The 19th in ’20
I don’t know if you’d heard, but women were not originally allowed to vote for President under the Original Intent of the Framers, who were a bunch of rich white guys. It took another 144 years before the 19th Amendment changed all that in 1920.
Susan B Anthony, the quintessential suffragette, did not live to see that day, dying in 1906. But thankful women (and men!) have been visiting her grave ever since. In recent years, they have taken to leaving their “I voted” stickers there.
But today. Oh, Today! With the election of the first Woman President in the History of the United States at last a real probability, this quaint custom has been turbo-charged.
Today. there’s a damn LINE – dozens of people! – standing in a line to tell Susan we made it.
How cool is that!
This made me cry. Thank you, Primo!!
1WashPost has a story about a woman who was born the day that the 19th Amendment was ratified by the 36th state, finally allowing women to vote.
“Gladys had recently celebrated her 96th birthday, which was also the birthday of the amendment that now allowed her to do what she had always wondered if she would live long enough to do. She filled in an oval bubble with a pencil, and she voted for Hillary Clinton.”
My mother would be 97 today. She had dementia and didn’t vote in this year’s primary, but I hope she voted for Clinton in the 2008 primary. I know she voted for Obama twice.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/she-was-born-the-day-women-got-the-vote-and-then-a-century-passed–/2016/11/05/64e9aa16-9adc-11e6-b3c9-f662adaa0048_story.html
An article for kids about voting had a timeline of voter expansion laws. Native Americans were made citizens of the US and allowed to vote by a law passed in… 1924.
2I read the Wash Post article. Then wiped a tear away and voted for Hillary Clinton. She will be a fine President. Now, let’s get Barack Obama on the Supreme Court.
3Pretty darned cool.
4The trend is super cool!
1960 JFK elected first Catholic President
2008 BHO elected first African American President
2016 HRC elected first woman President
Not that it shouldn’t happen faster, but we are making progress despite the snacilbupeR.
5*** 2017 Michelle and Barack Obama first couple appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Move over Alito, we need your seat.
6PKM, if we can celebrate the first Catholic president, I’d love to see the first openly atheist president. Or even agnostic. “No religion” is about 20-25% of the population by now. We’ve had a few agnostics or at least deists like Jefferson, but it wasn’t a big deal then.
7Let Notorious RBG select her own replacement in time.
8PKM, it would be rather fun if Samuel “Headshaker During the State of the Union Address” were replaced by an Obama….
9I find it sad – to steal the small-fingered-vulgarian’s word – that Susan B. Anthony’s name has been co-opted by conservatives: https://www.sba-list.org/
So, I find this a mixed joy. I rejoice that women who voted for Hillary are sharing their joy with her; I am sorrowful that her good name is associated with an anti-feminist cause.
10I believe in the Greater Consciousness and I know that Susan B.is aware and enjoying this day!
11Rhea, something I didn’t understand was the KKK hatred toward Catholics, until learning about the Italian indentured servants who arrived in an immigration wave to replace the slaves. Feel free to correct me on my history (weak area for me), but wasn’t JFK elected when Dixiecrats were still roaming the south? Then came that snacilbupeR southern strategy,then union busting. Long history of the snacilbupeR hating those who do the labor for them. Seems counter intuitive and counter productive, but that is the snacilbupeR.
Buddhist, Muslim, atheist. I don’t care. Just send us more politicians who don’t worship the GBG at the feet of the .01% and have a clue about science.
12Yes, I teared up reading that. Thank you Primo.
I voted this morning and the entire process took about 30 minutes. The site was a Lutheran retirement village gym so lots of old people and some young. The woman voting beside me, in a wheelchair, had bad tremors so, per Minnesota law, an election judge filled in the ovals for her. She wanted to vote a straight Democratic ticket, but Minn ballots don’t have a D or R at the top. You have to vote for each individual race. So the election guy went down the ballot and she stuck with the Dems. My kind of woman, must have been 85 or older.
(I want to be like her when I grow up.)
13PKM @ 5: And let’s not allow anyone to forget that JFK, BHO, HRC were all DEMOCRATS!
DEMOCRATS: America’s FIRST Party
FIRST Catholic President!
FIRST African-American President!
FIRST Woman President!
I’m proud of that.
14PKM, according to wiki, the Dixiecrats per se existed only for the 1948 election, when they ran Strom Thurmond. They then oozed back into the Dem fold, temporarily, but they were the first crack in the Dem Solid South. After that the southern Dems were not so solid on the presidential candidates, though they hung on for a while in the state and local races.
JAKvirginia, I agree that the Dems have many honorable firsts in the White House and elsewhere. And I love the continuing coverage of the crowds at Susan B. Anthony’s gravesite today and tonight. We truly are Stronger Together.
15This just in– a Nasty Lady Liberty shirt!
http://www.teefury.com/nasty-lady-liberty-1
16JAK, I agree. Many reasons to be very proud of being a Democrat.
17“I don’t know if you’d heard, but women were not originally allowed to vote for President under the Original Intent of the Framers, who were a bunch of rich white guys.”
the only people who were allowed to vote at the time were rich, white, landowning guys. narrowed the field considerably in their favor.
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