Do you know what it feels like for Hillary?

This week I started riding in a work-sponsored van pool. Listening to music with my eyes closed instead of battling stop and go traffic to and from work is a luxury that offsets the 6:10AM departure time, and I love getting home early enough to see the late afternoon sun making the rooms in my apartment glow. I guess the one thing I will have to adjust to is getting my news in the evening rather than during my AM commute, but I get email alerts from the NY Times and BBC in case something serious happens. It was great to hear about Hillary’s “comeback” in NH, though I could have called it during the debate the night before, when Obama snarked that she was “likeable enough.” The next day, I heard Obama interviewed on NPR and deliver, when pushed, the closest thing I’ve heard to a policy statement delivered from him. To paraphrase, he said that, for instance there were plenty of health care initiatives out there and what really needs to happen is for the people to organize and demand that it happens. So – its up to us, we the people, to do the diligence and fight for the right and deliver the results and so forth, so he can green light it? Excuse me, but wouldn’t I be voting for him to do this on my behalf? I’m busy enough trying to finance my old age – I want him to deliver the goods on the health care, and on the mess we’re in in the middle east, and get the econ and education and our good name abroad back on track.

Anyway, when I started riding the vanpool I dug out my shuffle and the day after NH the first tune up Madonna’s “What it feels like for a girl,” which pretty much summed it all up as far as I’m concerned – wouldn’t you know it,but I heard the song again this AM on the radio (KCRW, natch), so I thought I’d drop the lyrics here…

Strong inside but you dont know it / Good little girls they never show it / When you open up your mouth to speak / Could you be a little weak /Do you know what it feels like for a girl / Do you know what it feels like in this world / For a girl…Hurt thats not supposed to show /And tears that fall when no one knows /When youre trying hard to be your best /Could you be a little less…
Of course the pundits who called NH wrong are busy adding questions to their polls attempting to gauge latent racism among voters (funny, no one’s knocking themselves out to uncover latent sexism) , and insisting, rather unconvincingly, that Hillary attracts poor uneducated voters, while their boy Obama rallies the Whole Foods and Starbucks crowd. From what I can tell, Hillary turned out the female vote as well as the poor and less educated (working class, if they voted for Obama) voters. The reason for the former might be that women can usually spot a player, and the latter might be because the working classes want to hear what’s going to get done, whereas the rich can afford to support pie-in-the-sky rhetoric about hope. What do I know though. I’m a voter, not a pollster.

 

And for the record, I shop at Whole Foods when I’m feeling flush, but I would never drink Starbuck’s coffee –that stuff if crap. I’m a Peets girl. I gotta say though that it feels good to be a dem when my choices are between a woman and a black man – finally!

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