I thought I'd be prouder today.
I've worked hard to get the healthcare bill passed(others have worked harder, and I salute them, but I've done my bit) and I'd love to feel great about the historic journey it is now on. Part of me still does.
But I'm pissed off about Stupak, and this has left me with a series of uncomfortable choices. None of them seem right all the way.
- Work as hard as I've always done for Dems, shitty amendment or no shitty amendment.
Political work is a good outlet for my aggressive impulses, and this choice has the weight of five years of recent custom behind it. Also, I'm supestitious about hanging up my guns, because after a fairly political college experience, I took a break for a couple years, only to watch helplessly, with an expired registration, as the nation plunged into Bush vs. Gore. I haven't liked to turn my attention away since. Even the thought fills me with a vague sense of guilt. But I'd hate to let anyone think I don't care about policies that sell women out.
- Go indie.
Around here, that means giving up my primary vote. Other than that, it is a largely cosmetic gesture, as I haven't been able to be a donor in some time anyway, and it's still pretty fucking novel to get a viable Dem on the ballot here(Thanks, Howard Dean! ) much less some scrappy underdog of some other persuasion.
- Shift my energies to choice/ getting women elected.
I'm already on my local Planned Parenthood message response team, which I feel good about. And I do generally believe that good women in the corridors of power could make a big difference, but it's totally not as simple as creating lines in the Capitol women's room. Aside from prominent wackos like the Bachmanns and Malkins, Arizona's current governor is as fervent a choice-quasher and woman-squasher as one could hope to find so I'm not sure I could ever really believe in universal sisterhood ever again.And I have a disability and many progressive women's groups are clueless about access and other such issues as anyone else(except, I should note, the local chapter of the much-maligned ACORN.So, as far as I'm concerned, ACORN rocks...although I don't know what the hell is on those videotapes. What about poverty, the environment, the ADA? "More and better" Democrats work to make all this stuff happen.
- Focus on my personal life.
Could I write so many diaries if I had a personal life worth mentioning?
- Be in on the formation of some kind of women's party.
This would partly be cool and partly, I think, kind of a naive gesture. Not that I don't understand the impulse...right after college, I read nothing but women authors for about three years. It was good for me when I did it and it really filled me with appreciation for what our gender could accomplish, but after a while I began to miss the duality in having the viewpoints of both sexes and I'm not just thinking of Florida Congressman and diary-muse Alan Grayson, but my brother and some of the good guys that might take that as something of a rejection. Also, I like winning. I know we're not supposed to say that, and there are losing campaigns I think of with pride, but still.
And it strikes me as awfully seventies. I'm not sure if it would be cool "Free to Be," seventies, or sad,avocado-leisure-suit rugby shirt seventies, though. Harold Melvin seventies, or puka-shell seventies.
So I sit here, a Dem woman with more questions than answers.
Let me know if I'm alone out here.