2008 Presidential Election: Had Enough?
Aug 25th, 2008 by admin
I am so tired of having my intelligence insulted by being repeatedly told the 2008 presidential election is all about change. We now have a democratic Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, who vigorously endorsed the credit card company-backed bankruptcy bill. In this, he stood with corporate interests and predatory lenders against working people, and we are now feeling the fairly horrific effects. There are thousands, maybe millions of hardworking citizens across this nation whose homes have gone into foreclosure, who are not making it in this time of $4.00 per gallon gas, rising food prices, layoffs, unemployment, skyrocketing medical and dental expenses not covered by insurance, and who are now unable to declare bankruptcy because of this bill Biden heartily endorsed. Their lives will be in ruins shortly if they aren’t already.
Biden also voted for the war in Iraq:
[Biden] has been one the leading congressional supporters of U.S. militarization of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, of strict economic sanctions against Cuba, and of Israeli occupation policies.
Most significantly, however, Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of 2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administration’s decision to invade that oil-rich country.
Biden is against government funding for abortion and has been scored only 36% by NARAL for his mixed record with respect to reproductive rights. Yes, he authored and has consistently defended VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act, which is critically important to me. But that does not make him a good Vice Presidential candidate. He is also the kind of dufusly arrogant white male liberal who can be counted upon to make (giving him the benefit of the doubt) racially insensitive comments on a regular basis. And as a 35-year member of the Senate, he is a Washington insider, not a “new generation candidate defying political convention”.
It’s enough. Let’s make real change. Aren’t decades and centuries of betrayals from both Republicans and Democrats enough?
Heart
Thank you for this post - I couldn’t have said it any better.
VAWA is extremely important legislation, but I feel like Biden has used it as a tool to pretend he is progressive. Looking at his whole record made me realize he does not support women.
I am so so angry about Obama’s choice. The candidate of change? I don’t think so - I will be voting Green this year.
And don’t forget Biden’s arrogant demeaning treatment of Anita Hill during the infamous Clarence Thomas hearings! I was furious watching him lead the Judiciary Committee back then, and vowed I’d never vote for ANY of those men should they run for higher office.
I’ve known all along that Obama just used the “Iraq” issue to fool the left, and his choice of a pro-war democrat meerly demonstrates who we are really dealing with here. Young people get fooled by “charismatic men” give me a break, nothing makes me more suspicious than a good speak maker who had so little information on specifics. The democrats picked a really weak candidate, as it is becoming increasingly clear, and we’ll pay the price for this stupidity once again.
Is the American public really this dumb? I’d say so.
Obama was a huge supporter of that credit card bill. And he is no supporter of abortion.
It makes me sick to see so many Americans brainwashed/following the leader (myspace/television/dailykos)/not thinking deeply/ not thinking at all.
Go Heart!
Julia said: “And he is no supporter of abortion.”
Julia, may I ask what makes you support this statement? I know that Obama has abstained from quite a few votes re: such issues but he couldn’t even admit that a full-term child laying on a steel table after a late-term abortion was indeed a “human being”. If that’s not supporting abortion, I don’t know what is.
I’m progressive but I hate abortion and do not support it. I’m a former OB nurse and I’ve seen too many beautiful little women come out of the womb, pink and alive and waiting for their chance at life, to be able to be anything else but anti-choice.
I love women… all women… even those in the womb yet unborn. There are way too many resources and avenues of help for those unborn women whose birth mothers can’t take on the responsibility of raising them, for me to advocate their slaughter.
Peace~ Learning One
Early this year I commented here that I was going to enjoy the moment: a woman and a black person in a serious race for the presidential nomination. In my hopeless optimism (an oxymoron?) I believed that after GWBush things could only get better. I didn’t see how they could get worse or even simply remain the same. I was wrong. It’s become crystal clear to me that it’s the same ol’ same ol’ politics as usual.
