My Mother’s Painful Quandary

But when it came time to vote in the Illinois primary on Super Tuesday, my mother was in a quandary. She didn't like the sexist comments about Hillary ("Iron my shirts," chanted a couple of imbecilic hecklers in New Hampshire, thereby helping her win there). But she was also upset that Obama has been depicted as connected to Louis Farrakhan, unaccomplished in the Senate and full of empty rhetoric. These charges, she says, are "ridiculous." For years she watched him work with great skill to bridge barriers of race, class, religion and party in Illinois. The choice was beginning to jangle her nerves.

When my two sisters became active Obama volunteers and her granddaughters as well as grandsons grew excited about politics for the first time, my mother began to think about the contest in a new way. The next president was for them, not her, she reasoned. Slowly, idealism edged identity. Her sense that Obama was a once-in-a-lifetime candidate took a fragile hold over the cause of women in politics to which she had devoted so much of her career. She voted for Obama, and knows she might not live to see the first woman president. Joanne Alter can live with that, even if she still often tosses and turns over it at 3 in the morning.

© 2008