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Kelly Love Johnson

Skirt! managing editor

Writer, editor, author, independent girly feminist hipster, slightly neurotic, cynically optimistic, compassionately liberal, fiscally conservative, somewhat intellectual, and always irreverent. ...

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Gloria says it better than I could...

Kelly Love Johnson

Our Savannah editor, Jessica Leigh, sent me an op-ed by Gloria Steinem this morning from The New York Times that ran earlier this week. Ms. Steinem writes about the issue of politics and gender so eloquently, as usual, that I found myself wondering why I can’t put my complicated feelings about the upcoming election into words as easily as she does. One, it is complicated. I worry that people will think I’m voting for Hillary simply because she’s a woman (I’m not). Two, it’s complicated and I’m really afraid of what will happen if we don’t elect someone who can fix what’s gone so terribly wrong in the past several years. Three, it’s complicated.

Gloria says:

“I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.”

Exactly. Read the whole op-ed here.

Full disclosure: I’m fiscally conservative (I think you have to be these days) and socially liberal, so I don’t identify as either a Democrat or a Republican. The candidates whose platforms are usually closest to my own beliefs just happen to be mostly Dems. The only agenda I have with regards to the upcoming election is to encourage people to turn out and vote, no matter who they’re voting for. We should all care about the leadership in our country. I am still idealistic enough to believe that it is still in our hands, that we do have a say, and that we can make a difference if we all do this one small thing that usually takes no more than 30 minutes on Election Day.

Remember, if you’re not registered and you don’t vote, you don’t get to bitch about your elected officials. And isn’t that the most fun of all?