CommentsVOICES--In watching a recent Frontline presentation covering the respective lives of 2016 presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it dawned on me that while voting for Hillary might have reasonably been construed as only just the latest example of my 48 year voting history of either holding my nose and voting for the supposed "lesser of two evils" or alternatively wasting my vote by voting for a Jill Stein-esque candidate, that had objectively no chance of winning.
Voting for Hillary next month might actually be my best chance of being part of a sea change away from what has been a male chauvinist American politics that Donald Trump's continuing crude comments and candidacy prove is regretably still alive and well.
In this morality play, Hillary represents the every(wo)man who has had to suffer the humiliation of a lying and philandering husband, who in what would be his new role as "first lady" would now have to live under the same historically humiliating role he and other presidents have put their undervalued wives into in the past.
It would also serve as a final repudiation of a male chauvinism that Donald Trump is clearly the posterboy for and whose successful candidacy in capturing the Republican presidential nomination shows is still regretably alive and well in too many places in this country.
The ultimate revenge and substantive 2017 reality of a Hillary presidency is to say that it's no longer business as usual at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Just as Barak Obama's presidency has made one think in a whole new light about what will never again be the "white” house, Hillary Clinton as president will irrevocably challenge and change what has been the negatively stereotypic roles of both president and "first lady.”
Hopefully many other American societal roles that continue to undervalue women and others at a time when we need the best of all our people if we expect to survive the contradictions that have brought down great societies in the past.
Be a part of a political sea change. Vote for Bill as ‘first lady.’
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
Bill as ‘First Lady’ … My Best Chance of Being Part of a Political Sea Change!
