Moving On
But it’s time to move on. As Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, pundits are talking furiously about where Hillary’s eighteen million supporters will go as if we voters are disinterested little children who will wait and be told which line to get into. The pundits will tell us that feminists are angry that she did not win and that we women will then vote against Obama. Ouch!
Perhaps there is a small minority of Democratic women who are disinterested in the issues and will vote for McCain instead, but the majority of Hillary supporters are apt to vote for Obama now. I can’t imagine that anyone seriously interested in Hillary would suddenly rally around an anti-choice Republican who does not seem concerned about the forty-seven million uninsured Americans or the rising numbers of American soldiers who are committing suicide. The assumption that even a sizable segment of Hillary supporters are pissed off and will vote against Obama—or worse, will need the security of McCain in an age of terrorism—is patronizing at best, misguided at worst. We Hillary supporters are not so mercurial.
Hillary’s female supporters are practical. And although many of us—myself included—were invested in seeing the first qualified woman run this country, we’re not so stubborn to leave the Democratic party in the dust, are we? Barack Obama’s platform is very similar to Hillary Clinton’s. We’re excited about Obama—but more important, we’re hopeful of our nation’s future, too.