I’m glad I did that - enjoyed the moment - because it was only moments later that it all went to shit and since that moment there’s been nothing enjoyable about this election campaign.
Heart, I know a lot of people saw Obama (/Biden) for the bigoted, conservative frauds that they are and are thus voting Green or Free Soil for real change, but I was wondering what your take is on the liberal PUMAs who are voting McCain for a bigger one-two punch to better ensure Obama’s defeat as a means of salvaging the Democratic Party for the long-term.
I don’t know what I’m doing yet, except that I won’t be voting for a Democrat.
I got the impression the PUMAs plan to vote for McCain to give Senator Clinton a better chance to win in 2012. I do not know how many of them would call themselves liberal. I also do not know how many of them are making an empty threat to vote for McCain. I doubt many of them like McCain, but they are angry enough at the Democrats to retaliate, even if it is more an act of desperation than principle. I think some of them would be open to voting for a dark horse, but the media is bound and determined to keep people believing this is a choice between Obama and McCain. It seems only the left gives any credibility to alternative candidates, and they are stuck on their favorites, the Greens and Ralph Nader, scapegoated by Democrats for their last two embarrassing narrow defeats.
In my article A Case Against Obama Nation, I quoted ABC News Correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg from her blog entry about Obama trying to clarify his position on late term abortions. (http://blogs.abcnews.com/legalities/2008/07/obama-revisits.html) He dug himself a pretty deep hole, talking about what exceptions he thought should be in a law prohibiting such abortions. His idea of a mental health exception turns out to be much more restrictive than current law.
Democrats will throw around lots of fine rhetoric to try to convince women not to stray. They know without a big edge from women voters, they are lost. They are used to getting that edge by default. So they will make a big deal of the danger of McCain appointments to the Supreme Court, to create the impression women have no choice. Meanwhile Bob Casey, son of the infamous governor in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, will be speaking at the convention tomorrow. The big tent must accomodate anti-choice Democrats, even to the extent of the party leadership forcing out a perfectly viable woman candidate who could have defeated Rick Santorum for the seat Bob Casey now holds.
I hear you, Cool Aunt. Satsuma, I forgot about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill fiasco led by Biden! Dear god. It starts to suck rocks as we get older and remember all of this stuff and young people weren’t there and so they do not share these important recollections.
I am all over the place on all of this. When push comes to shove, it would mean a lot to me and to my kids to have the Obamas in the White House. The White House without a white President, it’s just so far past time. It’s at times hard for me to get past just this, that I would really like to see a nonwhite person in the White House, simple as that.
I think Cynthia McKinney would be a fine President and would love to see her get the support she deserves. I think I would make a great President and would like to get the support I deserve too, of course.
I hear the PUMAs, I see what they’re about. From my perspective, I don’t see much value in working to reform the Democratic party. I don’t think it can be meaningfully reformed, certainly not in my life time, just as party politics in their current state cannot be meaningfully reformed. I would rather see women get behind viable third party candidates than expend a lot of energy trying to get the Democratic party to do what I swear to god it is never going to do and that is, represent the interests of women.
The thought of McCain as President is horrifying to me. Really horrifying. And that it looks like it might happen is so deeply disturbing to me I can hardly bear to think about the upcoming election. I swore if Bush was re-elected I’d move out of the country, I feel that way even more strongly should McCain be elected. So trying to get McCain in in hopes of getting Clinton in in 2012 is something I can’t get behind, first because we have to suffer through McCain if that happens and who knows how much damage he can do in four years, second because I doubt McCain in for four years would bring the desired result of the PUMAs, i.e., Clinton getting re-elected. She is just too deeply hated by too many people. I’m afraid we’d end up with EIGHT years of McCain instead!
I am just thankful at the moment that Edwards isn’t the nominee. Ugh.
Hey, Learning One, long time no see. I hope you are well.
xo
Heart
Hey Heart, I just have a very long memory. The good that came out of Anita Hill was genuine outrage across the nation by women. Finally ordinary women were getting real mad real fast!
