I wonder how much of a factor it is that women will look at Hillary's candidacy and think: "If she doesn't get elected it might be another 20 years before a woman is in the White House."

I'm just one woman...but one of the many things that's turned me off to Hillary's campaign is the expectation I've seen from some of her supporters that I ought to vote for her because I'm a woman. I'm voting my conscience, my mind, and my heart, not my sex chromosomes, thank you very much!

I'm caucusing for Obama on Saturday. I'm convinced from what I've seen from him, including both of his books, that he has the intelligence, good judgment, and competence to be a good president from the moment he takes the oath of office. As far as that goes, he and Hillary are equals in my eyes. But the thing is, he managed to get my heart, too. When I listen to him, I'm not a cynic. He makes me care and hope for my country like I haven't in over a decade. Cynicism is probably more logical, and I'm already dreading the broken heart I'll get if he doesn't win the nomination, but, dammit, just this once I'm going to follow my heart and live in hope.

What has Hillary done?

Coming out of Yale Law School she could have clerked with any court in the country. Instead she spent the next twenty years creating legal clinics to support abused children.

She spent a long time in public service before she was the first lady of Arkansas, much less the first lady of the country.

Side note: I don't think women should vote for Hillary just because she is a woman, but I do get royally pissed at the level of sexism I see in media coverage of her candidacy.

I have to go watch tv.

I'm earwormed with:

I'm Fucking Matt Damon
Yes We Can! Yes We Can! Yes We Can!
I'm Fucking Matt Damon
Yes We Can! Yes We Can! Yes We Can!

Obama came out of Harvard with plenty of options and spent a decade and change doing similar work, actually -- community activist, state senator, taught constitutional law...but you don't seem to take any of it into account, you (quite reasonably) seem to want more from him in the Senate. I do too.

But what has Hillary done in the Senate?

Kat, I'm sorry about your sister, and Noah's projectile vomiting.

The Obama video was amazing.

Aurelia's earworm just made me snort.

I don't want somebody going into the White House making new and exciting mistakes because they don't have a grip on the vagaries of foreign policy or freakin' health care plans.

A while back the NYT magazine ran a great article on Obama and what struck me most was this part that talked about support that Obama has from former

In mainstream foreign-policy circles, Barack Obama is seen as the true bearer of this vision. “There are maybe 200 people on the Democratic side who think about foreign policy for a living,” as one such figure, himself unaffiliated with a campaign, estimates. “The vast majority have thrown in their lot with Obama.” Hillary Clinton’s inner circle consists of the senior-most figures from her husband’s second term in office — the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the former national security adviser Sandy Berger and the former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke. But drill down into one of Washington’s foreign-policy hives, whether the Carnegie Endowment or the Brookings Institution or Georgetown University, and you’re bound to hit Obama supporters. Most of them served in the Clinton administration, too, and thus might be expected to support Hillary Clinton. But many of these younger and generally more liberal figures have decamped to Obama. And they are ardent. As Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official under President Clinton who now heads up a team advising Obama on nonproliferation issues, puts it, “There’s a feeling that this is a guy who’s going to help us transform the way America deals with the world.” Ex-Clintonites in Obama’s inner circle also include the president’s former lawyer, Greg Craig, and Richard Danzig, his Navy secretary.

The first of the Clinton people to notice this rising political star was Anthony Lake, national-security adviser in Bill Clinton’s first term. Lake says that he was introduced to Obama in 2002 when the latter had just begun considering a run for a Senate seat. Impressed, he began contributing ideas. When Obama came to Washington as a senator and joined the Foreign Relations Committee, Lake continued to work with him on occasion. Like others, Lake was impressed not so much by Obama’s policy prescriptions as by his temperament and intellectual habits. “He has,” Lake says, “the kind of mind that works its way through complexities by listening and giving some edge of legitimacy to various points of view before he comes down on his, and that point of view embraces complexity.” This awareness of complexity felt like a kind of politics itself and a repudiation of the Bush administration’s categorical thinking.

The fact that lots of Bill's supporters (who work in foreign policy) have thrown their lot in with Obama (and this article was published in early November, when he was still and underdog candidate) is very compelling to me. These are people who work in USFP for a a living and they find legitimacy in this man's leadership. More over the fact that he serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would speak to his ability to understand the issues deeply.

(Also, I loved that in the article, they discussed the idea of soft leadership and how the US has lost that ability under Bush).

eta: I should also add that when I first read this article I was pretty much undecided and remained so for a long time. But I was impressed by folks in the know whom I do admire s(uch as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jospeh Nye [even if Nye officially supports Clinton]) do think of Obama as having the leadership and the gravitas necessary to lead on foreign policy issues.

Moreover, I think Obama hits the nail on the head when he says, as it pertains to Hillary's experience, especially as it pertains to foreign policy, that people assume she got it osmotically from her husband by being present for things as a wife, which I think is both dangerously naive. I wouldn't assume that a surgeon's spouse had osmotically gotten the knowledge to perform an open-heart procedure just because he was married to a surgeon and the same is true with leadership.

I wouldn't assume that a surgeon's spouse had osmotically gotten the knowledge to perform an open-heart procedure just because he was married to a surgeon and the same is true with leadership.

That's a specious comparison to me. It's more like two heart surgeons who are married and one of them is a pioneer in heart transplants. When they talk shop they're speaking the same language.

I totally disagree, David. And I doubt that we'll come to an agreement on what constitutes experience, which is fine. I will say that it confounds me when the Clinton campaign tries to hammer home her experience.

For me, the least inspiring part of Clinton's campaign is the whole idea of experience because I don't think she has as much as she tries to pretend. 35 years in what capacity? Her experience as what? A lawyer in private practice (absolutely! She has a lot of that)? A senator (where she has more than Obama, but somewhat less than lots of for-lifers)? A first lady (which for me is the least compelling of all)?

I guess I just don't think spouse of president qualifies one to be president. Though, truth be told, I do think I would have preferred Barbara Bush to her husband.

Overall, I think if her opponent were anyone other than Obama, with his clear self-definition as an agent for change, she would work the change angle more and that would be, for me, much more exciting than experience that just isn't there.

My real "Guy" is out. I have a second choice, just for, you know, the horse race of it all, but really? Still wishing it had turned out for Edwards.