To me, as you know, much of my opinion is impacted from having known Barack from when we overlapped in law school. First impressions are hard to shake.

Certainly, I greatly respect his message. I just question has positions on most issues, including Israel (not strong enough, accepts support of Farakhan), choice (voted present on late stage abortion prohibitions) and most importantly (to you too, I thought!), LGBT issues. Remember when he was in SF, and he refused to shake Gavin Newsom's hand and have his photo taken with him, due purportedly to Gavin's support of gay/lesbian marriage? In my opinion, almost no issue demonstrates a human being's opinions about sex roles than their opinion on gay marriage. This affects all humans, straight or gay, who don't fit into the box. (Like me! Like you! Like most of our friends!)

I also worry greatly about Barack's lack of experience. It's too easy to say, "I didn't vote for war!" when no one was asking for your opinion at the time. Similarly, Obama was not asked for opinion about NAFTA, or just about any other (ill fated) decision made by Hillary. It's easy to have 20-20 vision in hindsight, and the simplest way to have a clean record is to have no record at all.

Finally, it saddens me to hear people, especially fellow feminists, say, "I'd love to have a female president; it's just that Hillary isn't my top choice." I say: Who is? What woman is in the pipeline? What woman is more qualified than Hillary to lead? When will we next have this shot again?

I greatly suspect that, if Hillary gets wiped out in Texas and Ohio, and then in November, Obama, with his thin record, can't succeed against McCain, with his broad portfio, that across the country people may have that "V-8 Moment" — I coulda had a woman. And now I have McCain.

But I sure hope I'm wrong about that.