Heidi Li's Potpourri

For a friend: What it is like to be a liberal law professor in Washington, DC in February 2009

Dear friend,
You asked whether I was finding it easier to be a liberal who was not enthusiastic about President Obama's candidacy and is not enthusiastic about his administration. The short answer: no. The problem is both due to external circumstances and internal ones. I've never been a left-leaner who takes pride in being left of the mainstream Democratic establishment. But this year, as the race narrowed down to Clinton and Obama, it was clear to me to that the more liberal candidate was Clinton: the candidate more interested in a politics favoring the middle-class, especially the lower middle class, and the poor; the candidate more interested in separation between church and state; the candidate more interested in gay rights and women's rights and economic justice. The candidate who understood that Kumbaya is not popular song in Washington, D.C. and for good reason: politics is not nonpartisan: it is fight, rooted in competing visions of social good and the means to achieve it.

I work at a place of higher education where it was unfashionable to support Clinton's candidacy, on the widely broadcast assumption that no liberal could prefer any other candidate to a viable black Democratic candidate. There were some underlying messages broadcast along with this: that it was "cool" to support a relatively young black man who liked sports while it was "shrill" to support a slightly older white woman who liked her daughter and her friends. Indeed as time went on, the misogyny of the academy, which is a topic for another time, became more and more apparent.

I started this blog with the intention of giving those friends and family interested in the volunteering I did for then-Senator Clinton's campaign a way of opting in to updates. I told almost nobody at work about the blog or the extent of the blogging because it was so obviously assumed by every colleague around me (except for those encountered at Clinton events, where we greeted each other with happy surprise) that we must all be on the same side and that meant the Obama side. Work is enough of a stressful environment (that's why it is called work, after all) that I did not have the interest or the energy to forcefully object to this blind assumption.

I did occasionally express my frustrations with the DNC and the way it rigged its convention, its refusal to follow its own rules. This usually provoked hostility. I think some of that hostility had to do with the fact that, since I am a member of law school faculty, the criticism hit home: law professors - full fledged ones - tend to take pride in due and fair process. To be reminded that the Democratic Party had engaged in the same sort of hijinks that so offended my colleagues when performed by the Republican Party did not make people happy.

Part of my coping strategy was to put my head and heart into my teaching and scholarship and try to tune out the political noise, which was very loud. The line between work and politics at a "liberal" law school in Washington D.C. is very thin. The strategy has been effective for my teaching and scholarship. But just as so many people feel irreparable rifts with friends who could not accept that they would not support Senator Obama, I feel a rift - I don't know if it will be irreparable - with an institution that felt so comfortable silencing anybody who supported Senator Clinton.

Coming up is our faculty retreat. Part of its theme is "reflections on the presidential election." I will have a better idea of how things are after this event, because I will see if I can talk about the misogyny during the election and the centrism (even economic and social right tilt) of the current Democratic administration without getting the same blowback that went on prior to the general election. Maybe it will be easier for people to hear about these concerns now that a Democrat is safely ensconced in the White House. They, like me, were so ready for an end to the Bush years, and maybe any questioning of whether the ends justified the means or even whether the the means were regrettable was too scary or painful or threatening before President Obama actually won. I confess I am nervous about voicing my views at the retreat. Yet if I do not, then I am not being fair to my colleagues who may not realize just how antagonistic they seemed to any Democrat who did not share their faith in party and candidate Obama.

For those in pain because today is not the day Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes President of the United States

Today, many men and women of good will toward this country and its new president are, nevertheless, heavy-hearted. These are men and women who looked heartily forward to seeing Hillary Rodham Clinton inaugurated president. In an election cycle when winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to winning the presidency, these men and women worked and rooted hard for Mrs. Clinton during a hotly contested Democratic primary season, one where she won the popular vote and where we can never know for sure who would have won at the Democratic National Convention had announced and promulgated Party procedures been allowed to run their course.

Some of these men and women supported Mrs. Clinton despite of her gender, some because of her gender. For some, gender truly was not part of the equation of their support. Some, like me, started as a firm Clinton supporter for reasons that had nothing to do with Mrs. Clinton's gender and ended up realizing that in order for this country to ever elect a woman president, we will have to work together at the deepest of social and cultural levels - let alone in politics -to eradicate the misogyny and sexism that reared its head as soon as it became clear that there was high likelihood that a woman would become the next president of the United States. Misogyny and sexism did not just pop up out of nowhere, either. It was used deliberately or willfully ignored by alleged liberals from whom we expected so much better.

