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TechnoratiIn the course of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House -- in which she became the first woman ever to prevail in a state-level presidential primary contest -- she has been likened to Lorena Bobbitt (by Tucker Carlson); a "hellish housewife" (Leon Wieseltier); and described as "witchy," a "she-devil," "anti-male" and "a stripteaser" (Chris Matthews). Her loud and hearty laugh has been labeled "the cackle," her voice compared to "fingernails on a blackboard" and her posture said to look "like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." As one Fox News commentator put it, "When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear, Take out the garbage." Rush Limbaugh, who has no qualms about subjecting audiences to the spectacle of his own bloated physique, asked his listeners, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" Perhaps most damaging of all to her electoral prospects, very early on Clinton was deemed "unlikable." Although other factors also account for that dislike, much of the venom she elicits ("Iron my shirt," "How do we beat the bitch?") is clearly gender-specific.
Watching the brass ring of the presidency slip out of Clinton's grasp as she is buffeted by this torrent of misogyny, women -- white women, that is, and mainstream feminists especially -- have rallied to her defense. On January 8, after Barack Obama beat Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, Gloria Steinem published a New York Times op-ed titled "Women Are Never Front-Runners." "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House," Steinem wrote. Next came Clinton's famous "misting-over moment" in New Hampshire in response to a question from a woman about the stress of modern campaigning. For that display of emotion, Clinton was derided, on the one hand, as calculating and chameleonlike -- "It could be that big girls don't cry...but it could be that if they do they win," said Chris Matthews -- and, on the other, as lacking "strength and resolve," as her Democratic rival John Edwards put it, in a jab at the perennial Achilles' heel of women candidates. Riding a wave of female sympathy, Clinton won New Hampshire in what was dubbed an "anti-Chris Matthews vote."
Thus, feminist opposition to the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton has morphed into support for the candidate herself. In February Robin Morgan published a reprise of her famous 1970 essay "Goodbye to All That," exhorting women to embrace Clinton as a protest against "sociopathic woman-hating." In the Los Angeles Times, Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, wrote of older female voters fed up with the media's dismissive treatment of Clinton: "There are signs the slumbering beast may be waking up--and she's not in a happy mood." A recent New York magazine article titled "The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave" described how "it isn't just the 'hot flash cohort'...that broke for Clinton. Women in their thirties and forties -- at once discomfited and galvanized by the sexist tenor of the media coverage, by the nastiness of the watercooler talk in the office, by the realization that the once-foregone conclusion of Clinton-as-president might never come to be -- did too."
The sexist attacks on Clinton are outrageous and deplorable, but there's reason to be concerned about her becoming the vehicle for a feminist reawakening. For one thing, feminist sympathy for her has begotten an "oppression sweepstakes" in which a number of her prominent supporters, dismayed at her upstaging by Obama, have declared a contest between racial and gender bias and named sexism the greater scourge. This maneuver is not only unhelpful for coalition-building but obstructs understanding of how sexism and racism have played out in this election in different (and interrelated) ways.
Yet what is most troubling -- and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement -- is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival's race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right -- in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country -- seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. And the Clinton campaign's use of this strategy has many nonwhite and nonmainstream feminists crying foul.
While 2008 was never going to be a "postracial" campaign, the early racially tinged skirmishes between the Clinton and Obama camps seemed containable. There were references by Clinton campaign officials to Obama's admission of past drug use; the tit-for-tat over Clinton's tone-deaf but historically accurate statement that Martin Luther King needed Lyndon Johnson for his civil rights dreams to be realized; and insinuations that Obama is a token, unqualified, overreaching -- that he's all pretty words, "fairy tales" and no action.
From the point of view of Obama's supporters, the edge was taken off some of these conflicts by the mere fact of his stunning electoral success, built as it was on significant white support. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton and an Obama volunteer, recalls that for black Americans "Iowa was an astonishing moment -- watching Barack win the caucus felt like Reconstruction. There was something powerful about feeling as though you were a full citizen." In democracy, Harris-Lacewell explains, "the ruled and rulers are supposed to be the same people. The idea that black folks could be engaged in the process of being rulers over not just black folks but over the nation as a whole struck me as very powerful."
Soon enough, however, that powerful idea came under attack.
"More than any single thing, that moment with Bill Clinton in South Carolina represents the rupture that was coming," says Harris-Lacewell. The moment occurred in late January, when the former President compared Obama's landslide win, in which he received a major boost from African-American voters, to Jesse Jackson's victories there in 1984 and 1988. Because the former President offered the comparison unprompted, in response to a question that had nothing to do with Jackson or race, the statement was widely read as chalking up Obama's win to his blackness alone and thus attempting to marginalize him as a doomed minority candidate with limited appeal. Obama was now "the black candidate," in the words of one Clinton strategist quoted by the AP.
By March, multiple videos of Wright, Obama's former pastor, had popped up on YouTube and had begun to play on an endless loop in the right-wing media. "God damn America for treating your citizens as less than human," Wright inveighed, reciting a litany of racial complaints. And he said in his sermon immediately following 9/11, "America's chickens are coming home to roost."
According to Smith College professor Paula Giddings, author of a new biography of Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions and the Campaign Against Lynching, Wright's angry invocation of race and nation tapped into a reservoir of doubt about the very Americanness of African-Americans. "American citizenship has always been racialized as white. Who is a true American? Are African-Americans true Americans? That has been the question," she says.
