MOMocrats Guest Post from Jackie Augustine: New York's Newest Senator? MOMocrat Kirsten Gillibrand

The MOMocrats welcome Upstate New Yorker Jackie Augustine who introduces us to her new senator.

In a noontime announcement today, Governor David Paterson named Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand as the successor to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat following Clinton’s confirmation as Secretary of State in the Obama cabinet.

Gillibrand, 42, is currently serving her second term in Congress representing NY’s 20th District, a largely agricultural district that extends from the Hudson Valley north through the Adirondack Mountains and includes such well-known areas as Saratoga Springs and Lake Placid (home to the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympics). Gillibrand and her family live just outside of the City of Hudson--south of Albany but far enough north of New York City to be considered ‘Upstate’. Speaking of her family, her husband Jonathan and their four year old son just welcomed a sibling, little Henry Gillibrand in May 2008, delivered the day after Gillibrand helped to pass an amendment in the Armed Services committee that she serves on.

Is Kirsten Gillibrand the New Hillary Clinton?

Now that Caroline Kennedy has officially withdrawn her name from consideration for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat, it's time to look at the other names on the list. News reports say that New York Governor David Paterson isn't inclined to appoint New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and will instead give the seat to New York Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand, who has only been in the House of Representatives for two years.

Many women activists have called on Paterson to appoint Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who has been in Congress for 16 years and has a long history as an advocate for women's and economic issues. So what does Paterson gain by appointing 42-year-old Gillibrand?

Mostly, I think it's the fact that she's from upstate and she's a Democrat who's liked by Republicans. And she doesn't come from a famous political "dynasty," as Kennedy or Cuomo.

Gillibrand supports SCHIP, proposed legislation to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Report and favors decreased federal spending. But she's also supported by the National Rifle Association. The announcement is supposed to come on Saturday.

Maybe to give her some time to find someone to suggest for her Congressional seat?

Cross-posted from Joanne's place, PunditMom

Sarah Palin a-Go-Go!?

A couple of weeks ago, I had a personal crisis -- whether to watch the last Presidential debate or the season finale of Project Runway.  If you know me, you know that this was not a joke. 

Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I did both one after the other!  But now, I can have both at the same time -- the perfect combination of politics and fashion has been put together by Project Runway mentor Tim Gunn!

Hillary Clinton as the Great Pumpkin?  S&M Cindy McCain?  Sarah Palin, Vice-President a-go-go? 

Not my words, but those of the great fashion guru himself.

When it comes to style, you can take his words to the bank. I really want to know what Gunn thinks about how these fashion choices and statements (or questions!) will impact the final election outcome!

Carry on and make it work!

WE: Women Empower, "Women at War with Women and How That Impacts the Election"

Participants:

Session Host: Lisa Nelson (LN)

Session Moderator: Campbell Brown, CNN (CB)

Session Speakers: Amy Holmes, CNN (AH); Susan Estrich, CNN (SE); Susan Pinkus, LAT (SP)

(Looks like they're about to get started soon. I predict lots of reference to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, naturally.)

Introductory remarks by LN, of Visa. Pep talk about economic growth and "lifting yourself out of poverty"--via microfinancing. She's referencing a program last evening I didn't see. Discusses "financial literacy" program. VISA empowers women financially around the world.

Introduction of CB, the moderator. Daughter of a Democrat, married to a Republican consultant.

Video: Katie Couric's Interview with Hilary Clinton On The Pres. Debates

Hilary Clinton on last nights Presidental Debate: "Barack Obama won, and now it is 3 for 3"!

VP Candidate Biden and Senator Clinton on Women's Issues

Women's issues and what an Obama-Biden administration will do for us. Hear about equal pay for equal work, work-life balance, health insurance coverage, women's reproductive rights, and the concerns of people in the sandwich generation trying to raise kids and look after aging parents.

Isn't it interesting that "women's issues" are "human issues"?

I also enjoyed hearing about Biden's work on the Violence Against Women's Act and how women would be protected from physical violence through funding of hotlines, training of police officers to issue "stay away" orders, transitional shelters, and assistance in finding  abused women new permanent homes. There's real passion and commitment in his voice when he talks about this issue.

To find out more about Biden's 100,000 volunteer lawyer corps to help abused women so they aren't re-victimized by the court system, go here.

Cynematic blogs at P i l l o w b o o k.

Palin v. Clinton: It's Policy, Not Personality (Or, Just Say No to Stepford Votes)

Wish I could tattoo "It's Policy, Not Personality" on the eyeballs of Hillary Clinton dead-enders, otherwise known as PUMAs.

For ardent Clinton supporters somehow still wavering in their decision to vote for Obama (a number that's decreasing by the day), let me just do a little gentle reminding from the senator herself.

Instead of watching Clinton deliver her speech live on Tuesday night, I was racing around the Pepsi Center helping MOMocrat Julie P. set up her interview with Senatorial candidate Jeanne Shaheen (NH), so I missed a great deal of Clinton's speech as it occurred. (The entire day was devoted to celebrating women's suffrage on the 88th anniversary of its granting via the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, and culminated with Senator Clinton's speech that night.)