The pain felt today by many of Mrs. Clinton's supporters is the pain of frustration: frustration at realizing how deeply and pervasively sexism and misogyny infiltrate our lives and our world. It is the pain of impatience: impatience with others' obliviousness to the infiltration. It is the pain of anticipated toil: the toil ahead to put women into 51 percent of the positions in all spheres of public life so that eventually one woman with even half the qualifications of Mrs. Clinton will indeed be elected President of the United States of America.

We can take that pain and turn it totally inward, to the point where it exhausts us. Or we can take that pain and turn it outward, in the form of energy to fuel the changes we demand. As I have listened to Mrs. Clinton herself spend her time in the build up to being confirmed Secretary of State, I have witnessed a leader showing us how to do the latter. I do not know Mrs. Clinton personally, but from what I know of human nature and what I can glean from her odyssey since Denver, surely she has experienced some of the pain so many of her supporters feel today. I am also sure that, like all of us, she will always carry some measure of the pain within her. What makes Mrs. Clinton's leadership so extraordinary is that she exemplifies the power of pushing through the inner pain or going around it or using it to fuel continuing achievements.

If today you are among the hurt and the angry, remember that tomorrow (or the next day or the day on which you are ready), you will have a chance to take that hurt and anger and put it to use for full social justice for all people, including the 51 percent that are women.

Some pleasing surprises found today:

• a post over at Stray Dogs that Amble in: 51 Percent - "The New Women's Suffrage"
• donations from those who have recognized today with a contribution to 51 Percent
• newly discovered site to see: Madam Secretary

"FDR: A Democracy-Builder": Franklin Delano Roosevelt, democracy, and liberalism

I am against the beatification, secular or otherwise of politicians past or present. But some politicians have a record of greatness, some a record of achievement, some no record of anything, others a record of which to be embarrassed.  I believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt has a record of greatness - not, not perfection, but greatness, that in part stems from his firm footing in the values of liberalism. Democracy, self-government by citizens, is a form of government that can further liberalism, so long as citizens and elected leaders appreciate the connection between each individual's  autonomy, the need to permit others their autonomy, and the need to collaborate in the grand experiment of self-government. Franklin Delano Roosevelt appreciated these connections, recognizing the value and dignity of the individual. Roosevelt appreciated the state's affirmative obligation to do more than simply stave off threats to individual autonomy. He understood the state's role in ensuring a social safety network that enabled the exercise of autonomy. While he experimented with the means to keep American democracy liberal, his programs were consistently aimed against absolutism and in favor of individual self-determination.

The selections below come from an article printed originally in 1995 (emphases mine, the link takes you to the full article). I find them as apt today as they were then.

FDR:A Democracy-Builder, Eager to Try
Kevin Baker

What did Franklin D. Roosevelt accomplish? It is vital to understand it now, as we Americans consider making fundamental alterations in his legacy. Essentially, he preserved and enlarged the promise of human freedom in our time. Or, as Joseph Alsop put it, "On a very wide front and in the truest possible sense, Franklin Delano Roosevelt included the excluded."
...
The America of 1933, racked by four years of depression, was all but exhausted with democracy. Every bank in the country was in the process of closing its doors. Thousands of square miles of farmland had become a desert. Between one-quarter and one-third of the work force was unemployed, and millions were being evicted from their homes and their land every year.

Depression was neither a natural catastrophe nor an isolated event. Things had never been quite so bad, but every 5 to 10 years, for the better part of a century, the country had suffered a wrenching economic collapse, much worse than any recession Americans have endured since World War II. Bank failures and Wall Street panics were common, and usually led to nationwide meltdowns.

Most elderly Americans lived in abject poverty. Working men and women worked six days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day. They were routinely joined at the job by their children; few people ever finished high school, let alone college.

A system of apartheid, rationalized by bad science and enforced by lynching, ruled in the South. Another system of quotas routinely kept blacks, women, Jews and ethnic whites out of the best jobs and schools.

Farmers could rarely make a living; more and more were reduced to the serfdom of share-cropping. Nine-tenths of rural Americans did not even have electricity.