In Obama's case -- given his mixed-race lineage, his Kenyan father, his experiences growing up in Indonesia, his middle name (Hussein) -- questions about his devotion to America carry a special potency, as xenophobia mingles with racism to create a poisonous brew. The toxicity is further heightened in this post-9/11 atmosphere, in which an image of Obama in Somali dress is understood as a slur and e-mails claiming that he is a "secret Muslim" schooled in a madrassa spread virally, along with rumors that he took the oath of office on a Koran. The madrassa and Koran canards have been thoroughly debunked, but still they persist -- and few have been willing to stand up and say, So what if he was a Muslim? For her part, Clinton, asked on 60 Minutes whether Obama was a Muslim, said, "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know."
Giddings calls the Wright association a "litmus test" that Obama must pass, saying, "It will be interesting to see if a man of color, a man who's cosmopolitan, can be the quintessential symbol of America" as its President.
Obama initially responded to that challenge with his speech in Philadelphia on March 18. While condemning Wright's words, he placed them in a historical context of racial oppression and said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." (More recently, of course, Obama did renounce him.) But in the Philadelphia speech, called "A More Perfect Union," Obama also outlined a racially universal definition of American citizenship and affirmed his commitment to represent all Americans as President. "I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction."
A mere three days after Obama spoke those words, Bill Clinton made this statement in North Carolina about a potential Clinton-McCain general election matchup: "I think it'd be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." Whether or not this statement constituted McCarthyism, as one Obama surrogate alleged and as Clinton supporters vigorously denied, the timing of the remark made its meaning quite clear: controversies relating to Obama's race render him less fit than either Hillary or McCain to run for president as a patriotic American. A couple of weeks later, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went so far as to call on Obama to make another speech, modeled after John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1960 that, despite his Catholicism, he would respect the separation of church and state as President -- as though Obama's blackness were a sign of allegiance to some entity, like the Vatican, other than the United States of America.
In the Democratic debates, enabled by the moderators, Hillary Clinton has increasingly deployed issues of race and patriotism as a wedge strategy against her opponent. First, in the debate in Cleveland on February 26, she pressed Obama not only to denounce but to reject Louis Farrakhan -- to whom he was spuriously linked through Reverend Wright, who had taken a trip with the black nationalist leader in the 1980s. In style as well as content, that attack was a harbinger of things to come. In the most recent debate, ABC's George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson peppered Obama with questions such as, "Do you believe [Wright] is as patriotic as you are?" and, regarding former Weatherman Bill Ayers, a Chicago neighbor and Obama supporter, "Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?" Time after time, Clinton picked up the line and ran with it. "You know, these are problems, and they raise questions in people's minds. And so this is a legitimate area...for people to be exploring and trying to find answers," she said, seeming to abandon her argument that these issues are fair game now only because they will be raised by Republicans later and thus are relevant to an evaluation of Obama's electability.
The Wright, Farrakhan and Ayers controversies have been fueled by a craven media, and ABC's performance in the debate has rightly been condemned. But given that Clinton is the one who is running for President and who purports to represent liberal ideals, her complicity in such attempts to establish guilt by association is far more troubling. While she has dealt gingerly with the matter of Wright in the wake of his recent appearance at the National Press Club -- accusing Republicans of politicizing the issue -- she also took pains to remind reporters that she "would not have stayed in that church under those circumstances."
It's disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent's patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color -- who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous. Says Paula Giddings, "This idea of nationalism and patriotism pulling at everyone has demanded hypermasculine men, more like McCain than the feline Obama, and demanded women whose role is to be maternal more than anything else."
For Hillary Clinton, the gendered terrain of post-9/11 national security politics has been treacherous indeed. As Elizabeth Drew observed in The New York Review of Books, Clinton took steps in the Senate, like joining the Armed Services Committee, "to protect herself from the sexist notion that a woman might be soft on national security." As a 2002 study by the White House Project, a women's leadership group, found, "Women candidates start out with a serious disadvantage -- voters tend to view women as less effective and tough. Recent events of war, terrorism, and recession have only...increased the salience of these dimensions." Clinton has been quite successful in allaying these concerns, although she faces a Catch-22: her reputed toughness and ruthlessness have helped ratchet up her high negatives. The White House Project study found that a woman candidate faces a unique tension between the need to show herself "in a light that is personally appealing, while also showing that she has the kind of strength needed for the job she is seeking."
Of course, Clinton's decision to play the hawk may have had other motivations. Perhaps she really believed that voting to authorize the war in Iraq was the right thing to do (which is, arguably, even more worrying). But her posture in this campaign -- threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran after being asked how she would respond in the highly improbable event of an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel, for example -- has at least something to do with a desire to compete on a macho foreign policy playing field. It's the woman in this Democratic primary race who has the cowboy swagger: the nationalist and militaristic rhetoric, the whiskey-swilling photo-ops, the gotcha attacks for perceived insults to a working-class electorate (as in "Bittergate") that is usually depicted as white and male.
Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton's response to "Iron my shirt" was immediate and straightforward: "Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well." Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, "While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn't mean it's worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such."
While on occasion Obama's campaign has complained of racial slights, Obama himself has avoided raising the charge directly. Even so, Clinton supporters make the twisted claim that it is Obama who has racialized the campaign. "While promoting Obama as a 'post-racial' figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics," wrote Sean Wilentz in The New Republic in an article titled "Race Man." Bill Clinton recently groused that the Obama camp, in the controversy over his Jackson remark, "played the race card on me."
As for the way the Clinton campaign has dealt with race, Crenshaw says, "It started with a small drumbeat, but as the campaign has proceeded, as Hillary has taken part in things, more people are really seeing this as a 'line in the sand' kind of moment."