1992 was a big year for women running for office, and we finally saw increases in women in the Senate and in governorships thanks to outrage over the white male judiciary committee meetings.
But still, I have yet to hear an Obama speech that really preaches it feminist style to us die hard Hillary voters. I’m not impressed, because these guys just take people like me for granted. They think waving the same old abortion red herring has any effect on lesbians! I’ve never seen reproduction as an issue I at all care about, and we’ve wasted so much time on this. Sonia Johnson had the answer to this ages ago, and it required massive civil disobedience until all male LAWS became virtually unenforceable.
We got Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein as Senators, and Nancy Pelosi got national exposure. Sexual harassment became a big issue, and corporations got it. The rules are tough and clear, and even the most evil men in my office just shut up when women are in the room. They haven’t changed but they do shut up now. Getting men to fear punishment or fear having a career ruined for doing stuff that they thought was perfectly fine before Anita Hill was the victory.
But Biden treated Hill terribly. He didn’t even want her to testify and he didn’t believe her, none of the men did. At least the woman drowning Ted Kennedy has the decency to shut up during the hearings– sexual harassment, a Kennedy boy favorite.
On a side note: I got a note from a 20-something woman telling me about a vacation she was going to take to Chappaquidick, and then she went into a lengthy explanation of where it was! She had no idea that the very word of that place makes all feminists my age still boiling with anger. No memory, no knowledge of the last 40 years, and patriarchy trying very hard as always to erase women’s herstory and knowledge. It’s already succeeding yet again.
Unlike everyone else here, I’m not all that afraid of McCain. I don’t get into terror overdrive over every stupid man that gets elected to the presidency. Even revered JFK almost got us into a nuclear war; people tend to forget his administration provoked the Soviets to begin with over Cuba. Bay of Pigs came BEFORE Missile crisis, remember?
We really had our chance to have change in the White House, and people wimped out. I don’t know why women can’t close the deal, but it is a general weakness of feminism that it can’t deliver the goods on a national stage.
McCain, he’s just another paluka, just another flag waving idiot very much like the people I grew up with. I get to listen to straight people day and night diss lesbians and gay people, and hate on us constantly on talk radio. Straight people are the real terrorists in my daily life, and so are all men.
I am really going to throw up if I have to see another straight woman “wife, mother, daughter-helpmeet… etc etc’ prop up yet another man for the high office. I have just had it. And let’s add the icing on the cake of bragging about giving up a high paying legal career… women throwing money out the window again, and THIS is progress?!
So no, the world won’t end with McCain, but my world was shocked by feminists dropping the ball so clearly in this election.
What is so hard about women supporting women and delivering the goods, showing up on time, and getting the job done? What is so hard about getting Hillary as VP? 26% of the convention goers support her, only 6% support Biden the grand Anita Hill inquisitor.
And that’s my take on hetero-reality yet trying to make a good case out of the same old wife and mother sterotypical role playing. It’s the 21st century and I don’t know when women are going to get serious about running the country, I just don’t know when. What are the excuses now? And there will always be excuses as to why we can’t support our own.
It is my understanding that PUMAs aren’t doing it to get Hillary elected in 2012, but so as not to legitimize the extreme misogyny and selling out women’s rights that the Democrats employed this election cycle. By trying to defeat them, it is a protest of those sexist tactics.
However, I agree with Heart that the Democrats are unlikely to be reformed in any meaningful way any time soon. But I still won’t validate their misogyny by giving them my vote this election cycle.
I think one has to view national elections as only the most distant stage on which to express our will. By the time the candidates from either party reach the general election, they’ve contorted themselves into more positions than Houdini in trying to appeal to a host of competing forces. Well-informed voters on the Left have no mainstream party candidate they can vote for with gusto.
