George,

I'll bite.

One, I've always respected Robin Morgan.

Two, I've always thought that the nation was too misogynist to accept a woman president and have been doubtful of a Hillary candidacy for that reason from the beginning.

But three, I think arguing that misogyny is the ONLY reason Obama has been able to transcend race--which implies, if we push through to the logical conclusion, that Hillary bears no responsibility for her failure to transcend gender--well, I think that's a pretty hollow argument.

Even if 97% of the candidates' proposals are identical, as Morgan says, there are still real differences, in policy, in personality, and in the way they make their appeals. I'll skip the policy (this post was intended to be short and it's not) and the personality stuff (I've given up criticism for Lent, so I can't go there for the next five weeks--and believe me, it's a struggle, I need prayer!). I'll simply point out that in Robin Morgan's long and not completely coherent jeremiad (invoking Harriet Tubman to imply that those who don't support Hillary are slaves???) the word "hope" did not appear a single time. Believe me, I combed the piece over several times and did a "search," too--no hope.

And that's a very big deal this year.

Hope is bringing people across ages and races and classes and even party affiliations into Obama's big tent. And the reason is the way we're living now. Division and anger and competition and fear seem to be the rule in our society. We feel we're hurtling helplessly toward disaster--economic or environmental, we don't know which, but we're afraid. So here come the candidates offering "100 years of war," the theocracy, "competence and experience," "hope." Which message speaks to our deepest desires, our deepest longings?

Hope wins for me hands down. And that's because I believe the majority of people in our society have a deep and unsatisfied longing for the "beloved community." We don't know how to get there--we don't even know who the other people who feel this way are--we suspect we're in the majority, but we don't know for sure because the fearmongers are so set on keeping us apart--but we long for it. Obama is the first candidate in my lifetime to offer to lead us there--and to lead all of us, not just the few, the rich, the white, the religious elect. Everybody. He's issued a call--people are responding and the fervor is building, not dissipating. And it's not just the excitement over our candidate, it's also the excitement of discovering each other, learning we really are not alone, that other people feel and long for the same things that we do.

This seems to be driving some folks absolutely crazy. They laugh at us, sneer at us, call Obama and us "hopemongers" -- Robin Morgan seems to be calling us misogynists--perhaps I'm misreading her... Are they reacting out of fear? out of the cynicism of the failed romantic?

I've heard people proudly say they haven't listened to a single political speech. I don't criticize--not because of Lent but because I did it, too. I closed my ears to it all for a long time, was proud that I chose my candidate for intellectual reasons not emotional ones. It was such a load of hooey. All I was doing was protecting myself from disappointment, as I'd been disappointed in the past soooo many times, because though I was planning to vote for him, I didn't really believe... After Super Tuesday, I listened to Obama's speech from Wisconsin--the first one I'd heard all the way through.

Then I listened to Clinton's, to McCain's... And suddenly, my heart was opened as well as my mind.

So I think Obama's surging not because he's a guy, not because he's the beneficiary of the one American prejudice that runs deeper than race (an assertion I'm not at all convinced is true) but because, like Lincoln, he appeals to "the better angels of our nature": ideals of service, of shared sacrifice, and shared benefits. (This is upper chakra stuff, people!) And his supporters are responding as humans--not as white people or black people or women or men or high schoolers or retired persons or Episcopalians or evangelicals or Greens or Republicans or Independents or Dems. We're just the folks who want the beloved community and who have the audacity to think that this can be the year.

Kendra Hamilton (electronic mail, February 16, 2008)