KJ

Although calling people I don't know on the phone is, like, number five on the all-time list of things I most hate to do, I bit the bullet and spent some time today phone banking for Hillary Clinton, with a few friends. The process was largely automated -- I didn't dial the calls myself, but entered my phone number in the system and the system then called me, and continuously connected me to voters -- and I had a script. It was still a little intimidating, especially at first, but once I got into the swing of things it was okay. It helped that we were mostly calling likely supporters, such as registered Democrats and people who have a history of voting Democratic in the past. I was actively calling for a little less than two hours, and I probably spoke to about twenty people, not counting hangups and disconnections. (Since California is beyond safe at this point, we called voters in Ohio. They're probably pretty sick of us by now, so I can't 100% say I blame anyone!)

Not everyone was supportive -- I got a couple of outright Trump supporters and one obvious Hillary hater, and a few undecideds who weren't willing to talk about their concerns. There were also a few people who said they were uncomfortable discussing their voting choices, which I more than understand. But I reached enough people who were enthusiastic about casting their vote for Clinton to make up for it. Like the 90-year-old lady who proclaimed she would never vote for Trump, "not for a million dollars." And the man who reached excitedly for the phone when I told the woman who answered that I was with the Clinton campaign, and informed me that his whole family were Hillary supporters. "God bless Hillary Clinton," he said. "She's going to be the next president of the United States." "I surely hope you're right," I said, and couldn't help smiling. There was also the boy sharing a table with us in the call center. He couldn't have been more than twelve, and he was brilliant: following every detail of the script, talking with such conviction about his support for Clinton and sharing his enthusiasm with every supporter he reached. His mom sat next to him, beaming with pride, and we all beamed back at her. That kid, and every kid like him, is hope for the future.

I know these two hours I put in isn't much, compared to the many, many hours and days of volunteering that some of my friends have undertaken. But I'm glad I did participate today. It was good to get down there, spend some time with fellow Clinton supporters, and get an inside glimpse at just how well-oiled a machine this campaign is.

Just two more days to go. I can hardly believe it. I can hardly wait.

You've probably noticed that I've written very little about this presidential primary season -- my last and so far only post on the subject was in November. That doesn't mean I don't have thoughts, of course. I've shared plenty on Twitter (by far my most active social media presence these days), and sometimes Tumblr posts as well, and it's all but taken over my Facebook feed (although I took a break from posting election-related content myself from about March through Clinton mathematically clinching the nomination). But my journal hasn't really seemed like the venue to share them. Until now.

Because there's no way I'm letting a milestone like this go by without marking it down for posterity. On Thursday night, July 28th, 2016, I had friends over to watch Hillary Clinton become the first woman to accept the presidential nomination of a major political party, giving her a very real shot to become the first female President of the United States of America. We cheered and we cried and we broke out a bottle of champagne. As I watched her speak, I thought about the generations of women who worked and fought and died for this moment. I watched women and men basking in the glory of a victory they may have never expected to see. I looked at the faces of girls in the audience, rapt with attention and brimming with possibility. I took it all in, and I relished it. Sure, it's not exactly a surprise -- this has been the anticipated outcome of the 2016 Democratic primary since at least 2008 -- and yet there's a part of me that couldn't believe it was happening, that still can't quite believe it's real.

I've always hoped to see a woman become president in my lifetime, but for many years I assumed that the first female president would be a Republican. My reasoning? It seemed more likely to me that a moderate Republican woman (think Elizabeth Dole, or Christine Todd Whitman) could attract support from moderate Democratic women than the other way around, and that such support would be necessary to offset the people who simply couldn't vote for any woman as president. Also, any viable female presidential candidate would need to project a tough image: in particular, be a strong supporter of the military. And until not so long ago, those were policy positions associated with the Republican Party. So I thought it made sense that a centrist Republican would be more likely to break through this particular glass ceiling.

And the truth is, I would have raised a glass to that theoretical Republican, too. Chances are I wouldn't have voted for her, but I still would've cheered her accomplishment. The fact of a woman, any woman, being poised to take the highest office in the land is a blow against sexism. A small one, to be sure, if the woman in question campaigned on a regressive platform. But a blow nonetheless. And whatever you think of Hillary Clinton, her policies, and the trajectory of her political career*, you cannot argue that she hasn't made promoting equal rights for women and girls a priority throughout her life.

This isn't the end of the battle, of course. Electing a female president wouldn't end sexism any more than Barack Obama's election ended racism. We need more women and people of color -- especially women of color -- at all levels of government, from local positions to the White House and beyond, before we can truly say that we've won anything. (I think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her vision of an all-female Supreme Court.) But just as Obama's candidacy was an important step along that path, so is Clinton's, and I hope we can hold this progress going forward.

*Which is not something I intend to argue about here. I'm happy to have substantive debate about Clinton as a politician and a candidate on another day, but that's not the point of this post. This is a moment to celebrate, for me and millions of others, and I intend to make the most of it.

If you've been following all this business with The Interview, it sounds like Sony has "relented" and will be releasing the film on Christmas Day after all, in limited release.

I don't doubt that the hacking and the threats were real. I do doubt that the government of North Korea has the resources to make such a threat credible, certainly not in the United States with everyone on alert. And the cynical side of me has to wonder whether Sony always intended to release the film anyway, but played up the threats and free speech angles to line up audience for a film that they were afraid was going to tank.

Just a sneaking suspicion. (I wasn't going to see it anyway, I am pretty much the opposite of a Seth Rogen fan.) I suppose we may never know either way.

Maybe so, but they got the wrong bums. The Republicans are cruising to an easy takeover of the Senate, and seem to have picked up a number of governorships as well. I'm not sure how much this changes anything on a practical level, though. Even if the GOP has a Senate Majority, it's not enough of one to get anything done, any more than the Democratic majority was before. Certainly not enough to override any presidential vetoes. And despite all the hand-wringing I saw on MSNBC about Republican governors in blue states as harbingers for 2016, it's not like New England and the Mountain West haven't had Republican governors before. Remember, it's not so long ago that Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts.

I really do continue to boggle at the Democratic inability to capitalize on success, though. People like the Affordable Care Act! Why do you keep running from it?

Meanwhile, I did of course vote this morning. California is rather insulated from the national stuff because Jerry Brown was reelected in a walk, and neither of our US Senators were up this year. We also had slightly less of the proposition-related ridiculousness this year, although "less" is not "none". But it looks like almost nothing I voted against is going to pass, and nothing I feel strongly about is going to lose, so that's generally okay.

If only the midterms being over meant that we were done with election nonsense for awhile. But alas, it seems that will be with us always.

Today was tea and snackies and the library with SE, then dinner with T, then the new series of Top Chef -- is it too soon to say that this cast looks promising? Then Nate Silver was on The Daily Show, and can I just say how much I love that one of the emerging narratives from this election cycle is pundits versus mathematics, and by just how much mathematics is winning?

Also, it looks like we will have 20 women Senators in the 113th Congress, and while some part of my brain is yelling at me ("20%? That's a freaking disgrace is what that is, why are you so happy?"), the rest of me is very, very happy.

I will likely have more to say about these things when I am not sneaking in my post for the day before I have to run off to bed. 'Night, all.

It's probably cheating for so many of my posts this month to be about my Mega Flare progress, but it is the main focus of my time and attention right now, so maybe not? I can't decide.

Anyway. Got some good editing done yesterday and today, maybe halfway through this first editing run, and once this post is done, I'll dive back in. Current wordcount is 26,483; I haven't discovered any gaps yet, but I've flagged a few sections for possible rewrite. It would be in great shape if I had about a week longer, or at least if I weren't completely booked this weekend. As it is, well. We'll see.

In other news, bleah. If Ed Lee wins outright, I am going to be Very Irritated. Can San Francisco politics get nothing right?

All right, enough of that. Back to work. If you see me on Twitter or Tumblr, smack me on the hand, will you? Thanks.

Wow, I have been really bad about posting here lately. I'm following both flist and circle, commenting some, but as for writing my own posts (about things that are not The Vorkosigan Saga), not so much. Between travel, a new quarter, sickness, and just plain feeling boring right now, I guess it's not so surprising.

So, in lieu of real content, here are links to three things that have made me happy lately:

• Is there anyone left who has not seen this awesome video of a cat playing with a dolphin? Just in case, I leave a link to it here.



• Speaking of awesome videos, Apeture Science Investment Opportunity #1. There are four in the series and they are all great. I loved Portal's sense of humor, and it looks like we can expect more of the same in Portal 2. I am so excited for this game.



• #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement: Stephen Colbert at his finest.

What's been brightening your day lately? Silly things, cute things, big or small, feel free to leave a comment.

[Sorry if you saw the earlier version of this I deleted; I was editing it so heavily that I decided I'd better just start over.]

I finished Rebecca Traister's Big Girls Don't Cry today, and although I enjoyed the heck out of it, I feel like I don't have much more to say about the events it covers that I didn't already say back when the 2008 election was happening. Although in way, having followed the story so closely at the time added to the pleasure of reading it, because I felt like I knew the players: the candidates, the feminist leaders, the bloggers, the talking heads. Another aspect familiar to me was Traister's own work; she drew heavily from the articles that she wrote about the elections, articles I remembered reading, and particularly one on being undecided between Clinton and Obama that influenced my own thinking on the issue. And although she and I came to different conclusions (she voted for Hillary, I voted for Barack), many of the emotions she described feeling about the election -- about Clinton's rise and fall, about the nomination of Sarah Palin, about the Democratic establishments failure to call out the sexism media until after the end of primary season -- resonated with me, both in my memory and now.

I did review it on GoodReads (and was the first person to do so -- it hasn't even received any other star ratings yet), and if the topic interests you even a little, I definitely recommend picking it up.

I hope you have all seen by now the most excellent news that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was found unconstitutional by a district court judge yesterday. News that was, for me, made all the more welcome by the fact that I didn't even know the law had been challenged in court, and so it came as a wonderful surprise.

Two things jumped out at me from the article linked above. First:

The case was filed by the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest political organization for gays in the GOP, in 2004.

Really? I mean, really? This is not a complaint, mind, but it really shocked me at first glance. A Republican group? Challenging DADT? But on reflection, it makes more sense: Republicans often believe in a strong military, perhaps are more likely to want to serve in the military, and DADT keeps gay Republicans from being able to serve. Still, it threw me for a loop.

Second, the article mentions President Obama and his oft-stated desire to repeal DADT. Now, that's great and all, Mr. President, but if you're that committed to getting rid of the law, why did the Justice Department just defend it vigorously in Federal Court? Someone explain that one to me, because unlike the first thing that caught my eye, I really don't see how that follows.

Still, good news. Great news. As always, it's just a first step, but maybe one that will get Congress and the Pentagon to get cracking on repealing the law for good.