So the questions left are: “Should I bother to vote for one of two currently electable candidates at all? ” and “Where can I really make a political difference?” And it seems to me that voting in the the general presidential election is simply the lightest of fingerprints one can apply. It’s important in that the aggregate of voters choose the lesser of the unsatisfactory choices. But if you want real change, you have to pick your political activities, battles, etc. more locally, more constantly, and more within the parties/groups you work with every day.
I think if one recognizes how important the presidential office is but how unreflective of our values the candidate ulitimately will be, one can participate but not get demoralized about the political process. That process is broad and encompasses so many issues and venues. Surely, that’s where we should continue to work.
Who knows why a disaffected Clinton supporter might vote for McCain. Randi Rhodes, in full spin doctor mode, is claiming there are no real PUMAs, only Republicans masquerading as part of Operation Chaos! I thought that was curious, considering a few PUMAs have posted on this blog! Today she blithely asked, why would a Democrat protest the convention? I know she has a huge crush on Obama, but that barbed remark really took the cake.
I found a link someone posted at her forum to an interesting interview of Naomi Klein, worried about where Obama is heading, that gives some answers to that silly question. It got all of one comment. http://vodpod.com/watch/967432-naomi-klein-on-obama-and-progressives
Nobody over there bothered trying to refute any of my article about Obama, even after I directly challenged them to do so. I did get a few thoughtful comments, but nearly half of 13 people who voted in my poll dismissed it as right wing propaganda. Is political spin and image all that matters to these Obama maniacs? It seems truth does not.
What does PUMA stand for?
Hey, twitch, you are always the calm voice of reason.
Satsuma, PUMA stands for “Party Unity My Ass.”
Try as I might, I cannot work up any sort of enthusiasm for or interest in the mainstream presidential race.
And isn’t that the way it goes, Aletha? What is thoughtful, intelligent, carefully written people read and move on, or don’t read, but in either case, they don’t comment. It wasn’t always this way. It used to be that people were really interested in digging in, thinking deeply about political issues for themselves. When I was 17 and a freshman in college, I bought a book entitled “Vietnam.” It was red with yellow type on the front and I bet I still have it in one of my boxes of books in the barn that I can’t find a place for. It was a thick book, tiny type, and I read it cover to cover because I really wanted to understand what the war in Vietnam was all about. I was involved in the anti-war movement, but I wasn’t content with soundbytes and couldn’t be, I wanted a thorough understanding of the issues and all the players.
Do people even bother to dig in this way anymore? I’ve done this all my life, and my mother and dad did it, as did my maternal grandmother.
Heart
I can’t speak for other people Heart, but I’ve always been interested in all kinds of political issues, and continue to read on all subjects. I don’t know why political discussions with people seem so out of it these days, but I’ll tell you, I rarely meet people who read ANYTHING in depth. There seems to be no desire to find out what is really going on with the war, for example.
More later….
I think many people who might otherwise be inclined to really dig into political issues are so disillusioned and turned off by the big spin machines running politics, it may seem quixotic or too painful to get involved in discussion of complex issues, unless it hits really close to home. Who knows. I have rather low expectations of that Randi Rhodes forum. There are a few thinkers there, many heated discussions, but little depth. One thread I started did go deep, a discussion of my What This Feminist Revolution Could Accomplish lasting almost a month, but that was before Air America confiscated that board.
I am wondering how long it will take before the Women’s Campaign Forum decides to ban me from its blog. I made a brief comment there last night that was approved, protesting that women are expected to play second fiddle once again. Snarky Sue took off on that, so I tried a longer comment to elaborate on what I meant. If that makes it through moderation, I will be amazed.
I believe the reason people don’t seem interested in digging in, is that the Internet is kind of an artificial conversation space. I don’t meet many people who have much curiosity to dig through issues. They seem to lead busy lives, but as to active sustained thought, I’m not so sure what is going on with people.