Among the black feminists interviewed for this article, reactions to the declarations of sexism's greater toll by Clinton supporters -- and their demand that all women back their candidate out of gender solidarity, regardless of the broader politics of the campaign -- ran the gamut from astonishment to dismay to fury. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and author of Black Feminist Thought, recalls how, before they were reduced to their race or gender, the candidates were not seen solely through the prism of identity, and many Democrats were thrilled with the choices before them. But of the present, she says, "It is such a distressing, ugly period. Clinton has manipulated ideas about race, but Obama has not manipulated similar ideas about gender." This has exacerbated longstanding racial tensions within the women's movement, Collins notes, and is likely to alienate young black women who might otherwise have been receptive to feminism. "We had made progress in getting younger black women to see that gender does matter in their lives. Now they are going to ask, What kind of white woman is Hillary Clinton?"
The sense of progress unraveling is profound. "What happened to the perspective that the failures of feminism lay in pandering to racism, to everyone nodding that these were fatal mistakes -- how is it that all that could be jettisoned?" asks Crenshaw, who co-wrote a piece with Eve Ensler on the Huffington Post called "Feminist Ultimatums: Not in Our Name." Crenshaw says that, appalled as she is by the sexism toward Clinton, she found herself stunned by some of the arguments pro-Hillary feminists were making. "There is a myopic focus on the aspiration of having a woman in the White House -- perhaps not any woman, but it seems to be pretty much enough that she be a Democratic woman." This stance, says Crenshaw, "is really a betrayal."
Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, attributes this go-for-broke attitude to the mindset of corporate feminism. "There's a way in which feminists who have been seriously engaged in electoral politics for a long time, the institutional DC feminist leadership, they are just with Hillary Clinton come hell or high water. I think they have accepted, as she has accepted, a similar career trajectory. They are not uncomfortable with what has gone on in the campaign, because they see electoral campaigns as mere instruments for getting elected. This is just the way it is. We have to get elected."
The implications of all this for the future of feminism depend significantly on the outcome of the primary, says Kissling. "If Clinton wins, the older-line women's movement will continue; it will be a continuation of power for them. If she doesn't win, it will be a death knell for those people. And that may be a good thing -- that a younger generation will start to take over."
Many younger women, indeed, have responded to the admonishments of their pro-Hillary second-wave elders by articulating a sophisticated political orientation that includes feminism but is not confined to it. They may support Obama, but they still abhor the sexism Clinton has faced. And they detect -- and reject -- a tinge of sexism among male peers who have developed man-crushes on the dashing senator from Illinois. "Even while they voice dismay over the retro tone of the pro-Clinton feminist whine, a growing number of young women are struggling to describe a gut conviction that there is something dark and funky, and probably not so female-friendly, running below the frantic fanaticism of their Obama-loving compatriots," wrote Rebecca Traister in Salon.
It's not just young feminists who have taken such a nuanced view. Calling themselves Feminists for Peace and Obama, 1,500 prominent progressive feminists -- including Kissling, Barbara Ehrenreich and this magazine's Katha Pollitt -- signed on to a statement endorsing him and disavowing Clinton's militaristic politics. "Issues of war and peace are also part of a feminist agenda," they declared.
In some sense, this is a clarifying moment as well as a wrenching one. For so many years, feminists have been engaged in a pushback against the right that has obscured some of the real and important differences among them. "Today you see things you might not have seen. It's clearer now about where the lines are between corporate feminism and more grassroots, global feminism," says Crenshaw. Women who identify with the latter movement are saying, as she puts it, "'Wait a minute, that's not the banner we are marching under!'"
Feminist Obama supporters of all ages and hues, meanwhile, are hoping that he comes out of this bruising primary with his style of politics intact. While he calls it "a new kind of politics," Clinton and Obama are actually very similar in their records and agendas (which is perhaps why this contest has fixated so obsessively on their gender and race). But in his rhetoric and his stance toward the world outside our borders, Obama does appear to offer a way out of the testosterone-addled GOP framework. As he said after losing Pennsylvania, "We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes. Or we can decide that real strength is asking the tough questions before we send our troops to fight."
As comedian Chris Rock quipped, Bush "fucked up so bad that he's made it hard for a white man to run for President." Rock spoke too soon: many are hungry for a shift, but the country needs the right push to get there. Unfortunately, from Hillary Clinton, it's getting a shove in the wrong direction.
Betsy Reed is the executive editor of The Nation. She is the editor of Unnatural Disaster: The Nation on Hurricane Katrina, a collection of the magazine's coverage of the storm and its aftermath published by Nation Books on the hurricane's one-year anniversary.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
47 Comments so far
Show AllI just re-read the Betsy Reed article, above; hooray, Betsy, very perceptive and insightful. The only thing I might fault you with is not recognizing this.
In my opinion, you're right, Hillary's a strong woman and wants to come across that way. However, it's my belief the initial UN-level playing field set up by media adoration or non-comment on Obama's candidacy made it extremely difficult for her to do anything but end up overly outspoken about her opponent...I believe the way the media treated Obama so long (with kid gloves) gave him a HUGE advantage & built a huge momentum for him, leaving Hillary, the more qualified candidate, no option but to fight her way to the finish line. But you're right, she's been "damned if you do, damned if you don't" the whole way along.
Still and all, who has to spend more money to get a vote? He does. So whose really more "electable?" I'll leave that up to you.
Atheist, I agree w/you. Common dreams (internet) and Comedy Central (television) are the only media outlets that have been even "somewhat" unbiased or, shall we say, maybe they trash Hillary but at least they haven't had a total blind spot about Obama. I like Obama OK, but as you & others have said, he should have waited, he's just not experienced enough or tough enough for the job; also, I get the feeling he still doesn't really know who he is, I heard an interview w/someone who had researched his life story and she reinforced my perception of his weakness of character.
