HALLI CASSER-JAYNE - bio
RED, WHITE 'N TRUE™
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE
Posted, September 1, 2008,  12:01 p.m

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I come from a stock of strong, independent women. My maternal grandmother wore pants when women did otherwise, taught my mother’s friends how to roll cigarettes when women didn’t, and once told me when I announced that I was leaving my husband, the first in my family to do such a thing, “Honey, if you don’t like whose sleeping in your bed, throw him out. Life is too short to go through it being miserable.” My grandmother was in her eighties at that time and had wisdom behind her judgment, by the way, earned wisdom, that trait people no longer honor today.

This morning sipping java and watching my sunflowers dance in the light morning air, I was thinking about my grandmother who loved to dance. And I was wondering what that independent-minded woman borne of a generation when women were second-class citizens would say if she were alive today to watch the extraordinary story of the 2008 election unfold.

What a time it is; history in the making. Barack Obama has become the first African-American to come within earshot of the presidency and the first woman, Hillary Clinton, has garnered as many votes as a man if not the win. It’s enough to leave one breathless.

But at the moment that you might have thought that things would dissolve into the banter of the general campaign, another history making turn. Just when a political junkie didn’t think that it could get any better than this, John “The Maverick” McCain further upset the status quo by naming a gun-totin’, five-time mother, one term Governor of a small State, former beauty queen, reform-minded women, Sarah Palin, his vice-presidential pick.

Nope, who could have imagined it could get any better than this.

But it can get worse, and it has. Because while John McCain’s pick does shake up the race, bring an unknown but wonderfully interesting women to within a heartbeat of the American presidency, restore MAC’s status of Maverick and for MAC, most importantly shore up his much-needed support with his up until now reluctant Evangelical Christian base, the pick of Sarah Palin also turns this race into the same old stupid and destructive fight of nearly every election campaign since the passing of Roe vs. Wade in 1973.

Once again America’s president will be picked not because of what he can do to fix the problems of this country, but as the result of a race that pits pro-choice and pro-life women (and some men) against each other -- the argument, by the way, the very reason why women have not made it to the White House thus far and have remained powerless beneath the divide and conquer women mentality that political strategists have used against women since the landmark legislation passed. Since Roe vs. Wade  passed  the women voting bloc is like the country, split in half, women stupidly giving up their power, and  allowing themselves to be used for male political gain for far too long.

After Barack Obama became the party’s presumptive nominee I held onto the hope that we might get through this election without Roe vs. Wade on the table (Had it been Hillary, that wouldn’t have been possible). But along comes Governor Sarah Palin, smart, sassy, and a staunch opponent of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. It didn’t take 24 hours and the cat fights had begun, the lines drawn, the trenches dug, the political female pundits on either side of the issue pointing their guns at one another over the issue to be right over the issue of the right to choose or not, the long battle accomplishing only one thing: the further eroding of women’s rights and power.

I have led an unconventional life, and I can’t tell you how many women say to me, “I couldn’t live as you do.” I tell them that my love of adventure, if you will, is an innate to me as their choices are to them. But I don’t begrudge them their choices anymore than they judge me for mine. But on some issues women are not that magnanimous, and the abortion issue is one such issue.

In discussions with women about their choice for president there is only one issue that matters: Where do the candidates stand on Roe vs. Wade. It always comes down to that. You choose a Republican if you’re pro-life, you chose a Democrat if you’re pro-choice. The other issues, except after 9/11 when security might have in the short-term trumped abortion, never weigh very heavily on a women’s vote. That’s the fact, that’s the bottom line. That’s the major reason America hasn’t properly picked its leaders in a long, long time.

I said some time ago that if John McCain wanted to secure his bid for the White House he only had to tell the Evangelical Christian’s to get off his back, promise progressive women voters that should the need arise to make a new appointment to the Supreme Court on his watch that he would not be nominating activist judges for the job. With the issue of Roe vs. Wade off the table, many Democratic women not happy with Barack Obama would have easily moved to the Republican side.

But I suspect McCain’s own personal beliefs, a look at the numbers, and his fear of the Evangelical Christian base of the Republican Party helped him choose Sarah Palin, not just anti-Roe vs. Wade, but rabidly against abortion, as his running mate. In that respect there was absolutely nothing Maverick-like about McCain’s vice presidential choice.

And therefore McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, as novel as her story is, will in the end only prove to further divide the country into its ideological corners.  Still, McCain will get a few of Hillary’s disgruntled supporters to move to his side, but not as many as he might have had had he the guts to make this election a referendum on something other than Roe vs. Wade. Sadly, what we’ll have now is just a typical presidential contest, another race for the center, and the vote will break down along ideological lines.

So that at the end of the day on November 4^, 2008, America will be exactly where we started off at the beginning of this long and drawn out contest for better, and the worst, for women.