco. Read it all.

It is not lost on them that in selecting Joe Biden to be the vice presidential nominee, Obama has chosen a Washington insider who voted in favor of the Iraq War -- two of the sustained attacks on Clinton that Obama used to devastating effect during the primaries.

The television cameras will linger on angry and tearful Clinton delegates in the convention crowd. The commentators will no doubt take this as a demonstration of disunity -- and not a few will, of course, blame Clinton.

But it is usually the job of the party nominee to build unity once a vanquished rival has conceded and made the right gestures. Unless the loser happens to be a woman. Then it's just like high school, and she must do the work.

WHY I WON'T VOTE FOR MCCAIN

In light of my previous post, I say this to my friends and fellow travelers who have urged me to vote for John McCain:

I understand what you're saying, and I'm very tempted to agree, but I can't. The situation reminds me very much of my youth in the sixties. I was passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and fervently in favor of the civil rights movement, but I took the road of working within the system and trying to amend it rather than the Bill Ayers path of trying to blow it up. I demonstrated, I sat in (even slept in, which is where The Sage proposed to me), I was even arrested at a protest, but I would not participate in violence.

To me, to vote for John McCain is a kind of violence in itself. It's a vote for more senseless war, it's a vote to continue the disastrous Bush policies the world has had to suffer for eight years. It's a violence against women itself. So I'll be protesting once again by not voting for either candidate. That's the only path I can see for myself at this point.