Linda Barlow

Hillary and Bill Clinton gave great speeches at the DNC — rousing, intelligent, persuasive, and most of all, generous.  They were both more gracious to the Obama campaign than I could have been….but fortunately I’m not in the business of politics.  Usually, I’m not particularly interested in politics or politicians, almost all of whom I regard with a jaundiced eye.

But I am interested in equality, and if I do finally end up casting my ballot for Obama in November, it will be in the interest of seeing the United States led by someone other than the privileged white males who have held the office of president and vice president for the past two and a half (almost) centuries.  I would have preferred a ticket with Hillary for President and Obama, the junior, less experienced leader, as Vice President.  Denied that, I would have voted for Obama as President and Hillary Clinton as Vice President.  We need far more women leaders in every vital role in government.

I don’t particularly care whether the women who eventually come to power in government, business, the sciences, the arts, and all other areas of human endeavor share my personal ideology.  I want to see female role models everywhere — on the Left, on the Right, and in the Middle.  I dream of a Congress that is, like the population, 50 percent female.   When 250 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women, maybe we’ll have something that resembles equality of the sexes in this country.

Thanks, Hillary, for your 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.

It’s a start.

Joe Biden?  Ok, he’s a nice guy, and experienced, but… Biden the plagiarist?  Biden, whose own attempts to win the nomination have been greeted with yawns from the voters in the past?  Biden, the Clarence Thomas enabler from the Anita Hill hearings?  Way to go, Barack — is this seriously going to get you the votes you’ve lost by ignoring the 18 million of us who voted for Hillary Clinton?

Since Obama has failed to choose the candidate who actually got the most votes in the primaries, I’ll probably either be staying home in November or going to the polls for the sole purpose of writing in Hillary’s name.