{"id":814,"date":"2008-05-09T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-09T14:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=814"},"modified":"2008-05-09T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-09T14:01:00","slug":"reader-comment-marjorie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2008\/05\/09\/reader-comment-marjorie\/","title":{"rendered":"Reader Comment: Marjorie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-style: italic\">While I&#8217;m being ripped to shreds over at Comment Is Free (!) for my piece called<a href=\"http:\/\/commentisfree.guardian.co.uk\/deborah_siegel\/2008\/05\/a_hillary_supporters_remorse.html\"> &#8220;A Hillary Supporter&#8217;s Remorse,&#8221;<\/a> I&#8217;m sharing a comment from Marjorie here on GWP in a post.  I urge folks to check out what <a href=\"http:\/\/girlwithpen.blogspot.com\/2008\/05\/gwp-on-hillary-over-at-guardian.html\">Gryff has to say in our comments <\/a>too.  I love it when there&#8217;s this kind of back-and-forth going on over here, and just wanted to thank both of them for their insights and thoughts.  Here&#8217;s Marjorie, with an eloquent essay of her own:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I vowed way back in <i>1992<\/i> that, no matter where I lived in the world (at the time I thought I&#8217;d be living in Asia or Europe), if HRC decided to run for president, I&#8217;d drop everything and return to the US just to help out in her campaign.<\/p>\n<p>As it turned out, I&#8217;m in Colorado and have devoted some of my weekly columns for the local paper on her campaign and credentials, not to mention donated some hard-earned cash to her campaign. However, as far as putting my life on hold to volunteer my heart out&#8230;er, let&#8217;s just say that that hasn&#8217;t happened yet.<\/p>\n<p>I suck at fundraising (my own family turned down a request to donate $25 each to an awareness walk for a disease <i>that I have<\/i>), can&#8217;t stand the telephone, and literally break out in hives when I have to do any kind of public speaking. I can barely make it to my next door neighbor&#8217;s house without shaking in my shoes. In other words, I&#8217;m not the kind of campaign activist you want on your team. And yeah, I feel like I let HRC down, too.<\/p>\n<p>I would love to see HRC win, but while I remain the eternal optimist, the numbers are not looking good. However, I appreciate the McCaskill quote you referenced <a href=\"http:\/\/commentisfree.guardian.co.uk\/deborah_siegel\/2008\/05\/a_hillary_supporters_remorse.html\">in your article.<\/a> Hillary&#8217;s a big girl, she can handle her own campaign and will step down from it when she&#8217;s good and ready. At this time I still think she&#8217;s the best candidate and always will, and apparently millions of others feel the same way. If nothing else, I appreciate that HRC seems to understand the loyalty and passion her supporters feel for her and the responsibility that entails. To retreat now &#8212; even if that would seem to be the logical choice &#8212; would be an awful blow to those who worked so hard on her behalf.<\/p>\n<p>I think that, for her as well as for myself and countless others, this election is about more than just a call for &#8220;change.&#8221; What bothered me about the 2004 election (and why I didn&#8217;t vote for Kerry but for Nader instead) is because I felt that the Democratic theme seemed to be, &#8220;It&#8217;s better than the alternative.&#8221; There didn&#8217;t seem to be a really strong push to field a worthy candidate, just a half-assed attempt to throw any warm body into the ring as an alternative to Bush.<\/p>\n<p>Now, though, not only do we have two strong candidates, but they&#8217;re both non-traditional ones. Now that we have an election worth bothering about, it&#8217;s actually become <i>personal<\/i>, far more than any election I&#8217;ve ever witnessed in my lifetime (I&#8217;m 36). Suddenly, I&#8217;m seeing my <i>hero<\/i>, a woman I&#8217;ve admired for 16 years, whose life and accomplishments I&#8217;ve followed for just as long, on the verge of literally becoming the leader of the freakin&#8217; world.<\/p>\n<p>For that reason alone, I think that even if you&#8217;ve worked in politics in the past, I can only imagine that losing now would be even more difficult simply because we had a chance to make history&#8230;and <i>failed<\/i>. This isn&#8217;t about a Democrat winning anymore, but a <i>woman<\/i> actually winning the White House, something a lot of us didn&#8217;t think we&#8217;d see for <i>decades<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I would be <i>very<\/i> surprised if Obama extended the olive branch and offered Clinton the VP-ship, and even more so if Clinton accepted it. Maybe I&#8217;m just projecting my own profound disappointment, but I can&#8217;t imagine that happening after the exhausting bitterness of the last few months. And quite frankly, that would <i>hurt<\/i> like hell.<\/p>\n<p>Cheers,<br \/>Marjorie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I&#8217;m being ripped to shreds over at Comment Is Free (!) for my piece called &#8220;A Hillary Supporter&#8217;s Remorse,&#8221; I&#8217;m sharing a comment from Marjorie here on GWP in a post. I urge folks to check out what Gryff has to say in our comments too. I love it when there&#8217;s this kind of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10745,21929],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-political-campaigns","tag-womens-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}