Super Tuesday is here!!!

It's 1am and I'm up trying make sure I make the right decisions.  People are sending their emails with their opinions and I was criticized by friends by my decision to vote for Obama.  "How could you?  It's about time we had a woman for president!"  Unfortunately that was the only reason they could come up with.  We are women so we should vote for a woman.  I wonder how those friends would react if I were to say "I have to vote for Obama because I am black."  In fact, when I heard others in my family saying that they have to do just this, I was the loudest voice saying that was not a good enough reason.  This wasn't really a big deal for me at first.  I figured either way I would win.  I'm a black woman, so what could go wrong?  First woman or first African American.  Yea for me!  

Then I started to listen to others (big mistake) and became enraged.  I work in a mostly Latino community and my Latina co-worker (Obama supporter) told me about a conversation she had with her husband.  She asked him who he was going to vote for and he immediately said Clinton.  When she asked him why he said "Oh, you know Obama is black and you know..."  So yeah, I'm becoming a little infuriated.  Everywhere I go I hear this crap about how we need a woman to be president when really underneath it all what people are saying is that we CANNOT have a black person (male/female) as president.  It makes me sick. It's a harsh reminder of how people can be sometimes.

Today I had to pull myself away from it all and sit down once again to figure this whole thing out for myself.  Shut out all the noise so to speak and make sure that when I go in tomorrow to cast my vote, it is a vote that is backed by something more substantial than the ethnicity and gender of the candidates.  I don't want to become the people that I despise.  

As I said before, I really haven't paid a ton of attention to what each candidate has to say in terms of television interviews, putting each other down, radio advertisements, etc.  It's just too much confusion there for me.  I don't want anyone to help me make up my mind.  That's why I tried to judge them all as stand alone candidates, looking at their plans for the future.  Tonight, I finally decided to actually listen to some of their speeches outside of the horrible debate last week and I was completely blown away by Obama.  Completely.  I mean an actual tear.  I can imagine my little future biracial children memorizing those speeches for school plays and reciting them without knowing the full weight of it all and me crying in the audience completely embarrassing them in front of their friends.  

"Yes we can heal this nation"

"Yes we can repair this world"

Really Obama?  Okay, I believe you!  That is not to say Hilary's plan are trash.  They are great plans actually.  I just don't believe her.  I don't believe her on paper or in spoken word.  She does not move me.  She doesn't seem to move herself.  I will agree that it seems that she is planning for bigger things, but I have to remember that there is a difference between a president and a dictator.  Unlike a dictator, what the president wants and plans to happen means very little if he/she cannot convince others that it is good.  Obama seems to be going for the incremental plan.  He wants universal health care too, just in a different way.  In a way that is more agreeable to most than Clinton's plan.  AND he can get people there in way that is fulfilling and not simply paperwork.  

I sort of see it like this in my head:  You are on your way to your local bookstore (I'm a bookworm!) and you want to read the newest book by your fav author.  For months there has been this build up.  This book will change your life!  It will change the way you see the world and act in it!  It will make you feel emotions you never thought black words on white paper could!  It is almost indescribable how good and interesting this story is.  You get to the store and there is a huge poster in the window announcing that instead of selling the book, they have decided to sell the CliffsNotes because it's more practical.  It's the same story after all, and you could probably get all the main points and pass a test if you were reading it for you high school AP English class.  Wouldn't you be a little pissed?  

So, that's how I see it.  Obama is the ground-breaking, life-changing, continue the story even in your dreams novel and Clinton is the CliffsNotes.  I think my decision is made.  

Unfortunately, after weeks of hearing some of the rationale behind other people's decisions I simply cannot fool myself into believing that he will actually make it to the November election. I'm okay with that because I still would have made the decision that was right for me.  After all, I have used Cliff's Notes a few times when I was in a crunch before and it's always better than not bothering to read at all.