A lonely, delusional life? Or just a choosy, committed one?

Jennifer Nassour, the Chairman of the Massachusetts GOP, is probably having a rough day.  Her party fared well across the country in yesterday's midterm elections, but not here in the (still, again) blue state of MA.  Scott Brown's election to the Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy may turn out to be a fluke rather than a symbol of the changing tide of Massachusetts politics. 

Yet Nassour was on NPR sounding determinedly optimistic, disagreeing all over the place with the host of Radio Boston, Sacha Pfeiffer, as Pfeiffer asked her if she was disappointed with the election results.  She cited the Worcester County sheriff's race won by a Republican, as well as a few other, relatively minor races taken by the GOP.  She claimed that Jeff Perry, that lunatic Republican who was the supervisor of a police officer who illegally strip-searched an under-age girl several years ago and who then claimed, over the course of this campaign season, that he wasn't present when it happened and couldn't have prevented it, lost due to a vicious and harmful campaign strategy enacted by the Democrats.  Um, Jennifer, you're probably trying to save your own ass right now, but it was your strategy that channeled many MA GOP dollars into that race, and Jeff Perry lost, thank goodness, because even the state's registered Republicans (around 11% of registered voters in MA) probably saw through his bullshit and decided he is not a fit candidate for office.  Perry garnered a surprising 42% of the vote (surprising to me, anyway, since he's a crazy asshole), and then he LOST.  Hopefully he won't run for anything, ever again.

So, is Jennifer Nassour desperately trying to hold onto some credibility within her party, clinging to her conviction that the Republicans are the guys to trust, even in the lonely landscape of ultra-blue Massachusetts?  Is she a transplant from another, redder, region of the country?  Did she grow up in a working-class household, where Republicanism translated to "planning for the day we get rich" while continuing to vote for folks who make it more and more unlikely?  Or is her family more the country-club shade of Republican?  Who knows?  Who cares, when Mass GOP candidates had such a poor showing last night?  I'm curious about her own brand of picky-ness.  Maybe someday she'll grant me an interview, which I'll of course blog about here.  Attorney Nassour, are you out there?

Women, VOTE tomorrow!

Since the 1980 presidential election, women in the United States have outnumbered men at the polls.  There's been a lot of talk (and written words) focused on the theory that women in this country are so hopeless about the state of the economy and so disgusted by the lack of action on the part of our elected officials that they will skip voting in the midterms tomorrow.  I really hope this doesn't turn out to be the case.  Women voted in overwhelming numbers in the 2008 presidential election, and Barack Obama became the president-elect.  Many of those women were first-time registrants.  Many people (pollsters, pundits, commentators and journalists) claim that Obama won the election in large part due to the public being fed up with George W. Bush's disastrous foreign policy and generally piss-poor leadership.  This sentiment often discounts the brilliant and superior campaign strategy Obama's team enacted in the face of incredible odds.  Was the man, in addition to being super-smart and good looking, lucky?  Maybe, but he was also pretty picky about his campaign staff, and pretty picky about his message, and pretty picky about being inclusive. 

I watched a clip of the Sex in the City 2 Movie (actually, I watched two clips, but the first one was where Miranda and Charlotte claim to not understand how mothers who don't have full-time paid help manage their lives, which I found annoying) in which the four women, visiting the Middle East, sing at a karaoke club.  They sing "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar" to a bar full of men and women of all nationalities.  It's cheesy (the entire movie is cheesy, I've heard), but the song seems newly inspiring to me:

"I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back an' pretend, 'cause I've heard it all before, and I've been down there on the floor, No one's ever gonna keep me down again...
I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long long way to go
Until I make my brother understand"

So, please vote tomorrow, American women!  Be picky, be choosy, and VOTE.