My Sister is Over Obama

“It’s over, I don’t love Obama anymore”.  My sister announced this change of heart after the President’s speech on Afghanistan.

She invoked the same language of romance that had surrounded the candidate throughout his improbable, heady campaign.  Like millions of American women, she had gotten a policy crush on him—after all, he supported many of our issues, although not quite as many as Clinton did.

Of course, the majority of American women voted for him:  Obama garnered 56% of the Women’s vote.  

But now, many of his female supporters realized he is not what they thought. 

Many women thought he was the anti-war guy, the peacemaker.  For crying out loud, my mother would say, he was given a down payment on peace by the Nobel Committee.   Now, will the Scandinavians ask for it back?  

This president of hope and Change plans to send 30,000 more troops to continue this occupation. And so more and more Americans and Afghanis will die—from bombs on the road and drones in the air. 

Back in 2008, many feminist-minded democratic- women I talked to struggled:

          1). Should they support the woman candidate even though she had voted for the Iraq War,

OR
          2). Should they stand behind the man who voted against these offshore debacles? 

As women agonized over their Sophie’s choice between women and peace, the Convention finally made the decision.  So during the primaries, it was like the years before WWI, when progressive women were torn between the cause of suffrage and pacifism.

So many of women voted in 2008, thinking they were voting for peace.  That Bush’s martial matched set of Iraq and Afghanistan would be cast off like last years look.  Iraq is starting to wind down, although not as fast as many hoped.  But that’s only half of the covenant many made in the voting booth. 

It’s not just my sister who’s mad about what she sees as a broken promise: polling this week by ABC showed that 51% women want a small training-only mission if  additional troops are sent to Afghanistan.  Another CBS poll from November revealed that only 32% Americans wanted an increase in troops.  American women don’t want to send more soldiers into combat.

And if my sister feels let down, what about the other millions of women who voted for him—dreamed about him and his reign over a new America.  A New York Times article back in January revealed that many women had a dream of Barack Obama.  What does he do now in their dreams address the troops over and over and over again.  And then, I wonder about the young woman called Obama girl, how is she feeling now?

My sister is a grown woman she’ll get over it.  Anyway she loves her husband.  But I don’t think she’ll fall for a politician again.