I would like to see a third party form but in the meanwhile this is all we've got - & it's better than a lot of other systems of govt. Where we still fall short tho is how easily we "perceive" racism, and how difficult a time we have "perceiving" gender bias. The media gave Obama the entire highway the first dozen primaries & it took SNL to wake them up, too bad they fell back asleep so fast.
Don't forget, a large majority of the total electorate from 2000 to 2006 were (& in 2008 will be) non-black, non-young, non-students, and not from small states. Hillary's also more likely to beat McCain because so far she was won in all the big states needed to win the office of President. Anyway let's all stick together & vote for whoever gets the nomination. And I just hope it's Hillary because she's got a faster timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq & she'll get our economy back on track faster. I do hope the Superdelegates will deliver: 'Clinton / Edwards' 2008, yeah!
Blame this mess on Obama ! He should have waited 4 or 8 years.
I'm so sick of this constant Hillary-bashing on Common Dreams ! I used to like this web site. Now it's just another Obama circle jerk.
Btw Betsy, I'm offended by the treatment of Clinton, but I voted for her because she's the best candidate, not because she's a women or because I felt sorry for her.
If Bill Clinton was allowed to run for president he would walk away with the election. Other than his personal life which was nothing compared to other presidents, he was one of the best presidents we have ever had. Hillary is the closest we can get to electing Bill Clinton. Obama causes me concern in many areas. He is half black and half white so, what is he white or black. His race doesn't matter to me as some of my best friends are black. If it was Colen Powell running his support would dwarf Obama. It appears that everyone is afraid to tell it the way it is for fear or "playing the race card". I was a member of the executive committee for many years in a state. It was impossible to get the black voters to vote. Now that a candidate is running that considers himself black there is a tremendous black turn out. But everyone is afraid to call it what it is. The only reason he is in the position he is in is due to his race. Things were good for our people and our country when Bill Clinton was president.
AJK
How can this author claim that Clinton and Obama are similar in agendas? Clinton is almost as big a war monger as John McCain. Obama speaks much more vehemently against the war. It is crazy, but if you speak out too much against the war you don't get very far this year. (As in Ron Paul)
Hillary Clinton has done more damage to the women's movement than any woman-hating male could ever do. She has held herself up as a figurehead but gotten there on Bill's coattails. Her actions have not been for the betterment of women but for her chance at power. (If you do not believe that then tell me why she moved to NY to run for the Senate?) Her actions on the Walmart board and promoting NAFTA along with her hawk votes for the Iraq war, for Kyl-Leiberman, plus the "obliterating" Iran comment are just a few of the reasons I cannot vote for her. But her Tonya Harding campaign with the lies, distortions and insinuations have sealed my disgust.
She says she has been vetted NOT by a long shot! The Repugs have supported her in TX and PA because they know she will be easier to beat than Obama. They have mountains of dirt on her but just have to mention her connections with the Family and the Paul trial and down she will go.
'For her part, Clinton, asked on 60 Minutes whether Obama was a Muslim, said, "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know."'
I'm no Clinton fan, but her comments about Obama's religious background have been portrayed in an extremely dishonest way. She repeatedly denied that Obama was a Muslim, but this was not reported by the media. They only reported "as far as I know." I have never seen such a massive intervention by the media in favor of one candidate in my life.
Here are Clinton's actual remarks:
"CLINTON: Of course not. I mean, that's--you know, there is not basis for that. You know, I take him on the basis of what he says. And, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.
KROFT: And you said you'd take Senator Obama at his word that he's not a Muslim.
CLINTON: Right. Right.
KROFT: You don't believe that he's a Muslim or implying? Right.
CLINTON: No. No. Why would I? No, there is nothing to base that on, as far as I know.
KROFT: It's just scurrilous --
CLINTON: Look, I have been the target of so many ridiculous rumors. I have a great deal of sympathy for anybody who gets, you know, smeared with the kind of rumors that go on all the time."
Someone in the press asked Hillary about the Wright deal and she replied she would not have attended that church. That's her choice and her reply. Personally, I think Wright is right on almost everything I've heard him say.
Bill Clinton said Jessee Jackson got the black votes and so will Obama. That's a fact and many jumped on Clinton for playing the race card. Good grief, ALL of the TV pundents and reporters have been saying the same
thing because it's a fact and no one jumps on them. Obama gets over 90% of the black vote. Why is it racial or playing the race card for anyone to say that?
And ~MAIRS~, no, I didn't leave out anything. And none of the things you broght up are even sensible to me, what are you talking about? People make those type of unfounded charges constantly.
The Clintons had nothing to do with Obama and his pastor and they are not the ones who keep bringing it up, Pastor Wright and then the press do. The Clinton's don't control Wright or the press, my gosh Obama has had far better press coverage than Hillary has.
Race and gender has been played. Both Clinton's, their surrogate's, lawyers, friends etc. It did not start with Obama....it started many years ago in their youth. They stuck to a plan, gathered all the 'radicals' into one movement. It still continues today. I was also part of the 60's revolution. A lot of good came from that 'era' that did change some things, not all.
The problem is...all those baby boomers are still stuck in the 60's, trash and burn, destroy, slander, manufactured speeches and lies are exactly what the Clinton movement is doing. They are all acacemia pals and sorts along the way to the WH. To be sure the could have World Domination. Britian calls Hillary "Lady MacBeth" for a reason. They have hurt the global community so badly, it would take a year to explain. They are despised worldwide.
