We have come so much further in race than in gender. (Not far enough in either.) When I think of the astonishing effort that ECS (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) & all those meeting & marching women put in to get women to be considered five-fifths human enough to vote & I see how invisible women in history still are, I realize how many miles upon miles we have to go for justice. Did you see CNN do huge gorgeously produced pieces on women's battles for rights this year? In this very election, hundreds & hundreds of thousands of older women in caucus states are cheated of their share of pledged delegates & popular votes because they are forbidden the Absentee Ballot. In America. In Texas, Hillary's voters were plus four in the primary and minus 12 in the caucus on the same day. A 16% swing! Suppose we had only seen the caucus results? Since I talked to 87-yr-old Vera in Iowa, "I can't caucus, honey, I'm a cripple," I've been trying, like Diogenes looking for one honest reporter, to get the 15% Caucus Skew covered in any media. I chirped up to Vera, "Could you vote by mail absentee?" 2008 may well be her last vote. She longs for the 44th president to be a woman, to be the superbly prepared Hillary who is a champion for so many of us, who bears both the vile and veiled misogyny with such grace and grit, who has remarkable visions for a green jobs economy, insourcing, and actually universal health care. "Oh, no, we can't have an Absentee Ballot in a caucus state. If I can't be there in my body, I don't count." Vera should count. I made 2400 volunteer phone calls for Hillary. Every 8th phone call I made into a caucus state got me: "No, dear, I don't dare go to caucus, I'm off-balance." I'm still in shock at the extent of this problem. There is an epidemic of older women with a terrible fear of falling who are prevented from voting in the benighted anti-democratic Caucus States. No ride will help them. They know a fall is the death sentence. Ruth said in anguish and fury, "Just because I'm sick doesn't mean I can't think." The appalling injustice of caucuses is just what the (non-lemming) superdelegates were designed to scrutinize. These older women for Hillary know they've been cheated, silenced, disappeared. The Caucuses are The Big Lie. The Will of the People? Which people? The Will of (Only the Healthy) People? :::: on wowowow in Comment on Lesley Stahl's post. Comment is shown as 4/9/08 5:10 am about #119. contact caucusdebacle@gmail.com END OF POST. THERE IS NO MORE