I personally don’t see much difference in my life based on artificial politics. The difference came when lesbians themselves organized their own groups, and that was the most meaningful experience to me. But my experience in mixed groups never meant much to me. There was no emotional connection, only a kind of detached feeling that I’m drowning is a sea of hetero realities, and often I experience this as utter boredom. Even most women can really bore you with the constant chatter and the fear of confrontation and agrument. Men bore in a different way.
In a lesbian world and society, I just find life interesting and complex, but that world is invisible to the larger world.
Obama or McCain? Who knows. I don’t really believe either one of them. Certainly I felt little to no connection to Obama’s speech last night, and it amused me that the one thing he did say about gays and lesbians is that he thought it was fine that we could visit our partners in the hospital. Big of him. Interestingly enough, I had just heard Frank Pastori of “Intersection of Faith and Reason” a right wing christian political show, say that very same thing. Big of him too.
No Aletha, people won’t read a reasoned argument and comment thoughtfully very much anywhere these days. Some of my best writing just is ignored or not understood at all. I’m used to the hetero world completely ignoring my existence, welcome to the club
I meet a lot of people, and they seem kind of zoned out. Obama wants to up the ante in Afghanistan and McCain is still all for it in Iraq, but neither one seems anti-war to me. The war certainly took a back seat last night.
Why would people vote for McCain and not Obama? Maybe because Obama doesn’t make much sense to them. I know I feel this way. I don’t know what all the fuss is about him; he just seems like a south side Chicago politician to me, and I grew up near Chicago, so it has this odd familiarity to me.
McCain is like every straight man out there. Militaristic, overly revering the armed services, clueless about women and lesbians. Just floating out there. No matter who is in the White House, my life changes very little. Straight people in power are just another world, and to me it’s just two guys with their doting wives yet again. No big deal.
I guess I’m tired of the left going on and on about how every right wing idiot is a disaster. The world is going to end etc. But it isn’t. We should be a lot farther along as a feminist movement, but we aren’t. We are mired in a sea of lieing men once again.
Womyn, I agree with you; I’m so sick of hearing about this meaningless election. An election, that it seems, so, so many people who want at least *some* sort of change believe will happen if Obama becomes Prez.
As far as I’m concerned, the elections are rigged. Which doesn’t mean I won’t vote, but I just don’t want to put my energy into men’s politics. Women did not create this system, women did not start wars, design nuclear explosives, ruin our planet, and on and on and on. Instead, we have to pick up after the men who have designed this system, while attempting and far too often succeeding in ruining us and our children in the process.
Aletha,
Your link to Naomi Klein in your post #13 was very helpful. The best description and analysis of why progressive issues get dropped during and certainly after campaigns are over. I can’t recommend this link highly enough to the other readers here. Check it out! Thanks.
I also highly recommended that Naomi Klein interview in my comment at the WCF blog, which to my surprise did get approved, but no responses. Hilary Has Asked To Suspend the Role Call That blog is only ten days old and not especially active, so I will not read too much into that. There does seem to be some dissatisfaction with the Democratic ticket growing among mainstream women. That may be due to Obama passing over Senator Clinton for VP, or his big tent approach to abortion and other feminist issues. She seems to want to be part of the Obama bandwagon now, but many of her supporters seem less than enthusiastic. You have plenty of company in that regard, Satsuma.
Former head of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt posted this on her blog and the WCF blog today:
DOES PALIN TRUMP BIDEN?
Obama’s speech was excellent, but not quite great, comforting if not moving. Strong on substance as it needed to be, yet not as strong on the rhetoric as he can be. I don’t remember any of his specific lines, which is a clue. And though the warm-up speeches by Al Gore and Dick Durbin touched on reproductive rights, Obama’s spoke only in a downplayed, appeasing way about reproductive justice, even though he stood on the podium in a state with a pending ballot initiative that intends not just to outlaw abortion but to take down many kinds of birth control with it, granting fertilized eggs full personhood status while demoting women to second class citizenship:
What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that’s what we have to restore.
We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.
The — the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.
I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.