But Jeremiah Wright wouldn't mean hoot, if it was any other candidate. He is being sold to the American people as his identity. Why? They've got nothing else, in other words, he's clean. The Clinton's are not.
Radical Hillary in the 60's knew william Ayres, Jeremiah Wright, many politicians in D.C. have known her that long. Yes, even George Bush. Later in the 80's Clinton knew of Rezko before Obama did, knew of Jeremiah Wright before Obama did. Knew of Chicago dirty politics before Obama did. So, how ironic, even while first lady, they accepted donation money from Rezko. LA mayor Ant. Villaraigosa also accepted and bundled money for Hillary Clinton, Ed Rendell of PA same thing. In fact, he is a witness, in the upcoming Campaign Finance Fraud Case against the Clintons in CA. He introduced Rezko to LA Mayor.
This is when all the peices are put together, one day Bill and Hillary Clinton will be behind bars for good. Even Judicial watch is looking forward to that.
i hope all the clinton supporters realize that people such as myself would never vote for hillary clinton SOLELY because of her militaristic billigerence, willingness to hold cheney's hand in wars with iraq/iran, and her republican-lite clintonian brand of status quo politics. if she wins the primary (the corporate media is doing their best) i will quite happily vote for a woman... a BLACK woman (omg!)... CYNTHIA McKINNEY!!! faced with the choice of mccain or clinton i will have to "throw my vote away" to someone with at least half a heart. very sorry for all the sexism women face (lets acknowledge the part the women of the fashion, advertising, and religious worlds have played in propogating the problem)... i am all for equality, and hillary clinton is equally as awful as most of her republican counterparts. i would very seriously suggest clinton voters put their committment where there mouth is and sign up (or convince their children to sign up) for the military so they can be the ones who are forced to go murder and die in iran when hillary decides its time to prove her cowboy creds... no Obama is not the messiah (thats Jello Biafra) but he 1.Very early on was speaking against the war in Iraq (stating the obvious and using the common sense that almost the entirety of our government was conveniently lacking at the time), even though he plays the game and votes to continue war funding and 2. Is willing to talk to people before threatening to "obliterate" them and their families... so Obama isn't Kucinich, I get it... he is strikingly more diplomatic and less hawkish of all my (viable) options so he is the only choice as far as I am concerned. PEACE.
Hillary Clinton is to Barack Obama as Robert Mugabe is to Morgan Tsvangirai.
With people of the intelligence of Ms. Reed in the Obama camp I believe (or think) it is a very good possibility that this experiment we call democracy will actually be successful with the election of Mr. Obama to the White House...and to hell with the rest. all the best, we're rootin' for you in Canada - polls show canada supports Obama that is the working class and the intelligencia in canada supports Obama the corporate lackies of course do not but hey when has that ever stopped a revolution. cooperatively, Elisabet
ps what a sad story about that woman in Austria - just about as bad as the Picton thing here in Vancouver E
Kem,
You are quite right that the Clintons had nothing to do with Obama's church choice, his 20 years there, or any of Rev. Wright's sermons. What the Clintons and the media are to blame for is seeing to it that every American KNOWS every last detail of Wright's views, as though any of this is important to American presidential-level issues.
We know it isn't. And we know why it is "paraded". And we know why Hillary keeps asking "Why didn't Barack leave his church?" And we know Bill couldn't wait to compare Barack to Jesse Jackson. It's orchestrated. And it's calculated meanness to keep the Clintons "enthroned".
Good comments: FISH FRY, HOOTOWL, AMCD, BILL BRG, & IOWA BLACKBIRD. (I don't have much to add, you all covered the key points.)
I don't have any evidence to support my suspicion, but to me it is very curious that the timing of Jeremiah Wright's inflamatory comments appeared now, just before two important priaries where Obama might have broken through. I suspect that the Clintons had something to do with it. Why didn't Wright go public with his exacerbating comments a year ago? Why now? The only person who benefits from such race=bating is Hilliary Clinton. And what better person to use than Obama's former pastor.
As I say, I haven't found any evidence to support this suspicion, but to me it is very suspicious.
there are really just 2 points,
1 hillary hasn't attained power of her own accord and,
2 her husband's actions (a large part of her presentation is based on the premise of the golden 90's) weren't beneficial for women relative to progressive standards.
hillary is bill and this muddles any discussion of sexism. hillary is obtaining the golden fleece for her husband. the situation is like the one in argentina w/ the kirchners or in pakistan w/ the bhutto family.
hil/bill is a commodity pushed by traditional DLC donors (american democratic dynasty that mirrors the bush dynasty as they exchange mirrors every 8 years). there is nothing admirable (in terms of gender relations) to hillary amassing power as a couplet w/ her husband, indeed on the shoulders of her husband as they melt and become one, the androgynous king/queen.
it is not a woman running for office rather a dynastic beast w/ assets of 100 million dollars gleaned from nothing more than celebrity and political connections (like dictators in former soviet satellites).
hillary clinton resembles Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes Argentina's first woman president. By Alexei Barrionuevo
Published: October 29, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/29/america/30argentina.3.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutto_dynasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilawal_Bhutto_Zardari
{Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (Urdu: بلاول بھٹو زرداری) (born 21 September 1988) is chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party, and the eldest child and only son of the late Pakistani politician and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband Asif Ali Zardari. He is also the grandson of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the first popularly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan and father of Benazir Bhutto.[1]}
in other respects clinton's campaign resembles putin's bizarre scramble to retain control of russia, despite the fact term limits prevent putin from direct control (as despotic leaders often enjoy the titles and perks 'president' that follow power). bill is also subverting the intent of the constitution, and many dems quietly sit by and say," oh but clinton was great, hilary will bring back good times/happiness".
there are 300 million americans - doesn't anyone feel a little queasy about 2 nuclear families (bush sr-bush jr) (bill-hill) controlling this much power. clinton -like bhutto- is grasping a dream that died at least 14 years ago (94-but lewinsky cinched it, wonder if elliot spitzer's wife will leave him? what is the proper thing for her to do? my, my.....)
then there's the question of how hillary's (and i guess bill's) positions effects/effected women.
Bill BRG May 2nd, 2008 8:29 pm
hootowl May 2nd, 2008 4:16 pm
Arvy May 2nd, 2008 1:29 pm
all have made salient points.
i would just like to ad the voice of the 500,000 children (presumably 250,000 girls) who died b/c of US sanctions that were imposed and enforced by the hand of Mr Clinton in the 1990's. m albright has justified the death (no remorse) - and of course clinton is itching to answer the phone at 3AM and start ww3 over israel/iran.
obviously none of those 250,000 girls (i guess they'd be young women now living in a secular iraq) will ever read betty friedan or gloria steinem...
mairs May 2nd, 2008 7:28 pm
yes, welcome to oceania (the land of bush1,clinton1,bush2,ckinton2), how can we help you????
...peace...
Betsy Reed: Perhaps most damaging of all to her electoral prospects, very early on Clinton was deemed "unlikable."
Well, she is. I don't like people who glibly threaten to "obliterate" an entire country without batting an eyelash.
hootowl: a little sabre-rattling is all that comment was intended to do. Unfortunately we live in a society were being rational and peaceful is considered weak; Hillary is not weak, just smart. Rhetoric is so much more important than actual work in our current political climate; so rhetoric is what you are getting regardin Iran.
Janet and Waco; those nuts were nuts without shells. They had many an opportunity to leave and chose not to; there is such as thing as the law of unintended consequences and Waco was a very good example of things gone arye.
"What did the Clintons have to do with Obama cutting of his long time friend, pastor, advisor and mentor?"
Kem, did you leave out anything? Like blood brother, soul-mate, worshiper, accolyte, hand-puppet, identical twin from different mothers, joined at the hip? If Clinton supporters could, they'd create an Obama face with Wright's voice coming out of it, they so need Obama to be seen as the boogey man.
The "saint" remarks and "messiah" remarks are like blank spots of wild exaggeration on this thread. They have no relation to reality, which is about people choosing which candidate they want to support, knowing full well the compromises they are making in their choices, as there are always compromises.
~Daniel David~ you are repeating the comment made by Obama backers, that the Clintons 'smeared' Obama on the Wright issue.
Is that so?
What did the Clintons have to do with Obama and Wright's 20 year long relationship?
What did the Clintons have to do with ANY of Wright's speeches or church sermons during the past 20 years?
What did the Clintons have to do with Obama cutting of his long time friend, pastor, advisor and mentor?
What did Pastor Wright ever do or say that should bother anyone __(outside of his church)? ___ It's his church and if anyone didn't like what he preached, the door swung both ways.
Our troops and the citizens of Iraq aren't in real danger now?
And added to all of that Kernel, he or his committee never played the race card. Sounds like a real winner.
The term "real winner" can be taken more than one way of course.
Jacob___Don`t expect to hear any criticism of Saint Obama on Common Dreams as we know by now that he has no faults, has been 100% right on every vote in the Senate, came up the hard way like the rest of us, never took a dollar from a corporation, loves his preacher if it is popular, made several million on his books and gave it all to the poor, could never ever say anything negative, can shoot a basketball, will tame the Rethugs like a housecat, will stop the war, give everyone a good job, pay off the debt, and unify us all in peace and love.
Jacob, I think he voted for the war funding because, absent a sound withdrawal plan, to merely cut off funding would put both our troops and the Iraqi people in danger.
How many anti-Clinton articles will Common Dreams run before they run any serious criticism of the Messiah, Barack Obama?
Obama votes to fund the war in Iraq every chance he gets, he voted for NAFTA-Peru after pretending to be an anti-NAFTA crusader, he wants to throw every gun-control law ever written out the window, but...
Don't bad-mouth the Messiah!
Bill BRG May 2nd, 2008 8:29 pm -- "To which I apply the non-sexist term, 'Cow Dung!'"
Some "politically correct" nonsense really does test anyone's tolerance for the patently absurd. Please explain how that comment is any less "sexist" than the more familiar epithet? Anyone with any real need to differentiate bovine sexes refers to them as cows (female), bulls (male) and steers (neutered). I seriously doubt that any of them consider gender association of their feces to be of any "sexist" importance.
I thought you'd like to check out the political allegory of mine that I just found a literary agent for. It's a story set in the context of a teacher discussing with his class all of the evidence that the Bush administration is as corrupt as it is incompetent….and how to rectify the Constitutional crisis we face. It's couched in a discussion about the urgent need to stop abusing Mother Nature. I wrote in 3 dozen celebrities to play the students, so it's very funny despite how infuriating it is. You can read it at www.stoplittering.com/theswitch.htm and, yes, StopLittering.com is my site.
The sexism, racism, classism, xenophobia (Not to be confused with Xena-phobia), homophobia, ageism that exist in this country stink. They all contribute to people cutting their own throats and others rather than see larger common cause. They cause immesurable harm to the American People and around the world.
It's a shame that we don't have a real discourse in politics today. Clinton, when she was the nominee-to-be, frontrunner, chose to take Fox's Murdoch money.
When I was on a local board of NOW, glass ceiling feminism wasn't the only concern. Hillary's support of NAFTA and welfare deform hurt tens of millions of women here and many times that abroad (counting other "Free-To-Pillage" Trade Agreements).
