The midnight hour - November 5, 2008

(source for image)

Senator Obama: Congratulations on your victory.  May you live up to the highest and best hopes of your most fervent supporters. May you make this country the better place you have said you want it to be.

Kay Hagan, Jeanne Shaheen: heartiest congratulations upon your respective elections to the United States Senate.

A number of Democratic women with terrific policy positions who were running for House seats have, unfortunately, lost their bids. It appears that Alice Kryzan (NY), Victoria Wulsin (OH), and Lisa Stender (NJ) are among these losers. At the time of this writing, it is less clear how women running in the western states will do.

Even if all women running for the Senate yesterday were to prevail, only one additional woman in the Senate, will be added at best (source). Best case scenario for the house, 5 additional women (source). Governors, no matter what, one fewer woman holding that position (source).

This is not good news for those still hoping to see a woman President any time soon.

Nevertheless, human rights advocates of both genders will now be working to win the fight for full political and economic recognition of women, both in the U.S. and abroad. 

President-Elect Obama: What will you be doing to increase representation by women in elected office? Will you support a woman who clearly supports such increased representation to head the DNC? Will you support Senator Clinton for Senate Majority Leader? Will you support a change to the Democratic Party rules that makes for winner-take-all primaries and eliminates caucuses? Will you and Senator Biden support women to fill your Senate seats? Will you create a Presidential Commission on Women?  

Will you announce that you will send Congress the Equal Rights Amendment for passage during your first hundred days? Will you be sending Congress a new version of the Lily Ledbetter law and other legislation aimed at eliminating the wage gap between men and women? Will you go on record as opposing the creeping restrictions on women's access to abortion that the Supreme Court's post-Roe jurisprudence allows?

Will you speak out against regimes around the world that deny women the right to the ballot, that force women as a matter of law to wear required garb?

Having won the Presidency, will you, Senator Obama, prove that you are going to join us in the greatest civil rights battle of our time, the fight for full political and economic recognition of women both in the U.S. and abroad?

The women of America, Mr. Obama, are waiting. The women of the world are watching.

Comments

[Suzanne]

I wanted to read something online about the election that I can relate to, something doesn't insult my intelligence and common sense. You (Heidi) delivered (yet again). Thank you so much.

[Mirlo]

This is the day a new feminism raises its beautiful, orange head. May it grow strong, produce many blossoms and may the fruits be, among many other things, a remedy against corruption.

Orange is part of my life from today.

[purplefinn]

Heidi Li, way out in front as usual! Yes, it's accountability time. Yes, it's move women's status forward for the good of all time. I was counting on you (and others) to frame this as well as lead. I may not need that ibuprofen this a.m.

[chatblu]

Heidi Li, I wish that I had the same good feelings. However, my concern is the anti-female hip-hop culture that brought us now Pres-elect Obama. I do not believe that gains are probable for woen in this administration. I hope that I am wrong, but I have a true feeling of forboding. I am only a few weeks away from my 60th birthday, and I am losing sight of the mountaintop.

[twandx]

WE WON!

Events in life seem to continually put us in a position of being winners or losers. But each of us must define for ourselves what is meant by winning and losing and not be led astray by how the media may define it.

We subscribe to the conviction of Grantland Rice: “It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.”

Some may think the winners are the ones who voted for and supported the media’s choice. But those of us who have stood fast against the onslaught of misogyny, hate and derision know that we are the winners.

We won because we believe deeply in gender equality. We won because we censored the Democratic Party for cooking the books in their Primary for the sole purpose of defeating a woman and maintaining the status quo of good ol’ boy politics.

We won because no matter how much it hurt and no matter how cruelly we were taunted and blasphemed by friend and foe alike, we stood firm because all the evidence showed that the best candidate for the job of president was a woman.

We won because we never wavered in our passion despite the piles of crap and garbage thrown at us. We watched former ally after former ally turn away from us as their courage and conviction evaporated in the storm of blog and media hype.

INVICTUS

by William Ernest Henley; 1849-1903

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

- also posted at Alegre's Corner

[ainnj]

Heidi,
I think you mean Linda Stender. She was the only democrat I voted for this election by the way. The fact that she lost actually doesn't upset me in the least. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that a woman will ever reach the White House (unless she is married to the POTUS) in my lifetime, I wouldn't bet on my daughters' lifetimes either. We have regressed as a society, and as the previous poster noted, this rise of anti-woman rhetoric and song and dance is not only tolerated, it's accepted and encouraged by the democratic party, the msm and mr. obama. Even if mr. obama is what his supporters believe him to be, he has remained silent on the horrific misogyny we have witnessed and experienced during this election season.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke