Dear Grandma,
When I was little, you taught me to be "wise." To be fearless. To read the newspaper clippings on Eleanor Roosevelt, the biography of Lucretia Mott, and the pie recipes you sent my way. I opened those boxes of presents with joy, and they had their desired effect. I believe women and men are equally capable and deserve equal treatment. Incidentally, I make a darn good blueberry pie. I'm true blue in other ways as well; like you, a lifelong Democrat.
It seems I might have been the perfect Hillary Clinton voter. I was raised in Wellesley, MA (where Hillary went to college) and attend Yale (where she got her law degree). I met Senator Clinton a few years ago and found her to be extremely smart and much warmer than the media like to portray her. When I met Senator Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, I was impressed by his story, his optimism, and his ability to speak at once to a whole room and a whole country. I supported him for other reasons, though. I looked at his vote against the War in Iraq and his choice of advisors who got this question right the first time. I looked at Obama's experience as a professor of Constitutional law at UChicago, a refreshing change from President Bush, who often ignores the Constitution he swore to uphold, and Senator McCain, who recently called warrantless wiretapping a presidential prerogative. Finally, I looked at the well-organized and enthusiastic apparatus of Obama's campaign -- a campaign which can and will win this fall -- and decided to cast the first ballot of my life for him in the Connecticut primary.
The supposed generational divide might exist right now, but it doesn't have to. Last fall, I promised to work for the Democratic nominee, whoever he or she might be, in the general election. A seventy-year-old friend of our family is going to vote for Obama in November even though she's not crazy about it. "Stop giving me those looks!" she said at dinner the other night, when I glanced at her sideways every time the election came up in conversation. That's fair. I stopped, and I'm writing this letter instead -- for her, for you, and for anybody else who's willing to read it with an open mind.
Grandma, please think about who you just said you'd vote for, and whether that conflicts with everything else you've done in your life. You worked with the Methodist women's group in Kansas in the forties and with the NAACP in Detroit in the fifties, when your neighbors wouldn't even talk to the black family that moved in down the block. You donated the money you saved for new furniture to various campaigns against Bush. Please think about what you just told me you'd do - vote for McCain, the man who said "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned." The man who wants to make tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, costing 4.4 trillion dollars over the next ten years. The man who would stay in Iraq for "a million years," drawing attention away from Afghanistan and hampering real efforts to shut down Al Qaeda. Please think of my future, paying off all that debt and undoing all that damage. Think of your as-yet-nonexistent great-grandchildren, in a world with resources becoming scarcer and temperatures rising, where you're either with us or against us and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. McCain, though he opposes Obama, is NOT your friend: not even in anger, not even now.
And to Senator Clinton - if you're the same Hillary who wrote, in 1969, "I'm really tired of people slamming doors and screaming obscenities at poor old life," then know that I like and respect you - and I will continue to, if you act with grace and start campaigning your heart out for the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. That won't be easy, but it's what you need to do as fast as possible. You could start by giving my grandmother a call.
Love,
Mari
Mari Michener Oye is a sophomore at Yale University. She is not yet working for
the Obama campaign, but she plans to join up and help win this thing.