(I left in the gun control part to illustrate that women’s rights to reproductive self-determination and gay rights get equated to just another policy issue that it’s ok for people to disagree on. Would he say the same about civil rights based on ethnicity or religion? I think not. And pray tell, why didn’t he mention his co-sponsorship of the Freedom of Choice Act?)
(End quote)
Good questions from a liberal feminist, I would say, though her reaction to that speech is overgenerous, in my estimation. It left me cold, as soaring oratory from male charmers generally does. In my comment, I alluded to Heart without naming her, inviting people to click on my name to find out who is that woman still running for President, not willing to take a back seat. Ordinarily I would not be so reticent, but I really did not expect my comment to be approved. That it was gives me some hope, that liberal feminists may have an open mind about an alternative to Obama/Biden. They may have been loyal Democrats forever, but that Hillary came so close with virtually nothing to show for it seems to leave a bad taste in their mouths.
I also note that the Gore challenge to end the use of carbon based fuels for electricity within ten years is far bolder than the Obama plan, to “finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East” in ten years. Obama is still stuck on clean coal, safe nuclear power, and the next generation of biofuels, meaning ethanol produced from plants genetically engineered for that purpose, though he has the political savvy not to trumpet that last dirty little secret. All of that is environmentally irresponsible, greenwashing hogwash. Even the Gore plan does not go far enough, though it is not a bad start. As I noted on my blog and the Randi Rhodes forum, clean coal and safe nuclear power? Uh huh. When pigs fly. BTW Ms. Rhodes had some choice words for Governor Palin today. She repeatedly referred to Ms. Palin as a chick or girl. That was bad enough, though she also frequently refers to herself as a chick or girl, but she also tossed in bitch and breeder. The sexism coming from Obama supporters is not confined to men.
Yes indeed, there is “growing” dissatisfaction over the way Obama rejected the dream team. Love it how these straight men seem to overlook the idea of dream and team when women are in the equation.
Aletha’s comments about this are right on, and I went to Gloria Feld’s blog and enjoyed her article thoroughly. Even decided to coment.
I don’t know why straight feministsthink that lesbians are all that enamoured of “reproductive issues.” I’ve never felt much for this obsession over abortion and birth control, and I was more the jobs and money type of feminist. I also believe that women waste time in relationships with men to begin with, and that unless women do really radical things we’ll be held hostage over the abortion issue forever.
In solidarity with straight women, I do try to get as many competant women elected to offices as possible. As long as they aren’t raving anti-lesbian maniacs I’m ok with most women, and all the complexity of women and ideas. I want women breaking job barriers all the time, because I know that once a barrier is broken, more women get in. That’s how it works.
Obama made sure that a woman didn’t get in. He didn’t give a damn that Hillary Clinton damn near won, and he doesn’t understand the Hillary voters at all really. He doesn’t connect with me that’s for sure. I never trusted yet another slick charismatic man, and perhaps it’s because this kind of “male charm” means nothing to me as a lesbian. Most men I come in contact with in the business world NEVER try to charm or flatter me, they know better. Obama could have had those 18,000,000 votes, he could have fired up his side and Hillary’s millions! He could have had it all.
To me, that does prove his inexperience, and it does prove a kind of contempt that these Boomer/Gen X borderline men have towards the hard working groundbreaking feminist women like Hillary.
Liberals hold out their sickening and patronizing carrots– oh we support lesbians and gays visiting each other in hospitals, oh how great we are!! We think only our sacred straight “marriages” are worth enshrining and crowing about. Your relationships are worthless and we don’t care about you. That’s what I get from all of them. So I’m not just picking on Obama here, they all do it.
What gets me is that he so arrogantly thought the Hillary Democratic women just would fall into line and “get over it.” Yeah, men always want women to get over it don’t they, and they grab the top job yet again. How many women here who have solid credentials have been passed up for promotions and raises? How many incompetant male managers have we had to deal with, when we knew women in the office were a million times better? That’s my history!
