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This election is definitely one for the history books. If nothing
else, 2008 will be remembered as the Year of the Woman. Ignored,
placated then tolerated in Washington, women are the new swing voters.
Millions of dollars have been spent appealing to the Wal-Mart Woman,
the Thinking Woman, the Hillary Woman.
There is an email
circulating that honors the women of the suffrage movement. Women
without whom, we wouldn't have a dialogue about Hillary Clinton or
Sarah Palin, much less a choice.
Eighty-eight years ago women won a 50-year battle to secure our right to vote. Fifty years they fought to get the vote.
You might be surprised to know that the first woman to be elected to
Congress, Jeannette Rankin, ran on the GOP ticket and won in 1917.
According the information posted at womenincongress.house.gov, Rankin ran as a 'progressive,
pledging to work for a constitutional woman suffrage amendment and
emphasizing social welfare issues. A long committed pacifist, she did
not shy away from letting voters know how she felt about possible U.S.
participation in the European war that had been raging for 2 years.'
She was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. participation
in both WWI and WWII. He remark about sending young men off to war is
classic: "If they are going to have a war, they aught to take the old
men and leave the young to propagate the race."
Jeanette Rankin was a college graduate in 1902. A community organizer, a social worker, back when the Grand Old Party was grand.
This year, 85 years after the 19th amendment, women have a choice. We will be the ones who decide this election.
In
memory of all the suffragettes who fought, went to jail and suffered
dire consequences so we could cast our vote; in honor of all the women
(and men) who have passed laws that lift us up enabling us to work
without fear of sexual harassment, allowed us to choose if, when and
how many children we want; with deep regard to our daughters and
granddaughters, we have an obligation to vote a platform that continues
that momentum, even if it means not voting for the female candidate.
Lipstick on a pig.
John McCain will need a lot of lipstick to put a pretty face on his
lousy record for women's rights. He said this week, on The View that he
intends to put judges on the Supreme Court that will overturn RoevWade.
To have said that on a show for and about women indicates how
incredibly arrogant and out of touch he is to women's issues. He opposed
equal pay for women by skipping the vote on the Lilly
