Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
My Feminist Dream Of Hillary Rising
By Jessica Peck Corry, 4-10-08
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These days, it seems almost cruel to write about Hillary Clinton’s floundering campaign. But not everyone has given up. In fact, I’m joining the nation’s most radical feminists to pledge my support for her continued Democratic presidential bid. Run, Hillary, run.
Clinton’s loyal supporters are mad. Blinded by their desire to see America’s first woman president elected this year, they fail to see what smart Democrats and Republicans already know. Hillary can’t win in November. If only we could find a way to keep her candidacy alive that long.
And now, as well known national liberals, including America’s highest ranking congressional female, Nancy Pelosi, sound their fevered-pitch rallying cry for Hillary’s departure, desperate feminists are resorting to an old playbook designed in the era of Hillary’s student days at Wellesley College. They are pulling out the gender card, claiming sexism as the culprit behind the requests for Hillary to exit her contested race against Barack Obama.
Such requests for Hillary’s departure are representative of a “psychological gang bang” of women, according to Marcia Pappas, president of the New York State chapter of the National Organization of Women. Earlier this year, she penned a column titled “Psychological Gang Bang of Hillary is Proof We Need a Woman President,” where she objected to a “patriarchal system that has persisted for millennia.”
Pappas specifically questioned the decision by now-former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards to “side with” Obama. “It seems John’s recent alliance with Barak (sic) sent a clear message to women everywhere,” she wrote. “The message is that if a woman gets too powerful, she can count on the good ole boys ganging up on her. Hillary is a powerful, strong and intelligent woman and she deserves our support. Let us remember what we as women’s rights supporters, are charged to do: SUPPORT WOMEN!”
Support them, Pappas implies, regardless of their talent, abilities, or viability.
But the non-Pelosi feminists - those still deeply committed to burning their bras at the Democratic National Convention this August in Denver - are right that Hillary should keep her campaign running.
While the media and Washington’s power elite are driving themselves into a tizzy over the prospects of a contested convention, the vast majority of Democrats don’t mind Hillary staying in the race. According to a recent national survey, an equal number of Clinton and Obama supporters - 22 percent - say that the opposing candidate should drop out of the race. It’s just plain un-American to push a candidate out of the race when masses of ordinary voters still support that person.
In addition, pushing Hillary out of the race at this point would run contrary to recent history, where male Democratic presidential candidates have been allowed - and encouraged - to take their contested races all the way to the convention.
Since 1980, the Democratic Party has seen two contested races remain unresolved until late summer. In 1988, Jesse Jackson took his throngs of supporters - coupled with tireless media adoration - with him to the convention in Atlanta, where he was promptly trounced by Michael Dukakis. Likewise, in 1980, Ted Kennedy - apparently believing in the power of a last name - took his run all the way to the convention, even after delegate support clearly indicated that he would get trounced by Jimmy Carter.
While both of the surviving candidates, Dukakis and Carter, suffered embarrassing general election defeats at the hands of Republicans, this year is different. We have no vice president or sitting president vying for either party’s nomination. Carter had a significant and volatile one-term presidential record to run against, while Dukakis was just a horrible candidate running against a popular vice president.
The other difference: this year’s race is much closer.
Why call for Hillary’s departure when she still has a statistical chance of winning the necessary delegate count essential to taking the nomination? Neither Jackson nor Kennedy had such a luxury.
Nor do any of the aforementioned Democratic candidates have the emotional, evangelical, and just plain fanatical support behind Obama. Of course, this advantage assumes he is the last candidate left standing.
Then there are those Democratic strategists who are concerned about party unity, saying that Hillary’s continued run will only further splinter important coalitions, including one between women and minorities. Such a viewpoint only indicates the party’s own lack of faith in the ability of two of the party’s most important constituencies to come together after a bruising political battle. Maybe such politicos are right.
Even if they are, however, they only risk further isolation, anger, and frustration if one candidate is artificially eliminated from consideration.
National polls show her only slightly trailing in the popular vote against Republican candidate John McCain. And, when it comes to an Electoral College match up against McCain, she’s mostly neck-and-neck with Obama. Yet, Hillary’s biggest problem is that she just can’t shake her label as a liberal.
But this, of course, shouldn’t prompt Democrats to deter Hillary’s candidacy. After all, should Democrats pick Obama, Republicans will have several months to beat up on him, exposing his desire to significantly raise taxes on America’s small business owners. In other words, the Democratic Party’s hard turn to the left on everything from health care to the economy isn’t just a candidate problem, it’s a party problem (just as McCain will have to shake the GOP image of big spender George W. Bush).
Assuming that Hillary doesn’t get trounced in this month’s Pennsylvania primary - thus effectively ending her candidacy - the Democratic Party, ever the crusader against institutional sexism, needs to stop crusading against her candidacy.
I love Hillary as the Democratic Party’s general election candidate. I’d burn my own bra if it meant I could help keep her effort alive until November. There. I said it. Now I must get back to filling out my application to join Pappas in NOW. Think I’ll be accepted?
