as the possibility of having the first woman president in my lifetime begins to slip away, i've been thinking.

in november, when i step up with glee to vote for the obamarama, i want to close my eyes and feel something for a second that ISN'T about him.

it's about her.

i want to thank her.

i think he should thank her.

i think we all should.

because like all women who against all odds work their way up to a position of power like a salmon fighting upstream before she spawns and dies, she's made a bridge of her body.

i hear all the time (in a sort of tepid and high pitched voice) from fellow women this: "I WANT to vote for a woman, just not this woman." Then they list all of her faults, or what they've decided to see as her faults; chief among them is that she voted to authorize the use of force, which somehow turns into she sent our troops to war, which somehow starts sounding like the war is partly her fault.

i like to slow down in my brain and remember something that they don't seem to. i don't have any problem at all addressing her dreaded vote. i think it was wrong. i think she made a mistake voting to authorize the use of force.

but the thing i can't seem to get through on is that congress didn't vote to go to war. like ever. and the reason is, because BUSH BROKE THE LAW. he didn't ever make a full declaration of war, he didn't bring it to the congress to vote on. remember? that's one of the things he ought to be impeached for.

so NO ONE in congress voted to "go to war," because our president broke the law by not asking them and getting their unanimous consent, then he did an end run around the US congress by going straight to the united nations with the house negro.

so i don't place the blame at her feet in quite the same way as others do. i think she's been scape-goated for a big mistake she made. and then all the stones got cast at her, instead of at the heads of the shitwads who really are responsible, bush, cheney, and rumsfeld. and nobody, it seems, seems willing to remember that our own complacency also contributed to this clusterfucked war--we didn't do a hell of a lot. did we.

but it's much easier to throw rocks at hill's head than look in the mirror, huh.

sigh.

and i've been thinking about the NEXT WOMAN. for surely, since the problem is this woman, who has fought her whole life in concrete and direct ways to make the lives of women and children better, and to get the needs of women and children up on the same level of political discussion and action as the "boys list" of priorities, since the problem is her, surely the NEXT WOMAN will be what we want, right?

for one thing, she'll be prettier, younger, definately more hip. and she'll be inspirational of mouth. hugely. her speeches will move nations. it won't be the slow and steady hard labor of changes a chunk at a time like all the important women of history have had to spend their lives toiling at. it will be THE PERFECT WOMAN who can claim the position of power. a woman who has never made any mistakes, doesn't have very much experience, speaks so eloquently it makes you think you can fly, smart as a whip, and utterly unconnected from anything which has come before her. and her husband will keep his mouth shut and his dick in his pants, he won't fight to defend her because she won't need that, since we live in such a fair and balanced society, and she will never fail at anything important like health care--she won't have to come back for round two because everyone will magically do everything she wants with no opposition. NEXT TIME--this perfect woman--she'll be the embodiment of CHANGE.

i just hope that when SHE COMES, and everyone who said they wanted her--this NEXT WOMAN--when they step up to vote for her, i hope they take a second to look down at what we're all standing on.

this bridge called her back, and all the womens' backs we stand on and then forget.

because without her body THIS TIME, NEXT TIME, we got butkus.

www.lidiaohlidia.wordpress.com

(title riffed from This Bridge Called My Back/Gloria Anzuldua)

Nice post.....

My thought on the authorization to use force is this, the democrats were manouvered into that vote. They could have fillibustered it to force it to happen after the election or they could have abstained, saying that there hadn't been enough time to review all of the information.

They didn't. I thought at the time that we were rushing to war. In hindsight we now know that we were not prepared and democrats should have been able to say so.

In any case, my real reason for not wanting to vote for Hillary is that I don't want to revisit whitewater or the Ken Starr investigation. I could see us going back through that adversarial period at a time when we need unity more than we need a woman for president.

This is why Hillary can't take the gloves off: the double standard. She's either not presidential or not a lady...can't win. It makes me sick.

And as regards the Iraq war: the majority of our country supported it AT THE TIME, and she voted for it. I'm vigorously anti-war, but a president's job is to represent the people, and Hillary has done that more accurately and courageously than Obama: she reflects with her own stance the initial support and the buyer's remorse.

I will write her name on the ballot if I have to.

And looking at the disarray in the Republican Party, she very probably would have made it all the way if she had gotten the Party's nomination. But, unfortunately for her, she ran headfirst into the Obama tidal wave of support. I think her only way to escape the tidal wave was to not let the wave get started rather than her trying to stop it after it got rolling.

As this point, I think that the best thing that she can do is to graciously bow out without burning all her bridges and regroup to run again some other day.

Hillary isn't being subjected to a double standard, if Obama "took the gloves off" then he'd drop like a rock in the polls.

