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    Super Tuesday From Texas

    Posted Tuesday, February 05, 2008 12:18 PM | By Meghan O'Rourke
    I've been radio-silent for the past few weeks because I've been on leave from Slate: The Lannan Foundation has kindly put me up in a house in Marfa, a tiny town in far West Texas distinguished by the happy co-existence of transplanted artists and older Texan families. Marfa is so stimulating in a quiet way that today is the first day I've missed NYC at all. But boy, is it tough to be in a state that's sitting on the sidelines as Super Tuesday moves into high gear. It's all the more so because votes in New York and Connecticut (where most of my friends and family live) actually seem to matter for Democrats this year. What's more, so many family friends and family members seem to be going into today's primary genuinely undecided—which is weirdly exciting. Some seem, well, shy about revealing who they're voting for, and for reasons they can't entirely name: women who feel a strange, subterranean pull when they imagine pulling the lever with Hillary Clinton's name on it for presidential nominee, even though they are, on a conscious level, Obama supporters. And men who say the same. (Over on Salon, Rebecca Traister wrote an interesting piece about being undecided.) All of which does underscore one thing worth remembering whatever happens: Somewhere beneath all the overinflated rhetoric about "change," some real changes have taken place. And there they are, alone on the ballot sheet: a female presidential nominee, and an African-American one. The kindergartner in me who asked why there had never been a female president is, well, foolishly excited, even if the adult in me is able to hesitate, hedge, and resist.
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