The Democratic Leadership Council/Democratic National Committee connection fought antiwar candidates in the Democratic party. Truthout ran a great article on this (Special Report: Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy ...Sep 6, 2007 ... Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives .... financial and political support for wealthy conservative candidates www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090607J.shtml - 39k ) Congressman Emmanuel, a Clinton supporter was a BIG part of it.
That one in three women in the US military are subject to rape or sexual assult is a feminist issue too. As are violence whether directed at women at home and in-home or within the US. That's before mentioning the misery the US and its allies of the billing have inflicted on Iraq. And Haiti. And Palestine. And elsewhere.
About support for Hillary- The corollary of "support any (put any group)" is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend or ally."
To which I apply the non-sexist term, "Cow Dung!"
Hillary Clinton's way down my list of people harmed by the inequities and ISMs in this country. She's had plenty of time to show she's about corporate and petty politics not the fundamental change in our society that's needed.
The economic challenges that confront America easily rival the Great Depression. Plus global warming,resource depletion including peak oil and environmental degredation make our current crisis larger.
The poorest in this and other countries will feel the greatest pain and suffering. And unfortunately, it's disproportionally women and children first.
Let's focus on their needs and that of the large majority of Americans. A majority of whom are female.
Hillary IS a Republican. Give me one good reason to go from Kucinich to Clinton. There is none. The truths that were embodied in the Kucinich candidacy are all but unrecognizable by the time they wander to the opposite spectrum and are deposited in Hillary.
If Condi ran, the Symbol Feminists would blow a rod. They wouldn't know what to do, since you're supposed to vote for women no matter their morals, character, or positions.
Hillary-speak is as close to George Orwell as I've ever heard a Democrat speak.
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?... The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
- George Orwell, 1984,
Animal Farm:
"Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs."
It's annoying to have to run to Obama's defense because he's so clearly a slick DLC-type "centrist". Yet the Republicans are once again caricaturing a Democratic candidate harmless to corporate America as "too far" to the left, after a primary process that has winnowed out anyone really to the left of the Beltway corporate-imperialist consensus. I don't suppose the Democratic superdelegates would resolve an Obama-Clinton deadlock by putting up Dennis Kucinich as the dark horse nominee, but wouldn't it be fun? Al Gore as nominee would at least be able to unite the party.
The first two paragraphs were okay. But then it just turns out that the author wants to sell Obama. No, Obama has never been sexist in his campaign.
But his supporters are extremely sexist and behave like members of a cult.
I'm not against Hillary because she is a woman. That really doesn't matter. I'm against her because she acts like a Republican -- endorsing John McCain, using Republican campaign tactics, Adopting McCain's call for a summer Gas Tax holiday that will save us $17 but do nothing constructive, voting for the war, sponsoring flag-burning legislation, voting against the ban on using cluster bombs in civilian areas, and voting for Cheney's wet dream (Kyl-Lieberman).
I'm a progressive Democrat. We need real change. Putting a woman is in the White House is not real change... it is cosmetic... much like the gas tax holiday.
So apparently feminism has degenerated to the point that voting for a woman — any woman — is supporting feminism.
What are these female chauvinists going to do when Condi runs?
I second what amcd said (5:07 PM).
I wish that when Obama responded to the Wright issue this week, he had simply said that he wanted to live in a country in which all people have the right to speak their minds, no matter how unpopular their opinions (Jeez, all he had to do was wrap himself in the first amendment). Disowning or repudiating him is a weird form of suppression or disavowal of free speech in and of itself.
I wish that when the ABC moderators were busy asking Obama if he loved this country, and if his pastor loved this country, and Hillary was linking him to Farrakhan, they had turned and asked Hillary to respond to the disavowal of the 1500 feminists described above, tired of the subtle race-baiting in her campaign and her support of war. Of course, the whole thing was set up to make Obama look bad and Hilly look good.
Ah, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Hey, did anyone catch Ron Paul's pseudo-endorsement of Obama today? I believe he said Obama was likeliest of the 3 candidates to pull back the absolute exercise of executive power that has made of this country a land o' fascism. And on that note, check out Feingold's Judiciary Committee hearing on Secret Law (April 30 on the CSPAN video archive): worth the two hours.
I've often wondered how a visitor from outer space would make any sense of the process that the US call democracy. It seems to go something like this:
Accept the reality that you cannot possibly elect someone who honestly and straightforwardly espouses and reflects positions on the issues that are truly representative of your own and most ordinary citizens (i.e., natural persons as opposed to corporate persons). Instead, vote for someone whose stated positions favor their MIC-Israel sponsors, but who may, upon being elected, revoke, or at least modify, those stated positions to adopt something that is marginally more aligned with the public good.
In other words, vote for the ones who are best able to deceive both their sponsors and the electorate. Very strange form of "representative government" indeed!
Our government is like a corpse with a fragile skin still covering the body: once it's touched, the skin gives way to reveal nothing but rot beneath. This is a time of great danger for our nation: our economy has crumbled, our foreign & domestic policies are bankrupt, too. It seems our only hope lies in looking honestly at ourselves and at the world beyond, and making an honest effort to repudiate what we have stood for over the past few years.
It seems that progressives might have a real opportunity to start this process. As Reagonomics & neo-conservatism have reached their logical conclusion, our nation looks for new solutions. It breaks my heart to see Hillary Clinton clinging to the old strategies of fracturing the opposition: If we can understand anything from the Bush years, we should be able to see that dividing people leads to divided people. It's shameful that she should take to dividing women and black voters. Anyone who thinks can understand that racism and sexism are the same. Dividing African-Americans from blue-collar white males? That's old as the hills, and it's prevented working-class people from effecting change for generations. We might call it different names, but lack of opportunity is all the same, too.