The majority of the country did not have the information that Hillary would have had if she had read the intel report.

I don't know of any "accurate" or "courageous" stands that Hillary has taken.

Uh huh. Pass me a hanky.

I wonder just how much improved are the lives of Iraqi women and children are when she not only failed to lead the fight against the war, but voted for it with no other reason than her own mercenary interests.

I wonder how much the lives of Mexican and other Latinas' lives are improved now that NAFTA, her husband's legacy, has destroyed tens of thousands of family farms and split apart families who must sneak north to America in order to make a living.

I wonder how much more relieved are the women and children of Iran who, despite her votes to authorize the mass murder of Iranians on false pretenses, are less likely to be buried beneath US made rubble due not to Hillary's leadership but to an internal revolt by our own military and intelligence services.

But who cares about them! This is all about, as it is always all about, the aspirations of baby boomers and their desire to be at once system destroying radical hippies and beneficiaries of limitless 401 K disbursements.

Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.

She voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq. Period. End of story. There was at the time the understanding among everyone that that was all that was legally necessary. There was never any suggestion that he had to come back to Congress for any reason. If you believe otherwise you are simply, factually mistaken.

Your attempts to rewrite history are just sad.

but it's much easier to throw rocks at hill's head than look in the mirror, huh.

I can look in the mirror just fine. I did what I could. I helped organize rallies and wrote letters to the editor that were published in several major newspapers. Unfortunately I did not have a vote in the Senate. Hillary did.

Therefore, I shall throw all the fucking rocks I care to, thank you very much.

Doodahman,

I think you blame NAFTA (and thus the Clintons) for way too much. Sure, NAFTA is responsible for ending a lot of small corn farms, but that was absolutely necessary to improve the lives of millions of people. Corn is best grown on huge plots of land in wide-open spaces - in a word, the American and Canadian plains. This efficiency directly lowers the cost of the basic staple of the Mexican people - tortilla. That's people's welfare, right there.

But what about the Mexican farms, you might ask. Well, there are many, many things that can't be grown on huge mechanized farmland - namely, fruits and vegetables. Mexican farmers are now shifting to growing fruits and vegetables, which are things *Americans* are ravenous for. That's why it's called a free "trade" agreement and not a free "keep doing what you've been doing even if it's inefficient" agreement.

Of course, that said, government can play a huge role in helping people displaced by the agreement - for example, help in training Mexican corn farmers become fruit and vegetable growers. Unfortunately, as with most things with trade, it seems the benefits are diffuse (cheaper tortilla for millions) while the hardships are focused (the displaced Mexican farmers or American factory workers). So my post is not meant to be unsympathetic at all...

dear maroci:

excuse me but a legal declaration of war in this country DOES require more than he asked for or got.

he skipped the declaration of war altogether, which is how he got away with it.

we've still not made a declaration of war.

and yet we are most certainly in a war.

but thanks for the disrespectful tone and rhethoric. way cool.

for the record:

The president of the United States has no clear constitutional authority to declare war without congressional approval. President Bush has stated that his powers as commander-in-chief allow him to act independently in defense of the nation.

The president did not seek a formal declaration of war from Congress. But he did seek congressional support, he said, to demonstrate to the United Nations and to the world that military action against Iraq was not just his own objective. Strategically, support from the legislators bolstered the president's case as he pressed the UN Security Council for a resolution authorizing military force in Iraq.

That's where they f***ed up.

The Constitution of the United States gives Congress alone the authority to formally declare war.

maroci:

see the history lesson on declarations of war.

and any chance you can reply with intelligence and respect so we can disagree with more than namecalling and shallow knee jerks?

doodahman:

hmmm. i guess i was confused. the entire war and all of its problems, as well as NAFTA, are the fault of hillary clinton.

are you serious?

so she's a mass murderer now?

i have to be honest with you, i think more blame sits at the feet of bush, cheney and rumsfeld, but maybe she's the she's the she-devil you say, and i'm just hoodwinked and bamboozled.

middleview:

yep.

I'm sorry, but you still have no clue what you're talking about.

We fought in both Korea and Vietnam without a declaration of war, mmkay brainiac?

It was PERFECTLY WELL UNDERSTOOD BY ALL CONCERNED that this was a vote that would authorize an invasion. If you believe otherwise you are again factually, objectively and historically mistaken.

I could give a flying fuck about legal theories that say he should have gotten a war declaration. Maybe he should have. That's completely BESIDE THE GODDAMN POINT, WHICH IS THAT SHE KNEW WHAT THE FUCK SHE WAS DOING WHEN SHE FUCKING WELL DID IT and you saying otherwise is ill-educated BULLSHIT.

There's no reason to "respect" idiocy.