But here's the relevant section I was able to catch up with, thanks to YouTube:

Go to 4:52 in.

Barack Obama is the Nominee - Vote by Affirmation!

Hillary Clinton came out representing New York minutes ago and proclaimed that her state was giving all of their votes to Senator Obama, then she called for an affirmation to suspend the roll call and vote as one body to support Barack Obama as president. Nancy Pelosi asked for a second, there were hundreds, and she asked for a vote, the house roared, and she announced he is the official nominee of the Democratic party. We've made history. The first woman Speaker of the House announced it and the first viable woman candidate for president did her duty for the good of the party and the country. Goose bumps...

The DNC: Now I'm the One Making Assumptions

There's a lot of room for misunderstanding here, and I've just discovered I'm guilty of it.

The guy in this picture is Ray, a Clinton delegate from San Diego California. Ray was next to Gloria Allred at the California Delegation breakfast I blogged about yesterday. He and Gloria were making the point that the Clinton delegates were being silenced. As I said in my post, Gloria had a scarf tied around her mouth as a gag.

Ray was next to her, wearing the mask you see in this photo (it was over his nose and mouth, covering half of his face).  I assumed the mask was part of the protest. Ray was the guy last night at the Pepsi Center who got angry that an Obama delegate wouldn't take a Hillary/Unity sign, and he expressed that anger while wearing that mask. I assumed Ray was still in protest mode, and I'll admit to you now, embarrassedly so, that I began to think of Ray as a wacko.

Well, I just ran into Ray here in the lounge of the hotel. Since he was still wearing the mask, even though this is "down-time," i.e. nothing official happening, no audience for protest, I asked him about the mask. He sat down and said, "Thanks so much for asking. I have a medical condition..." which he proceded to describe. And then he said he has lived in NYC and a republican stronghold in SoCal, and in neither place have people made an issue of his mask. But here at the DNC with liberal democrats as far as the eye can see, he is encountering ridicule.

So I told him that I had jumped to conclusions about the mask, because my first encounter with him was connected to a protest about Clinton delegates being silenced. The mask looked like a prop. We then discussed how the Obama/Unity and Hillary/Unity signage at the Pepsi Center actually fueled the polarization, and how unfortunate that was. We talked as human beings, not as delegates from a particular camp. Ray was in tears because I was giving him an opportunity to be heard, about his medical condition, and about how he has felt as a Clinton delegate. I was in tears because I'm always in tears here in Denver, it seems.

Since the end of the primaries, Ray has longed for the Obama crowd to reach out to him and try to bring him into the fold. That finally started to happen for him last night after the speech.

And it continued in our conversation this morning.

The DNC: Hillary's Big Moment... Unity?

It had been hyped like crazy, predicted, wondered about, and in some corners, feared, but tonight Hillary outdid even herself, saying what needed to be said to unify this fired up but fractured party.  You've seen the TV coverage, but let me give you a little backstage color.

The blue signs you see in this picture were handed out just as Senator Clinton started speaking.  The "whips" for each state come through the aisles Santa Claus style doling signage out to eager delegates. I was no exception.  You may not realize that the states nearest the speaker, on the flat part of the convention "floor," are the swing states, and those that are solidly blue or red are relegated to lesser seats. With Obama comfortably ahead in California, we are relegated to the background. But we're the biggest and often the loudest. We make our presence known, and I'm leading the way.

So pity the poor guy who came up to our whip to wrestle California's bag of treats away. He had a good argument -- for the sake of TV more signs were needed in the swing state area -- and he did get away with it once.  But when he came back a second time he was verbally stoned by Californians defending their turf.  The impostor deterred, our whips started to dole out our signs, three and four at a time, to a hungry crowd.

And then it got complicated.

You see, the signs said "unity" on one side and either "hillary" or "obama" on the other. Can you see where this is going? Sure, we believe in unity but we were fighting for the signs!  Hillary people wanted the Hillary signs. Obama people wanted Obama signs.  As if that wasn't bad enough, an Obama delegate next to me passed over a Hillary sign, greatly angering a Clinton delegate two rows back (wearing a gas mask -- part of the "silencing" protest crowd), who said, "You don't want a Hillary sign?  Fine, I'll take it."  So I tried to quell things by taking a Hillary sign.  But soon after taking it I unrolled a sheet of Obama stickers from my bag, and stuck them to the Hillary sign.  A show of true unity, I thought.  And I started urging people around me that the way to show unity was to to take the sign of the person we had not initially supported.  Sadly, that great wisdom did not catch on.

So we remained polarized in our unity, but unity is was, nevertheless.  I heard two Hillary delegates exchange a "she's come so far" whisper between themselves.  I nodded, and reached out to the one I did not know, and squeezed her hand.  She wiped away tears throughout the speech, and I felt great compassion toward her.  The shoe could so easily have been on the other foot, and it would have been me adoring my fallen hero instead of anticipating Thursday's great speech.  It is not hard for me to envision "us" as "them."

The pundits are saying she pulled it off, and the Hillary folk I've bumped into in the street since then have said the same.  Perhaps tonight was exactly what they needed. 

I sure hope so.