We're used to old white Republican males doing this, but now it's one of our own, Hillary Clinton, stamping out the first whisper of change we've felt since we all concluded that that business knows best.
Over the course of this campaign, Obama has actually addressed some of our twisted perceptions that we so desperately need to change. African-Americans are angry, not because they live in the past but because they live in the present. Blue collar people in small towns are bitter not because they're stupid but because the promise of "freedom" is meaningless to someone who has to spend 40+ hrs. a week to pay the bills, hoping her body holds out 'till she can get the meager income of pension & Social Security.
We need to look at ourselves & each other, reach out to heal each other's wounds. We should pray that John McCain will be doing that, because it's looking like Hillary's not going to let another Democrat win the election
in 2000 and 2004 nader warned us about gender and racial politics and he was excoriated for his views. nothing for women! nothing for blacks and hispanics! they screamed. now we see how prescient he was. now we have a splintering democratic party, splitting apart along just those lines and and the reat mass of people have no place left to go. neither ms. clinton nor mr. obama are my choice for a progressive presidency. nader is but his ob-going marginalization means i am without a vote or a say in the nation's future. the only victors? conservative demagogues and corporations. democrats- the new republicans. . .
Kernel,
I am not "against" Hillary and will support her if she's the nominee. I do believe that her and Bill's tactics on smearing Obama with Jeremiah Wright are a fairly recent development that is very unfortunate---and one that might come back in an unforeseen way to render her losing to McCain if she runs without Obama on her ticket. Some of her die-hards (like per the article) have thought this stuff okay. I don't. McCain may probably pick Huckabee, BUT, Hillary running without Obama just might prompt him to go with Condi instead. And, scarily, they could win.
And, yes, I have no trouble believing in Obama---except his electability has been compromised by Clinton and the media with Wright. And, yes, he could risk being a replay of Carter. That's a sad reality for anyone going in to stand on principles other than for the wealthy.
Daniel David___You are so sure that Obama is the one that will bring our country back in a hurry to what it was before the Bush disaster.
However, it is also possible that Obama will have about as much luck being President as Jimmie Carter had. He was another sure bet for change as he was religious, intelligent, and not a Washington insider, but never seemed to get much traction.
One thing is for sure, after witnessing the assassination of Clinton by even her fellow democrats, any woman will think twice before trying a run for President, as Hillary did. It does not seem that Condi has done so much for women as she is just a stooge doing Bush-Cheney`s bidding.
Rockerbabe "obliterate Iran" equals peace? Try a little harder next time. And no being a woman does not equal being a progressive leader, Margret "invade the Falklands, "TINA"* ring a bell? How about Madeline starve a million Iraqis with sanctions is "worth it" Albright? How about Janet burn a hundred innocent people to death at Waco Reno? Do a little research before you just assume female equals better, that's not better than saying white or male equals better. I for one don't want to see anymore corporate puppet war mongers in the White House, white, black, female or male thank you very much. The Hilary Clinton DLC backed Dims are part of the problem not part of the solution.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TINA
A lot of well thought out dribble; unsure of the rationale for the conclusion, but everyone is entitled to their POV.
There are lots of reason to like both candidates and both are struggling to run a national campaign with all of its ups and downs. Both are doing a good job, the pundits notwithstanding.
Lots of women, not just "liberal" women are supporting Senator Clinton; most of us see a golden opportunity to make a see-change in our lives. Hillary, is NOT a member of the boys' club despite her voting record and never will be. The boys'club requires certain hormonal attributes women just don't and are not likely to ever have.
I support Senator Clinton as I think she is simply the best candidate from my POV. She is not naive about politics nor handling the bureaurcracy that is Washington, DC. I believe she will bring about another era of peace and prosperity and saneness to DC and that is what is needed at the moment.
Feminism? Hillary voted for the Iraq war; voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to pave the way for war with Iran; recently said she'd be willing to "obliterate" Iran. That means to kill every civilian man, woman, and child in Iran.
This is feminism? Voting for a warmonger with a vagina?
Daniel David -- "There is no better hope to advance women's rights at this moment than actually electing Michelle and Barack ..."
If you're right, and judging by Barack's dedication and loyalty to others who become inconvenient to his own ambitions, that doesn't seem like a very encouraging prospect to hold forth as a best hope for anything at all.
Some of the women who have been for Hillary "come hell or high water" just because she's female (including endorsing the raised-hell of racism via Jeremiah Wright to get their woman), might get a surprise. In one scenario hoped for by many Republicans, they could get Condi Rice as McCain's VP.
Condi would laugh at 'em, and slap 'em, and laugh at 'em, and slap 'em, and laugh at 'em, and slap 'em----for perhaps 12 years. Did I mention laugh at 'em and slap 'em? (After that, then, John and Condi's Supreme Court picks might slap their daughters for a generation ---even two.)
Liberal women insisting on Hillary may be stupider than stupid. And the biggest stupidity, of course, can be in not having a clue about the downside risk.
There is no better hope to advance women's rights at this moment than actually electing Michelle and Barack, but due to the already-done actions of the Hillary supporters, this may be slipping away.
Wait a minute, she's a WOMAN!?
Corporate feminism? Hmmmm. Would that be the brand of feminism that equates liberation with exchanging traditional familial roles for participation in the corporate labor force and/or the MIC's armed branches?
A classic case of cui bono. Any real benefit to women and their families seems questionable at best.