I still remember the first ever election I voted in. It was 1980 and I voted by absentee ballot because I was away from home in college. Jimmy Carter was president and running as the incumbent against Ronald Reagan and John Anderson. hehehe … yeah … nobody except political science professors and poli/sci majors remember that. And the 763 of us who voted for John Anderson; we also remember. Those of you who are so enamoured of Ron Paul … you need to take a good hard look at that race. And the race where whats-his-name ran … you know? The guy who was a software engineer and put all his own money into the campaign, he used to own EDS and has a head shaped like a turkey. He was mighty entertaining, but …

There are at least 87 excellent reasons for a more than two party system in this country. However we won’t have one by starting with the presidential campaign. It will begin by organizing a new party or parties at the local level and electing officials down low and moving them up. It’s a process that will take decades. For the record, many libertarians are nuts. Wackos. A group of them voted to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire, from the middle of the state … led by my cousin, so I can say this. There is more to good government than low taxes and low level anarchy. If Libertarians cannot win their case at the local level, they will not win at the state and national level … no matter how winsome their candidate appears.

On to more pertinent matters.

I’m not voting for Hillary. If the Democratic party has so lost it’s mooring as to nominate her for it’s presidential candidate come it’s convention, I will vote for whoever the Republican nominee is … or I won’t vote at all.  I’m not going to settle for a vote between the lesser of two evils anymore. I’m not going to do it. I refuse. I’ve only had one election in my life where I felt an honest choice between candidates … and it was the first election I voted in. 28 years is a long dry spell.

I don’t vote with my breasts and I’m a little put out that it seems a lot of my fellow women are. It’s interesting to me that many of my family, friends and colleagues assume that I am going to vote for her … just because I’m a woman and she’s a woman, so they assume that I will take this ground-breaking opportunity to vote for the first woman president. No, actually … I have a little more integrity than that. I don’t like Hillary and never have. I have felt empathy for her. I have despised the manner in which she was pilloried when Bill was in office. I have admired her courage under pressure. But when the chips are down I do not trust her and I really think that she has an unseemly lust for power. To put it quite bluntly, I do not trust her character. In much the same manner as I never trusted the character of George W. Bush. To be fair, at least she is no fool.

I’m not going to vote for Hillary, because despite her protests to contrary now, she supported the war in Iraq when it was expedient to her to do so. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because she does not have a consistent ethic of life. I’m not going to vote for Hillary, because her husband was president 8 years ago and that makes him a loose cannon in the White House … with no restraints. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because if she were to become president that would give us 32 years of essentially the same style of leadership (Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton?) and it’s time for something new. I’m not going to vote for Hillary because she does what is politically expedient to gain votes, not what she feels is best or morally right for the country or her state.  Tom D’Antoni put words to my underlying suspicions in yesterday’s Huffington Post.  I’m not certain I’d go as far as he does, but I suspect it’s true and this is why I don’t trust Hillary’s character:

“‘I will work my heart out for you every single day!’ These are the incredible words of Hillary Clinton, who arranges for a cute little Mexican boy in a sombrero to bring her flowers onstage in Texas. What a pitiful and despicable show.

If you ever see a Latino near her multimillion-dollar house in Chappaqua, New York, he’ll likely be on his knees in the dirt with a gardening trowel.

You are to her a vote, nothing more. It is not you who matters to her. It is your gullibility that matters to her. Her goal is not to serve you. Her goal is to con you and use you to become president, and that is all. You are to her expendable, a mere means to an end that does not involve you or your concerns or your welfare.

But most of all, I resent Hillary.  She brings a bitter gall to the back of my throat.  Like Hillary and many women, I sacrificed my dreams for my husband and my children.  I do not have such a glamorous husband, he does not have such a glamorous job as Bill.  So perhaps the parallels end there.  However, I cannot go out into the workplace now after 14 years of not being paid for the grunt work I do, and claim that I have “experience” for a glamorous and powerful job that I would like to have.   People would laugh at me if I put 14 years of experience on my resume that looked like what my husband does.  People would laugh at any woman who did that.  Even if her college experience equalled that of her husband’s.  It galls me that politicians, the media, and people in general are buying into Hillary’s experience as if it were true … but for the rest of us women … well … we have to start all over again when we go back to work after raising our families.  I know … life ain’t fair.  The rules are different for those who rule.  But here’s the thing.  Our country is founded on the idea that the rules are not supposed to be different for those who rule.

So … who am I going to vote for? Well, the primary came to Virginia last Tuesday (February 12). I voted for Barack Obama with joy and glee.  He won by a landslide.  For the first time in 28 years I think we have candidate who is a voice for change. Not change for the sake of change, but change in how we think about ourselves. I think Mr. Obama will bring back respect to the position of President. Respect that it began to lose even under President Nixon in the early 1970’s.

I’m very excited about his campaign.  I just hope the pols in the Democratic Party have the smarts to listen to the people.