But on a happy note, I am ecstatic that a woman was chosen to run as VP. I’m smiling ear to ear, because this weekend is also an extraordinary anniversary for me. Today, my partner and I celebrate 33 years together. It was on Labor Day Weekend that we first met and had dinner in college. 1975 was a year like no other.
It was a time when there were no gay or lesbian groups at all, and women were harassed in classrooms, and feminism was gaining power. Back then I was majoring in political science and working on some of the first campaigns women were running for congress and state attorney general. I met them all and worked for them all.
My partner and I carved out a life for ourselves without the help of anyone back then. We dreamed of an Amazon world, we suffered the unbelivable sexism and homophobia that was routine back then. We prevailed over all the odds, and guess what, without any legal support, social support or institutional support, we had a better “marriage” than most of the straight people out there. Despite everything, we became our own creative dream team.
We had faith that women would come together, we’d work so that our time would come. Then after many years of taking care of my extremely sick partner, I came once again to the feminist blogs, and was shocked that they were dissing Hillary and supporting a god damn man for president! What the hell happened out there? Where have I been? Rip van Winkle is what it felt like. Feminists for goddess sake were backing men for high office–maybe not on this blog, but you know what I’m saying here.
Dream team? Beware – the team is about a male only team. Conservative old fashioned aging McCain comes out of nowhere with this surprising pick. Is Sarah Palin the prefect choice. No absolutely not, but one thing I know as a woman, that once one woman gets into office others follow, both good, bad and average. Feminists had a chance with Hillary, and she just wasn’t good enogh.
Years ago my partner and I speculated that women would choose a conservative women for high office, like Margaret Thatcher. Feminist women were too busy infighting to support and close the deal for even a liberal woman candidate. The feminist movement made it possible for all women to run for office, both liberal and conservative. We can take credit for opening all the doors, even if it hurts. That is the irony of history.
Now let’s see how Obama has to struggle for millions of women’s votes now. Biden having to talk about women! Even Chris evil Matthews the other day scolded Pat Buchannon for using the term “girl” and “gal” when referring to Gov. Palin. Imagine that!
I read your comment, Satsuma, yelling about how shocked you were at feminists attacking Senator Clinton. Some of us have had enough of her party. At least in my case, it was not personal. I would not support any Democrat, not when we have a better alternative. Are you a PUMA, Satsuma? Will you vote for the ticket with the woman you think has a chance to win, despite her politics?
I also commented on that blog, on an earlier entry, citing the 14th Amendment in response to a clueless man saying the ERA was a plot to enforce a different morality on men like him. Ms. Feldt asked me to elaborate on how Republicans sold feminists out, so I just did some ranting of my own over there. The word male occurs three times in that amendment, to make sure women could not vote or claim rights granted to black men.
Palin is amazing, if you read her bio, and her husband and children are aboriginal; Yupik Inuit. An aboriginal in the White House!?
Everyone hunts, fishes, rides snowmobiles, and works for the oil industry in the north. Palin knows how dependent the north is on resource extraction, but she’s also aware global warming is very real. She’s found a way down the middle that satisfies, for now: She’s nailed the oil industry with taxes (something even Canadian politicians haven’t done), and pushed an oil pipeline through Canada to move Alaska crude to Texas refineries. Based on that alone, the oil industry will be lobbying for her. It’s a done deal for McCain with her as his VP, even if she wasn’t a far better citizen and more ethical politician than Clinton.
Two things about her one hopes were different: she’s anti-abortion, and some say, anti some gay rights: no to marriage, but yes to civil rights.
I hate the male left so much I’d vote Republican if I was American, but I don’t think, from reading at Reclusive Leftist, that PUMAs are voting McCain. They’re voting Green or (still possible?) writing Clinton in.
Ahhh the knives are already out, on the left and on the right: her experience is–she’s a beauty queen. The child born in April with Down Sydrome–it was her daughter’s. Her sister and the allegation against sister’s battering cop husband–lies.