The root causes of these conditions were basic, long-standing flaws in American democracy. More shocking than the conditions in which Americans of 1933 lived was how little say they had in anything that mattered. Banking and investment were dominated by a small circle of self-interested, often dishonest men. Politics in every large city was usually controlled by corrupt political machines. In the South, millions of blacks and poor whites were kept from the ballot box by poll taxes, literacy tests and force of arms.

The power of landlords and large corporations was rarely contained. Unions were small and powerless. The courts repeatedly struck down the most basic minimum wage, child labor, consumer protection and worker safety laws.

The Depression only brought these ongoing social crises to a head, yet few at the time saw more democracy as an answer. The very idea of democracy seemed to be outmoded in the swift and steely industrial world. Hard new nostrums abounded in the 1930s and '40s: communism, fascism, socialism, technocracy, corporatism.

... What Roosevelt possessed was the essential flexibility of mind for a democracy. It was indicative that during his first presidential campaign he promised above all "bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Not everything he tried worked well, and some things did not work at all, and many of the New Deal's innovations have required revision. Roosevelt himself would have been baffled by the notion that they would not, for he was not erecting a Marxist utopia but a viable, modern democracy. What he did was to turn his entire administration into an ongoing debate on democracy.  ....

Best of all, he extended this debate into the living rooms of every home in America. FDR gave the press unprecedented access to the White House, and there were the "fireside chats."
....

Yet for all [Roosevelt's] democratic pragmatism, we look for something more. The life of Richard Nixon provides an example of what can come from expediency ungrounded in any deeper principle. Was there any guiding spirit, anything more to Franklin Delano Roosevelt than tactics and timing, to account for the great outpouring of grief 50 years ago? [note from Heidi Li: The original article was published on the anniversary of FDR's death]

There are at least two stories from his life that I think are telling. One was the account that he was unimpressed by the Grand Canyon: "It looks dead. I like my green trees at Hyde Park better. They are alive and growing."

"He responded to what was vital, not to what was lifeless; to what was coming, to what was passing away," wrote Mr. Schlesinger. "He lived by his exaltation in distant horizons and uncharted seas."

The other story is from when he was first trying to win back some use of his legs after the attack of polio that crippled him. He would try, every day, to make it the quarter of a mile from his Hyde Park home to the post office on his crutches.

It was a torturous journey for a man with no working muscles from his hips down. Sometimes he would fall - and have to wait, lying face down in the road, for someone to come along and help him back up. "For better or worse, I believe that the Roosevelt who could not walk was in most respects very like the one who could," writes Geoffrey Ward, and most current biographers would concur. It was Roosevelt's strong, optimistic - and deceptive - character that got him through the loss of his legs to polio, and not the polio that built the character.

Yet what better training has any president had - in patience, in humility, in building a basic sympathy for the human condition? Franklin Roosevelt understood the clumsy, halting progress of us all, and nurtured it, and the American people loved him for it as they have loved few men since.

What are we going to do about 2012?

Whatever you thought during the election or the primaries, what matters is what you think now. If you believe that President-Elect Obama is unwilling or unable to be anything more than an empty suit, you better start organizing around an alternative for 2012 right now. Because President-elect Obama has been organizing his run for 2012 since at least June of 2008, and probably earlier, assuming he has planned on being twice nominated by the Democratic Party.

If you have tended to prefer Democrats, you must accept the extreme unlikelihood of Senator Clinton challenging Senator Obama for the nomination. So, you need to identify somebody who would be willing and possibly able to challenge President-elect Obama for the nomination. It will be hard to find a person willing to do this. The last time a Democrat launched a serious primary run against an incumbent was when Senator Edward Kennedy unsuccessfully challenged Jimmy Carter; of course, the only opportunities since then have been to challenge President Bill Clinton who was, at the end of his first term, so successful a President that he was renominated by acclimation.

If you are looking ahead to the general election in 2012 and are an Independent, a Republican, or a Democrat willing to vote Republican, you have to accept that, as far as I know, there is no potential Republican contender with a commitment to gay rights or reproductive rights who could also garner the support of the Republican Party base.

You also need to face the fact that third party candidates do not win.