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics’ “Diary of a Mad Voter” feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Comments
From women who crossed Bill, to women who were obstacles to her own political ambitions, Hillary has unerringly displayed a cannibalistic survival trait that allows her to feed on her own to get by.
In fact her strongest trait is also her most unfeminist, and that is her self destructive co-dependent relationship with Bill.
As for feminists wanting a female president, feminists would do well to take as a warning P.J. O'Rourke's summation of Republicans, who "vote for whomever's turn it is no matter what, and as we've seen, even if 'no matter what' means Bush." You're not advancing the cause of women voting for a woman "no matter what." Republicans have paid dearly for voting for the Republican "no matter what." Feminists may well end up doing the same by voting for a woman "no matter what."
Is America ready for a woman president? Yes and no. Eight years ago, I didn't think America was ready for a black president. I'd seen racism - both subtle and overt - growing up in Indiana. What never occurred to me - and the same is true for a woman president, a Mormon president, an Asian president, a Muslim president or an Inuit president - is that no nation has ever been or will ever be ready for a (blank) president, but EVERY nation is always ready for the RIGHT (blank) president.
Clinton is not the RIGHT woman president, clearly. She is too disliked, often for unfair reasons, I'll admit, but as her own campaign has proven, some of the reasons some people have for disliking her - her power-hunger, her arrogance, her disingenuousness about her own record, her political cowardice in supporting things she knows to be wrong - are very, very valid. As it turns out, Obama may very well be what Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were clearly not, the RIGHT black president.
You're not proving a woman can do the job of president if you support a woman who can't do the job of president, and the first job requirement is to win an election. By your own admission, the likelihood of Clinton doing that is now very low, and it would be lower still in the GE. I am thoroughly convinced somewhere in America right now is a woman or a little girl who will someday - maybe in eight years, maybe in 16, maybe in 40 - be the first woman president. Her name is not Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Rob, the "old" part was just wrong. We all get older.
1. In 1988, Jesse Jackson's strong showing prompted his supporters to advocate that he should be vice-president on the ticket. That didn't happen, since Sen. Lloyd Bentsen became the VP nominee by a voice, not roll-call vote.
2. The Democratic Party, "ever the crusader against institutional sexism," nominated Geraldine Ferraro for vice president in 1984. Since then, we've seen four white guys on the Democratic veep ticket, all senators, with three of them from the south (Bentsen, Gore, Edwards). There hasn't been another qualified female VP candidate in 24 years?
On a very core level, no. I don't like someone who will cry because she's losing but will cackle at the question of why she voted to authorize an unnecessary war that has now cost over 4000 American lives and countless other innocent Iraqi civilians; cackle when asked about her family profiting from a trade deal which has cost American jobs and helped support vicious drug lord thugs; cackle about her inept inability 16 years ago to support her health care plan, leading to the absolutely indefensible sorry state of health care in this country today. I'm glad she finds that stuff funny. I don't.
Calling a person like that arrogant, power-hungry and disingenuous is using among the more polite words I can find for it. There are a lot of other words that would be appropriate - callous, narcissistic, murderer. And if that makes me "a clone, a sheep" for saying so, well then just call me Dolly. Too baaaaaaad because I'm still baaaaaaaacking Baaaaaaaaarack all the way to the White House.
Psemerson, I'm sure there have been other qualified candidates; Nancy Pelosi seems to have what it takes, for example. But instead of relying on your tin-foil-hat white-guys-conspiracy theory, shouldn't you ask if any women have desired the role strongly enough to make the sacrifices necessary?
Hillary may be qualified for the White House the way Clarence Thomas was qualified for the Supreme Court, but in neither case is there evidence that each was the best available candidate.
Those who subscribe to the theory that only a (insert-minority-here) can represent (insert-same-minority) are just as guilty of racism, sexism, etc. Prejudice against white guys is still prejudice.
I don't care if Obama is black, or Hillary is a woman, or McCain is a "white guy". Anybody who votes for any them for their demographic identity is un-patriotic, superficial, and bigoted.
As for Andy, you don't know me, so to call me "pathetic" for voicing an opinion with which you disagree leads me to believe you are an emasculated, femi-nazi mook whose only relationship to manhood is a random XY chromosome. Two can play the ad hominem game, if you like.
I'll credit Jessica for dressing up this anti-feminist rant in semi-intellectual clothing, but if you know who she is, who she works for, this was an utterly predictable column subject, and not at all original (Rushbo did it first and best).
Looks like "... Hillary Rising" has flushed out all the guy-comments one could ever hope for on NewWest.net! At least I presume there are no successfully-hidden female comments above (based only on the comments made and those labels they have selected as their by-lines when making comments).
Naw ... I don't think NOW will accept your application. Maybe your bra ~ if it's big enough and you provide the match.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041004045.html
Big Donors Among Obama's Grass Roots
'Bundlers' Have a Voice in Campaign
By Matthew Mosk and Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 11, 2008; A01
Here's the article in a nutshell, for those who haven't read it: Over 1 million people have donated to Obama's campaign. Half of them (compared to a third of Clinton's and quarter of McCain's) - are "small-time donors" - those who donate $200 or less.
