Another big primary.

Dear Sonia,

Let's talk about politics for a moment, shall we?

You chose a banner year to come aboard. We have a historic democratic primary going on here in the U.S. A woman and a bi-racial (black & white) man are running against each other. One of them will be our candidate. (I say our because your Auntie K. is a raging liberal left-wing Democrat. It's only gotten stronger as I've aged. But that is a story for another day.)

I am sincerely hoping that when you are my age (in 2043) the very idea that a woman or a person of color could be president is as normal as the sun rising and setting. Right now, though, that is not the case. We live in a time today in which there have only been 2 elected black governors of any state ever (Virginia a while back and now Massachusetts). We live in a time where today, April 22, there is an event at the MA State House about women and wage. Women still earn only $.77 for every dollar men do and today marks the day that women would match their male counterparts 2007 salary (they would have to work through 2007 and up till today in 2008 to match a male salary). We live in a time where race is still a factor in how we feel about other people, without even knowing them.

Back to politics, though. Today is the Pennsylvania primary. Nobody really knew that in a year with the first primary all the way back in early January, we'd be in late April with primaries still mattering and the race still being incredibly close. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could viably be our candidate. The polls this morning are showing Hillary ahead 48% to 41%, but this year, polls have been largely meaningless, with many people having no clue who they will vote for until they actually enter the little booth.

There's been a bunch of brew-ha-ha this year, too. Hillary is Bill Clinton's wife. He was our president from 1992-2000 and he's been shooting off his mouth a bit. Obama's Reverend at his church shot off his mouth about race relations and the state of black people in the U.S. and that set off a whole mess. Obama gave an amazing speech in reaction to that, though, which really helped him a lot. This followed by a statement recently saying that people in small towns cling to religion and guns which, as you can imagine, didn't go over well with the small town livers all over the U.S. (and there are a lot of them). He's now been branded an elitist. Hillary "mispoke" about when she was First Lady and landing in Bosnia where she had to dodge bullets to exit the plane. This apparently never happened. Hillary gets hammered in the media because she can be pretty hardcore in her demeanor and because it's still okay in the U.S. in 2008 to be hard on women. Course, this is just a very quick, un-academic summary of what's been happening.

On the other side, John McCain has been the republican candidate for months now. He's 71 and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for 5 years back in his day. He's a pretty middle-of-the-road republican, which is a good thing, but also a bad thing, because people who aren't die hard dems might vote for him in the end. He's nothing as bad as George Bush, but he's still a republican. I want the White House back!

So, you had the serious misfortune to be born during the presidency of George W. Bush, arguably the worst president we've ever had. (Don't feel bad. I was born during the presidency of Richard Nixon, and he lied and had to resign before we impeached him.) But, you've also been born during arguably the most exciting presidential election we've ever had and the most historical.

Love,

Auntie K.