There is some possibility that Barack Obama may turn out to be this century's Martin Van Buren.  Van Buren faced an economy riddled with unsolvable problems, and that set up the Whigs for victory despite Van Buren's popularity. It is possible that President-elect Obama will face a similar problem.

Just to remind people of some basic history, with the fall of Van Buren, the country entered a period of rather underwhelming Presidencies:

• William Harrison
• John Tyler
• James Polk
• Zachary Taylor
• Millard Fillmore
• Franklin Pierce
• James Buchanan

Abraham Lincoln then came to power at a time of crisis for the Union - but not crises or problems of the sort confronting Barack Obama today.  We do not face the prospect of Civil War. Lincoln's ability to offer moral leadership in the face of that prospect in his time was well established prior to his election to the presidency, going back at least to one of his first major public speeches, The Lyceum Address, given in 1838, a speech that shows his awareness of the potential for tyranny to creep up upon a democratic republic whose citizens fail to commit themselves to the rules of law and the democratic institutions it rests upon. From that speech, entitled The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:

It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon? — Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. — It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Lincoln's address invite "his audience to into a discussion of the principles, tendencies, and sustenance of self-government. He concentrates on its vulnerabilities and the burdens they place upon self-governing citizens." (source: John Channing Briggs, Lincoln's Speeches Reconsidered, p. 55).

As we have learned, much to our cost, the pace of our current electoral politics means a president who takes office - however he or she wins it (e.g. consider Bush's 2000 victory) stands a high chance of being renominated by her or his party (again, consider Bush in 2004) and retaining the presidency even after doing dreadful things (Bush). I may be wrong about President-elect Obama's chances of being a good leader or being able to resolve problems that may well be beyond his control. Perhaps, come 2012 I will feel he has earned my vote. For me, that would take a lot, because I do not believe in rewarding people who take advantage of corrupted procedures to gain office in the first place (which is what happened in Denver in 2008). But people can learn, and perhaps President-elect Obama will.

Regardless of that the nature of contemporary presevidential politics seems to demand that President-elect Obama start his current term as if he is already running for his next one. Therefore, those of us who await an election where we do not feel there is no major party candidate for whom we can vote or an election where we are not choosing the lesser of two of evils, need to begin seeking and supporting an alternative now.

Serious ideas and suggestions welcome.

Why Rahm Emanuel's actual dealings with Rod Blogojevich do and will matter

I have just one question about this. Did Rahm Emanuel mention all of his connections to Rod Blagojevich on the famous vetting questionnaire that the Obama team supposedly required all prospective staff to answer? Given the broad wording of the questionnaire and the fact that Blagojevich has been under investigation for years for all sorts of crimes and shenanigans, I would have thought the Obama administration would want to know the full extent of overlapping ties, even if Emanuel has not done one improper or illegal thing in connection with the Senate vacancy created by President-Elect Obama's resignation. The issue that President-Elect Obama seems to have is one that cost him some people's trust back in the primary season. The change many of us have been waiting for is not us. It is a change from the hypocrisy, corruption, and absurdity that have riddled the last eight years of this country's political leadership. If the Obama questionnaire was meant to do more than provide protection for President Obama, that is, if the questions it asked were asked in good faith, seeking full disclosure up front in the name of creating a culture of transparency and truthfulness, then Mr. Emanuel should have revealed all of his overlaps and ties to Gov. Blagojevich. If you deal with dirty politicians, however much out of necessity, disclose your dealings; and, if need be, put them in context so as to show why you should not be seen to be cut from the same cloth. If Mr. Emanuel only now explains himself - or rather if an explanation is supplied only on December 22, when the Obama-Biden transition team releases its "internal investigation (the one that it has already told us clears its members of any wrongdoing), that is a post-hoc effort at rationalization, which is not going to cut it with people who thought that President-elect Obama was coming to the Presidency to stop that sort of thing. Since the inception of the office the President of the United States of America has merited a great deal of public scrutiny. No, this did not just start with Bill Clinton. In his own time, President Ulysses S. Grant's drinking habits were subject of much speculation; whether he was or was not an alcoholic and how that affected his ability to serve his country remains a topic of historical study and debate. The question of whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemmings came up during his first term as president. I have no particular view as to whether Grant's drinking or Jefferson's relationship with Hemmings mattered during their own eras or whether and how they should matter know. But I do have a view about Presidents who expect not to come under scrutiny. In anything like an egalitarian democracy, it is the right of citizens to question their public servants, especially those who enjoy great public power. It is their right to care about the precise relationship and connections between their President's chief of staff and an apparently crooked Governor from the President's home state. It is their right to care about who their President chooses to write the words he speaks; or who he chooses to bless his inauguration. It is not only unrealistic to bleat about how unfair it is for the public to care about these things. It is to forget that the American public has always cared about these sort of things, even if at times the press has been selective and inconsistent in its reporting on different Presidents and presidential candidates. Certainly, part of why people care is that they care about sensationalistic matters or matters that may have nothing to with a person's actual qualifications or ability to be a good President. But people also care because they want to decide for themselves whether what a President reads or who she or he puts into a kitchen cabinet relates to a President's qualifications and abilities. So, people care about how Rahm Emanuel answered question 63: “Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect.” They care whether he had to answer the question; they care whether he discusses any of his dealings with Gov. Blagojevich. And they care not only because they voted for a change in our nation's political culture; they care because many of them voted for the candidate they did because they took his discussions of change to mean a change from low standards when it comes to corruption or even questionable dealings. People want to trust Barack Obama. Many react badly to people who criticize his integrity or trustworthiness. But again, to expect any President to be forever unscrutinized by the public is naive. And if a a candidate makes people believe he offers more integrity and truthfulness than any of his rivals, it is naive to suppose that President will not be watched closely to see if that President lives up to the standards he himself set.

