It’s Not About Hillary Anymore
By medusa on August 26, 2008 at 3:25 PM in Abuse, Bamboozling, Misogyny, Sexism
Some Hillary supporters are upset that the McCain campaign is using Hillary’s “defeat” to stir the flames of resentment to sway votes toward the GOP. SusanUnPc wrote a very moving piece about this. And then there are the people, women even, who, by using sophistry, disparage Hillary’s supporters, women especially, declaring that by being angry at the way the media and the Obama campaign treats Hillary, we are creating more sexism. Really? What horse pucky is that! Instead, I agree with, Joanne Bamberger who posted this last May on Huffpo:
When someone calls Hillary Clinton a bitch, it’s not just about her.It’s about me and my fellow MOMocrats and my sister. It’s about my mother and my aunts and my daughter. It’s about mothers and friends and women who haven’t even become the next generation of leaders, yet.The most famous and infamous TV pundits aren’t reserving their ‘looks are everything’ moments to talk of Hillary’s cleavage or wrinkles. There are no limits. We are all fair game.
And then there’s Hillary herself, who in all the newspapers and TV blips is calling for her supporters to line up behind the presumptive nominee. HIllary’s most devoted supporters are in a double bind: we do not want to see Hillary blamed if Obama is defeated, and we absolutely want to see Obama go down like the Titanic. Our anger is not about Hillary “losing.” This is about a stolen nomination, about the takeover of the Democratic party by the neo-liberals and the so-called progressives who use sexism, misogyny, and ageism with abandon, who belittle and insult blue collar workers and who use accusations of racism against anyone who points out that Hillary actually won the popular vote. In response to CNN’s Roland Martin, TGW writes:
Why oh why, lectures Roland, can’t Hillary and her supporters put party over “your petty personal issues.” Roland also threw around the word “dumb,” but refused to specify if he was calling Hillary “dumb” or her supporters. And we were just getting used to the term “dead-enders.”But you heard him. Fall in line little wimin! Or in the words of Barack Obama, just ‘get over it.’
If I hadn’t already been a feminist for the past 40 years, this whole primary debacle would be my conversion. Watching how it continues to be open season for shooting down Hillary, many people, not only women but especially women, have moved passed the primary and into a vast and airless realm of unreality. How has my party, the Democratic Party, become so corrupt? They use sexism to demean Hillary and ugly power plays to “defeat” her, as we saw in the RBC decision regarding MI and FL. Some of us are willing to forego our allegiance to the party because IT NO LONGER REPRESENTS US AND OUR VALUES:
Ooops. Somebody isn’t falling in line. In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll taken after Obama announced his VP pick, 27 percent of Hillary supporters say they’ll vote for McCain, up from 16 percent in late June. “The number of Clinton Democrats who say they would vote for McCain has gone up 11 points since June.”
Using the argument about the Supreme Court judges and Roe v Wade to guilt-trip people into voting for Obama is the height of hypocrisy in a party that has used sexism and misogyny to undermine the very best candidate for women. Do they think women are so issue oriented that we will allow one of our smartest and strongest leaders to be a sacrificial victim on the altar of their agenda and go along with it? For many women, this has gone far beyond Hillary, far beyond the election, far beyond platform politics:
With the brothers Roland Martin and Jack Caffetry lecturing the little wimin about our “petty personal issues,” the numbers of rebellious women can only increase.
For example, read this post by Riverdaughter, which she begins with a quote from Dowd’s Hillary-blaming piece a few weeks back. Dowd wrote, “Hillary Clinton feels no guilt about encouraging her supporters to mess up Barack Obama’s big moment, thus undermining his odds of beating John McCain.” Riverdaughter posts in response to this:
Ladies, putting aside the lie that Hillary is putting us up to this (she has absolutely nothing to do with our movement), is there something familiar about that sentence? Did it strike a bell deep in the corner of your mind where you have stored an unpleasantry? From personal experience, I can say that without exception, I have never met a man who did not behave as if his reason for being was more important than mine. No matter how supportive they were, when push came to shove, it was always my life that more easily sacrificed and compromised. My wishes and aspirations were a little less lofty. My gifts and talents a little less meaningful and worthy of praise. Nothing short of my winning a Nobel Prize, a Pulitzer and a humanitarian award would be acknowledged as sufficient for a life changing decision to go in my favor. Maybe even that wouldn’t be enough. When push comes to shove, where a man lives, what he does with his time, what career he pursues and what dreams he has will always come first. The only power women have in most relationships, ultimately, is the power to walk away from them. That is, if she wants to be judged a person in her own right.
This is strong language, reminiscent of the early days of the women’s movement. But this is how many of us feel. This is no longer about Hillary Clinton for President, although we wish she was our candidate. This is about the Democratic Party’s willingness to abuse an exceptional woman in order to promote a mediocre man.
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