“Obama,” she said to the pollster. “We think Obama is the best candidate to turn this country around.” She and her husband had discussed it endlessly. Clinton was too centrist, too loaded with baggage, too much of the same old thing. Obama was the new, fresh hope that the country could rally around.
“Obama,” she said to the people at work. “He’s the most electable. If he’s on the ticket he’ll beat any Republican they put up. You can’t say that about Hillary. Could Hillary really win against somebody like McCain? But you just know Obama would take it in a landslide. If the Democrats want to take back the White House, he’s the best bet.”
“Obama,” she said to their friends over dinner as her husband nodded. “Of course I would love to see a woman president, but what matters is who’s the best candidate.”
“Obama,” she said to the leaflet people as she and her husband arrived to cast their votes in the primary. “We’re voting for Obama.”
Inside the booth she closed the curtain behind her. The ballot was the AccuVote kind, with a blank oval next to each candidate’s name. She looked at the list.
I HEREBY DECLARE MY PREFERENCE FOR CANDIDATE FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO BE AS FOLLOWS:
She thought about the first time she’d ever paid attention to a presidential election, the first time she’d been old enough to care, though not yet old enough to vote. 1972, the year of George McGovern, the year of Nixon’s landslide, the year of Shirley Chisholm. A woman running for president! She’d been thrilled, though most people treated it as a kind of stunt. A lady president? What was that, the punchline to a joke?
“JOE” BIDEN
Wilmington, Delaware
She thought about when her high school social studies class had debated the woman-for-president issue. It was wildly theoretical, of course, like time travel; that was understood. But it was a good workout for the students’ thinking skills. She remembered sitting in the little plastic chair in the stifling room usually used for band practice while earnest acne-faced boys talked about women’s emotionalism and the monthly unreliability which could lead to a menstrually-induced nuclear holocaust, so at the very least female candidates should be required to be post-menopausal — ah, but then there was the hot flash problem too, couldn’t those continue intermittently for years?
RICHARD EDWARD CALIGIURI
Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania
She thought about the TV shows she’d watched when she was a kid, the episode of Bob Newhart where Emily had to ask Bob’s permission to go back to work. And All in the Family, when Gloria became a feminist and Mike went nuts, screaming “take my pants! just take my pants!” and the studio audience roared. She’d watched that episode in the living room, sprawled on her stomach the way she always watched TV, banging her bare feet up and down on the carpet. She thought about her own first job, where all the women in the office were expected to fetch coffee for all the men. Her first day at work and the boss had called her into his office and she was ready, ready for some big important task, ready to show what she could do, and he said “black with a teaspoon of sugar,” and then he smiled.
KENNETH A. CAPALBO
South Kingstown, Rhode Island
She thought about the stupid old man who’d refused to hire her because “young married girls like you just get pregnant and leave,” and how she’d sat in her car after the interview, defeated and furious. She thought about the job she did get, and what happened there, and how years later she’d exploded when her father said Anita Hill was lying because if a woman was really being harassed she’d just quit, right?
In 1984 she’d gone to the polls to vote for Ferraro — that was what it had been in her mind, voting for Ferraro, not Mondale — even though everybody knew that idiot Reagan would win. The ERA was dead but at least there was a woman on the ticket, even if it was just for vice-president. It was something.
HILLARY CLINTON
Chappaqua, New York
She thought about the day the Clintons won — the Clintons, plural, because that’s what it was. Before it all went insane, before the right-wing crazies ground the country to a halt out of sheer spite, before Whitewater and Kenneth Starr and Lewinsky, before all that: there was hope. She’d loved Hillary, loved her for being a feminist, loved her for her brilliance, loved her for standing up to the press. Damn right you didn’t want to stay home and bake cookies; damn right. You tell ‘em.
“RANDY” CROW
Kelly, North Carolina
“CHRIS” DODD
East Haddam, Connecticut
JOHN EDWARDS
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Everybody said Hillary had compromised too much, just like Bill, anything to win. But it wasn’t the same, not at all. Hillary had been playing a different game altogether, a game men didn’t understand, a game that maybe some younger women didn’t understand either. All the compromises, the curtseys to the Man, the power suits, the toning-it-down, the polite smiles, the endless pressure to be strong enough for a man but soft enough for a woman, like some kind of goddamned SuperWoman deodorant — jesus, wasn’t that what they’d all done, every single woman of that generation? Hillary had started out as Rodham but had to take her husband’s name so she wouldn’t scare the rubes; been there, sister. “She really needs to tone down that aggressive feminist stuff, it turns people off,” said the pundits. Been there, sister. “The reason Bill cheats on her is because she’s so smart; men don’t like that,” people said. Been there, sister.
DENNIS J. KUCINICH
Cleveland, Ohio
DAL LAMAGNA
Poulsbo, Washington
“TOM” LAUGHLIN
Santa Rosa Valley, California
BARACK OBAMA
Chicago, Illinois
“The fact that Hillary’s a woman isn’t enough for me,” somebody had said. But it’s enough for me, she’d thought to herself. That wasn’t true, though, not really. No right-wing Republican woman would get her vote, ever. But Hillary was a Democrat, and she was a feminist, and she was a woman. I know it’s not supposed to matter but it does, goddamnit, it does. Her eyes welled up. I can’t help it. I’ve waited all my life for this.
“BILL” RICHARDSON
Santa Fe, New Mexico
O. SAVIOR
Minneapolis, Minnesota
MICHAEL SKOK
Cheektowaga, New York
She filled in the oval next to HILLARY CLINTON. No one would ever know.
“Could we ask you a couple of questions?” The exit pollsters smiled as she and her husband walked out to the parking lot. “Would you mind telling us who you voted for today?”
She smiled back, her arm resting on her husband’s. “Obama,” she said.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Recommended, Fiction, Election 2008 on January 9, 2008, 8:05 pm EST