Barack Hussein Obama: the audacity of the status quo

I have largely shunned writing about any given story-of-the-moment pertaining to President-elect Obama. Frankly, he bores me. That's because the status quo generally bores me, and nothing is more tedious than somebody who pretends an interest in changing the status quo, does not even try that hard to fake his lack of interest in doing that, and then sticks with the status quo.

I  suspected then-Senator Obama's love of the status quo, his basic conservatism, throughout the election season, probably because I did more than listen to him chant the mantra of "change" over and over. I looked at the conservative church to which he belonged for 20 years; I read his two autobiographies; I looked at how rarely he ever stuck his neck out to change anything even when he did hold elected office; I paid attention to his 2004 speech on behalf of John Kerry when he claimed, "... there is not a liberal America and a conservative America", an irresponsibly naive or totally spurious claim.  Recently I thought President-elect Obama had definitively manifested his commitment to the status quo when he chose Bob Gates, the sitting Secretary of Defense, to continue in that post. After all, Gates currently serves as Secretary of Defense for President George W. Bush, whose administration and policies many people assumed they were rejecting when they refused to vote for Jon McCain and insisted on voting for Barack Obama.

But today's announcement of Ron Lahood, the retiring Illinois Republican House member who, says the New York Times, "rose to prominence when he presided over the House impeachment vote against President Bill Clinton", as the second Republican in Obama's cabinet really takes the cake. Obama has picked Lahood to serve as Transportation Secretary - Transportation Secretary in an administration that is planning to push a huge spending package disseminating bucks for works on the transport system and one that proclaims it is interested in "green" issues. This is like putting Dick Cheney in charge of energy policy and thinking that we were going to end up with a crackdown on various corrupt practices in energy trading and the oil industry or that suddenly environmental standards regarding the production of "green" cars would be advanced.

The Times also reports that "Mr. LaHood...is close to Mr. Obama and Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff." In other words, Lahood, another Illinois crony. Well, cronyism also carries on the Bush legacy: remember W.'s efforts to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court? Or his 2006 recess appointments of Ellen R. Sauerbrey and J. Dorrance Smith?

See, I wanted an actual Democrat to be the Democratic Party's nominee. That's why I thought actual Democrats - the delegates elected  in primaries and supposedly sent to Denver to pick the nominee using a fair and open procedure specified in the Call to the Convention - would  be the most sensible people to choose between the two candidates who had qualified to have their names placed in nomination. Maybe, left to their own devices those delegates would have voted for the candidate who I perceived as heading straight into making the Democratic Party largely indistinguishable from the Republican one. Maybe they would have nominated the candidate who advocated truly universal healthcare, investment in green technologies, and getting government out from under the thumb of big business - all of which would be departures from the status quo.

We will never know. But we know an awful lot already about the candidate who won the general election - Barack Hussein Obama, perpetrator of the status quo.

