It seems like a million years ago now, that I was a fervent Hillary Clinton supporter and volunteer.  I campaigned for her, I raised money for her, I set up offices and went to other states to work for her.  Was I disappointed she lost? Sure.  There was a lot about the entire campaign that I was disappointed in, but I’ve had to let it go. We have a new president elect now whom I’m ready to support.

What I haven’t let go is my dream of seeing a woman in the White House someday.  I don’t know if that will happen in my life time but I’m not going to stop trying.

I went with my family to see the movie “Milk” yesterday afternoon, the one in which Sean Penn gives a shining performance as gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was ultimately assassinated.  In it, someone said to Milk, as he prepared once more to run for political office as an openly gay man: “You know Harvey, you’ll never win this.”  He responded “Not everything is about winning.”

And I agree.  It’s the same point Albert Camus made in “The Myth of Sisyphus“, about a man being condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll back to the bottom again, and again.  Camus found something very courageous and uplifting about the act of trying to roll the rock up the hill: the victory inherent in our every day struggle to achieve our goal, to roll the rock up the hill.

The greatly esteemed Lynette Long says:” Right now, many people believe that they will not see a woman elected president of this country in their lifetimes…..

One can hardly blame people for feeling this way. But, I think it is too early to conclude that we will not see a woman elected president in the next 24 years. So, if you think you have another quarter century in you, not only might you see a woman elected president, you can help make it happen. It won’t happen because it will be easy to accomplish. And it It won’t happen because of hope. It will happen because of hard work in the face of long odds.

It will happen because we challenge ourselves to make it happen’ to make it a national priority. We must recognize that electing a woman to the Presidency of the United States of America is a way of affirming the 51 per cent of the American population consisting of women, a way of affirming that Americans can understand human rights well enough to appreciate that women’s rights are human rights, a way of affirming the great American heritage in promoting the rights of all persons based on ever more inclusive ideas of who counts as a rights-bearing person.”

Well, I agree with all of that.  Lynette also challenges us to join the White House project and to start our own groups, “Send A Woman To The White House.”

I believe, in addition to all that, we have to start from where we are with what we’ve got.  We have to elect more women to school boards, city councils, as mayors, senators and governors, so we develop a broad based farm team to start.  We have to identify the right women, believe in them and work for them.

And, equally important, we have to not allow the bias in ourselves, that puts a higher bar on women entering office than men.

I was at a party Saturday night when a long time woman friend and Obama supporter sat down next to me and started chatting about politics.  I told her I was impressed with a lot of Obama’s appointments and certainly wished him well considering the dismal state of our country now, with a recession and two bloody wars ongoing.  She told me how much courage she thought Obama had and what a magnanimous person he was for nominating Hillary as Secretary of State.  I said, “Well, if he thought she was that capable, why, during the campaign, did he say she had just gone and had tea with diplomats”. Tea, in the event you are not aware of it, is a long time code word marginalizing women, accompanied, even in the time of our own Boston Tea party, by the implication that women were out having tea with each other, mixing with undesirables, stirring up mischief, and leaving filthy homes while men where in “men’s places” drinking a good stiff whiskey and doing great things for humanity. I offered the opinion that if he thought Hillary was capable, to say she just drank tea instead of accomplishing anything was both cynical and hypocritical. She said: “Well, you do what you have to in order to win.” I said, “If you have to be cynical and hypocritical to win, maybe you shouldn’t do it.”

She exited the conversation.  I was reminded of a scene in The Godfather where Al Pacino, with great anguish, declares: “I try and try to get out and they just keep pulling me back in.”

It was an Al Pacino moment for me.  But then, although I wanted to put the whole thing behind me….not the election…but the denigration of women which sprung from it…..or rather, was made more unbearably visible by it, I didn’t really want to get out of the battle.  We are never going to get there without a battle.  And I hope we are up for it.  One more time.  Just to get you going, and if you doubt the reality of where we are and how daunting the challenge, perhaps you’d like to read a few of the White House Project facts below

The White House Project points out the following Women Leader Facts & Quotes: