Undecided '08: Should I vote for Clinton or Obama?

I think, every day, of what it would feel like to vote for Barack Obama. I can feel the pull of Obama-mania, how thrilling it would be to see the country come alive with excitement for a young person, someone with fresh ideas, a man beholden to few in Washington, a candidate who has lived around the world, who does not seem to take a cowboy approach to foreign policy, who has forsaken big business opportunities in order to address the problems of the working class. I think also that, in the United States, race (especially when combined with class) remains a more formidable barrier to professional, political and economic success than gender. Hillary Clinton may have a harder time getting elected than Obama because, frankly, Obama can be comfortably looked at as an exceptional black man, not as a harbinger of what's to come, whereas Hillary will stand in for all those pushy broads coming to take your jobs, college admissions letters and seats in Congress. If Hillary's success is less exceptional, does she deserve my vote as much as Barack?

I think of how I would love to be part of the wave of enthusiasm for this smart, charismatic man, of how he wipes the floor with Clinton as an orator; I consider that the dashing Obama, and his youthful adherents, have the chance to take John McCain, while Clinton would bring every angry, resentful white guy out of his parents' basement to vote against her.

And then I think of how, when I was 9, my dad took me into the voting booth so that I could pull the lever for the first female vice president, and how he told me that he hoped that in my lifetime I would have the opportunity to vote for a woman at the top of the ticket. And I think about the fact that this is it -- my chance to pull that lever for her, so that I can do it again come November.

Who am I to turn up my nose at her because she's imperfect? I always figured the first female president would be a Thatcher-style Republican -- how can I complain about a Wellesley-educated Democrat who once resembled the second-wave women who fought for my ability to control my own reproduction and get paid as much as my male colleagues?

How could I ever tell those women that I voted for Barack Obama? What do I tell my aunt, my mother -- women who aren't crazy about Hillary's politics either, but whose extra decades on the planet have left them more acutely aware than I about the fleeting opportunity she presents. What if I have a daughter someday and she asks me about why we've never had a woman president? Do I tell her that we once came close, but that Mommy was really digging Obama that day? (Lest nostalgia cloud my decision too thoroughly, I should add that my father, the one who made sure I could vote for Geraldine Ferraro, is dissatisfied with his options, and planning to write in the cat.)

So as much as I yearn to run wildly into the streets with the jubilant hordes of Obama supporters, if I cast my vote for him, it will be a silent one.

But a vote for his opponent would be, perhaps, even more private. There is shame in voting for Hillary Clinton, make no mistake -- pulling a lever for someone who voted for Iraq and proposed anti-flag-burning legislation provokes its own brand of self-loathing. When I think about doing the deed, I consider the fact that she's brilliant, that she's competent, that she knows her shit inside and out, that she's battle-tested, tough as nails, and that she wipes the floor with Obama in the debates. She provides a steel-solid track record, he a nimbus of vague hope.

But here is the honest part: Hillary Clinton is a woman. And so am I. And my president doesn't have to look like me, any more than she has to be a person I want to have a beer with, but I can't pretend that it doesn't mean something, something really important, that we've never had one who looked like me before.

And so as much as I protest about how I'd never vote for someone just because she's a woman, a vote for Hillary would not be a purely intellectual choice, and certainly not a politically enthusiastic one, but an emotional one, and in that, I would be conforming to every assumption about why I vote and how I vote. I don't want to be the girl that all the cool Obama-supporting progressives assume I am, if I happen to feel compelled to choose the woman in this contest, in part because she's a woman. In this, I guess, the shame is not so much about voting for Hillary, but in fulfilling a feminized -- and, relatedly, devalued -- expectation of Democratic womanhood. And in this, it would only be fair to conclude that I, the big feminist, am in my own way hiding from my own gender.

And so I'll spend the next two days waging this internal battle. I understand that while many Super Duper Tuesday voters out there are sure and passionate in their choices -- and I wish I were among you -- I also know that there are many others, male and female, black and white, young and old, who are feeling this same tugging in their bellies and their brains. I'm not the only one who, for the first time in my life, will understand exactly how private (and perhaps profound?) the casting of a ballot can be. All I can say with assuredness is this: Whatever move I make, I bet it's going to hurt.

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