Just when I think the DNC cannot sink any lower, they find a way to do so

My friend who continues to get email from the DNC just forwarded this message to me:

	S---- -- It's been just over a month since Election Day, and we're getting ready to change America. We can't do it alone, and we can't do it in a single day. But thanks to supporters like you, change is coming. Show your support for our ongoing movement with an Obama four-year calendar -- or share one as a holiday gift. Make a donation of $35 and get a limited edition, full-color calendar featuring photos of President-elect Obama and his family from the campaign trail: You can also donate just $25 and get an Obama winter hat: https://donate.barackobama.com/hat Your donation will support the Democratic National Committee, which did so much to strengthen the campaign over the past two years. The DNC will continue to support change -- but it also needs to retire the debt it accumulated by putting everything on the line for victory in 2008. Get a four-year Obama calendar with your donation of $35 or more: https://donate.barackobama.com/calendar If you order by December 15th, delivery is guaranteed before December 25th. Thank you for your continued support, The Democratic Party
	Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003 Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. Click here to unsubscribe from this mailing list.

Although this is for real, the DNC has now managed to sound like a cross between QVC and a blatant political machine straight out of Chicago.

The tackiness is not the problem; it is just a minor annoyance. The sound of Chicago-like machinery gears grinding is a problem and a big one. While I want President-elect Barack Hussein Obama  (I am now using all three names because CNN has just reported that this is how the President-elect wants to be sworn in and known for official purposes) to have a Presidency that serves our country well, I do not want a major political party beginning its next Presidential campaign before this one has yet to begin. And just as I did not want the Party to select the nominee in contradiction of its own rules and procedure -  thereby effectively disenfranchising every single person who voted in a primary or a caucus regardless of how they voted - neither do I want the Party now acting as if they know who the rank and file will elect to run in four years.

Or is the new DNC PAC/0bama-for-America Party simply planning to officially disenfranchise rank and file Democrats and abandon primaries in 2012 altogether?

At one time that might have been a question I would have posed rhetorically, to show the absurdity of the idea just by inquiring about it. But having seen the latest in the shilling emails from the DNC PAC, I ask the question seriously.

Because if the Democratic Party understood democracy they would understand that they cannot be asking people now to support Barack Hussein Obama for reelection in 2012. Democracy requires an election procedure that involves rank and file citizens choosing who will run for the chief executive office. The choice is not up to a webmaster - or a would-be DNC-chair- sitting in Chicago or Washington D.C.

It is seeming easier by the day to imagine a serious third party movement for 2012. It may be the only way to guarantee a fundamental presupposition of republican populist democracy: the right of the individual citizen to have a real choice of candidates to serve as the President of the United States.

Giving thanks, giving gifts, building momentum

Looking for a way to live a political life without breaking the bank? Want to spend your hard-earned money in ways that benefit multiple recipients at once? Want to begin to Salt March?

Support the White House Project - Send a Woman to the White House
Help the National Women's History Museum Build a Home in the Nation's Capital

As the winter holidays arrive, we will be giving thanks and giving gifts. The gift-giving will be, for many, curtailed due to financial circumstances. But there is a way that even those on a tight budget can give gifts that will be received with great thanks by two organizations, one focused on American women's accomplishments here and now, the other dedicated to educating and celebrating American women's achievements in the past. I think of this pair of institutions as the yin and yang of making sure that women count. Both organizations accept donations and one can join either as a member. With a bit of creativity, you can give as little as five dollars to either organization, print out the receipt (cross out the amount of money donated if you like) and decorate it or wrap it up and give it to a friend (maybe somebody with whom you are forming an SWWH group). This year, give the people you love a donation in honor of that love and in support of two groups who are helping to stamp out misogyny and sexism in favor celebration and empowerment of women.

For children, you can give the book Call Me Madame President from The White House Project shop. Or do your all your holiday shopping through the iGive portal and designate the National Women's History Museum as the beneficiary (the charitable cause you designate gets a percentage contribution based on your total purchases from cooperating merchants).

When millions of people combine financial forces, change happens. For an interesting read on the general topic, with specific reference to cause organizations mutually supporting one another, see this article, "Money Talks", by Eric L. Smith.

