The acceptance speech is next week.

The debates start next month.

Election Day is in less than 60 days.

Seeing Springfield on the tv today, with this sorry ticket, is just making me sad.  I love Springfield and New Salem and Lincolniana, all of which I first saw on a childhood trip that gave me an early interest in American history.  

So I'm thinking today of a Springfielder who isn't often thought about.  A woman who was treated so terribly in American history and who is buried there with her spouse and three sons, including the one she loved and lost in the horrible White House years for her, because of the media boyz even then.

I'm getting Jean Harvey Baker's bio of Mary Todd Lincoln off the bookshelf and onto the nightstand again for a re-read.  And for a reminder of how little progress we have made in so many ways.

Thought-provoking....

I've long suspected it but it's good to have it so shamelessly, explicitly laid out so I don't have to waste my time on that whole 'having nowhere else to go' exercise.

(That's the one where all the extra weight, and lifting duty, is piled on MY end so fauxmenist 'pioneers' like Nancy Pelosi can scurry around like a feckin' eedj for head-pats and table scraps.)

The Oboiz and Ogurlz can join JJJr all they want in the ridiculously conjured outrage over 'analyzing' Sen Clinton's tears and poring over how many were for Katrina.

I might give a sh!t about the equivalent concern over other human rights' issues on that glorious day when Obama's little girls are grown up and realize EVEN THEY can compete for an office for which they're qualified --- with that built-in Quit While You're Ahead proviso.

But something snapped somewhere in the beginning from the MSM, the blogs and the local political scene (dominated of course by men).  I kept denying it and denying it but I felt it...the blatant sexism.  My friends felt it too.  Only we were all were silent about it, as was Hillary, for fear of being accused of playing the gender card, playing the victim card.   But then, it happened.  I could not tell you the exact day or time, but at some point I could not, they could not hold it in.
It was so damned obvious, the elephant in the room.
Then we all became quite militantly for Hillary.

I always believed that when the primaries were over I would easily get past it all, as I always did.  But it is not happening. I am still angry and getting angrier and I am struggling to rid myself of the frustration I feel.  I believe I will vote for Obama/Biden come November.  I will not for the first time in eons,  work for the party or the nominee.   And it is not Obama for whom I feel the anger.  Right or wrong, it is Dean, Kennedy, Brazille, Kerry, and all the party leaders whom I feel betrayed the hardworking backbone stalwarts of the party ...the women.  

Many of us have worked for decades getting democrats, mostly men, elected.   Many of us were passed by, despite the hours we put into the party, for upper leadership positions.  We took it in stride.  We were doing this not for ourselves but for our daughters, our sisters, our nieces and all the little girls to whom we said, "Someday you to will be able to grow up to be president."  We wanted to believe it, those of us who grew up hearing that said only to our brothers and male friends and cousins.  

Hillary was us and we are Hillary.  And it is more personal that I ever thought possible.  Not because she lost but because of how she lost.  
There are so many betrayals I saw and felt but the worst were the young women at the caucuses who looked at people like me with disdain.  The words of some female in another thread (or blog) stung: "Well maybe you all need to go to Denver and march for Hillary and that other feminist anniversary...whatever"  (not the exact words but enough to show this woman did not even know or consider the right for women to vote is the anniversary we are celebrating).  

I really want to visit Colorado. Maybe in the winter. I'm more of a snowbunny than a beach bum. I plan on spending this entire winter on a snowboard.