"Don't agonize. Organize." - Send a Woman to the White House

'Don’t agonize. Organize.'
- Florynce Kennedy

Right now, many people believe that they will not see a woman elected president of this country in their lifetimes. The estimable Marie Cocco sums the situation up once again. One of my favorite blog writers, Ani, gives us her take.

One can hardly blame people for feeling this way. But, I think it is too early to conclude that we will not see a woman elected president in the next 24 years. So, if you think you have another quarter century in you, not only might you see a woman elected president, you can help make it happen. It won't happen because it will be easy to accomplish. And it It won't happen because of hope. It will happen because of hard work in the face of long odds.

It will happen because we challenge ourselves to make it happen' to make it a national priority. We must recognize that electing a woman to the Presidency of the United States of America is a way of affirming the 51 per cent of the American population consisting of women, a way of affirming that Americans can understand human rights well enough to appreciate that women's rights are human rights, a way of affirming the great American heritage in promoting the rights of all persons based on ever more inclusive ideas of who counts as a rights-bearing person.

Before you stop reading because you decide this is just going to be a bit of cockeyed optimism or mere exhortation, I will name two concrete ways Americans can challenge themselves to make a woman President within the next 25 years.

I. First, learn about The White House Project. Don't be put off by the bit on the home page congratulating Obama-Biden. There will be some ideas and aspects of the site you will like more than others, but spend some time at The White House Project, and you will  see that this group understands that to put a woman in the White House we, as a nation, are going to have to face down the pervasive misogyny and sexism rampant in the culture and never more in evidence than right now. (In May, Marie Cocco wrote about the phenomenon; now with the talk of Senator Clinton becoming Secretary of State, the public face of misogyny has surged to the forefront again.) Some great pages from the website are here (this page shows that The White House Project understands exactly what we are up against), as does this one. Want to think about leading a political life?  Look here. After you investigate, sign up to participate in the group - costs nothing but keeps you involved. Then, use the group's form to get some friends to sign up.

II. Second, set up your own support/action group, dedicated to challenging yourself and other people to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034. I think of such a group as a "Send a Woman to the White House" [SWWH] club or partnership. It might start with you and just one other person. But as with exercise, it is easier to stay motivated toward a goal if you do so with some friends and companions. Here are some things SWWH clubs can do:

• meet once a week for at least an hour; use the hour to focus on political actions you are taking or want to take; then use the next hour to see how progress is going.
• create an investment fund - decide with other members what you can raise per month, and how you can raise it, and pick an organization that is dedicated to women's rights and particularly their representation as President of the United States of America.
• think of fun and social ways to educate yourself (book group on women's history or building presidential campaigns); walk-a-thons to raise money to donate to women's rights/interest groups.
• let other people know you have set up an SWWH group - and stay in communication with other groups.
• take small but direct actions: if you see misogynistic or sexist advertising, boycott the product or service and write the company in question; if your local bookstore or library does not have an extensive collection of nonfiction about women in politics or women's history, speak to the manager and ask for a better selection; when somebody uses misogynistic or sexist language, tell him or her that you object.
• invite a woman you would like to know better or whose work you would to know more about to come meet with your SWWH; she does not have to be famous and the event does not have to be fancy; it can be a coffee for three or an open house for 30.

Yesterday was the anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. This sorry date did not cause me to dwell on the horror and sadness of life cut too short. Instead, it put me in mind of one of the most admirable things President Kennedy did for this country. He challenged Americans to meet a seemingly impossible challenge: they did. In 1961, President Kennedy addressed the United States Congress urging long-term and continuous funding and commitment to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. President Kennedy did not live to see that goal met in 1969, but the goal would not have been met if he had not issued the Congress and, in another famous address well worth reading and hearing, the American people to invest resources and energy in hitting the mark. So we know that we as a country can attain goals that, when first presented, seem outrageously unreachable.

We may not have a President who will challenge us to put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, but as American citizens we can issue the challenge to ourselves and to one another. If enough of us start now, we Americans can put a woman in the Oval Office by 2034, just as 40 years ago Americans put a man on the moon.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

-John F. Kennedy, Rice University, 1963

My own ambition and commitment: to start an SWWH group and to help anybody else who would like to start one. You can reach me through this blog for ideas about books to read, groups that might be worth supporting, specific projects you might want to try.

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.