Of the remaining 500,000 who have donated $201 - $2,300 (the maximum allowable), some of them are people of great means and influence who have encouraged others to donate for Obama and have gotten them to do so: Owners of companies who have brought Obama to speak at their companies and thus had their employees enthused to vote for him; rich guys suggesting to other rich guys at the country club, "Say, you know who we should donate to? That Obama guy;" etc. Some of these so-called "bundlers" - who are really nothing more than enthusiastic supporters with some method of "bully pulpit" or another - are experienced at doing this; others are doing this for the first time.
Nothing illegal is stated or implied in the article. Nothing unethical is stated or implied. While the previous record-holder for this type of fundraising (George W. Bush) rewarded his bundlers with appointed positions, there is nothing in the article to suggest Obama has promised the same - in fact, one person quoted flatly denies it.
That's the story. That's it.
It's exactly as legal and ethical as me donating $2,300 and encouraging my mother, my brother, my sister, my girlfriend, my best friend and my roommate to support Obama and do the same - just on a bigger scale. It's exactly as legal and ethical as anybody setting up a pro-Clinton Website with a donation drive counter on the side. And it's MORE legal than what certain members of a certain candidate's supporting Website have done, which is to max out their donation amount and then give their husbands or friends money to donate to the candidate. (Which is flatly illegal, by the way.)
But, yes, it's very "interesting" how supporters of certain candidates will find any news story they can and use it to paint one candidate in a bad light. Very, very "interesting," indeed, Rose Mary.
It IS very "interesting" how supporters of certain candidates will find any news story (or published opinion piece) they can and use it to paint one candidate in a bad light.
I see in one of your comments above that you say you have been "...writing columns ..." for any number of years. If you were writing them "... in support of ... " any candidate for any political office in the USA then I must assume your columns were of a commentary nature that did not come under the heading of factual NEWS reporting?
I can only hope they were labeled and represented as such since I think most journalistic schools do teach the vast differences between the two ~ News and Opinion pieces ~ and the public deserves no less.
Nationwide The Press has let us down on that score, in my not-so-humble opinion, throughout this heated race for the presidency.
The presentation of FACTS about all three candidates has not been even handed nor have ALL the facts regarding all THREE candidates been given equal NEWS reporting; and, too many "opinions" have been interwoven with "news" making it very difficult for a reader to determine which is which. Perhaps you've noticed that?
We should demand better, don't you think? How else can any of us make an educated decision on election day?
All your comments on this page ~ including but not exclusive to your *interpretation* of the article ~ are your *opinions*.
The article itself was published as News, whether or not there are additional facts or circumstances ... or *opinions* ... contrary to any part of it. I personally found ALL the information given in the article "interesting" ~ and it was News to me that I had not seen published elsewhere. It did not appear to be interwoven with the authors' opinions.
I posted the link so anyone who wanted to read what was actually published could do so.
I did not post the link with any personal interpretive *commentary* ~ nor did I attempt to practice law without a license or encourage others to accept my own standards of practice when it comes to ethics.
If you disagree with anything published in that article or think that it is not factual then you should present your *opinions* to the authors of it.
If NewWest.net readers wish to accept your opinions and interpretations of the article in lieu of reading it for themselves that is most certainly their option and does effect me one way or the other.
http://www.fec.gov/law/feca/feca.pdf
That the article you linked to does not suggest Obama has done a single thing in violation of those laws is not an opinion. It is a fact.
I can't read your mind, and I can't know for sure why you posted that article. You DID provide commentary, however, calling it "equal time to the other Democratic candidate" - which is not factual. Posting that article does not constitute any kind of "equal time" in any sense of the phrase; discussion of both Obama and Clinton had already been going on prior to your posting that article, and the posting of that article does not rebut or refute any single comment made in the discussion prior to your posting it. Your calling it "equal time" DOES suggest it rebuts or refutes something, and it's not hard to see what kind of time it would equalize.
So I can't read your mind and know which candidate you support. But I do enjoy gambling in Vegas, and guessing which candidate you support is some of the easiest money I've ever seen.
And yes, I do know the difference between facts and opinion. I didn't learn it in journalism school. I learned it in third grade, when we had to write "F" or "O" next to statements. My nine-year-old daughter has learned it, too, and while she's a bright kid, it still didn't take her long at all to figure it out. That's easy.
What's apparently harder to figure out is the difference between opinions supported by fact and opinions supported by wishes for how we'd like things to be. It's a pretty critical difference.
For instance, it is the opinion of some based on the wish of how they'd like things to be that the media must be biased against Clinton, because why else would she be behind?
It is my opinion based on fact that the media has become a convenient and cliched scapegoat for any ills a politician may face. It is my opinion based on fact that all three candidates have had non-issues blown out of proportion in the media at some point during this election cycle. And it is my opinion based on fact that some Clinton supporters - a small number, to be sure, but one that is over-represented on the Internet - have been rabidly and desperately clutching at any straw they can find which might paint Obama in a bad light.
Apparently, and unfortunately, that fact does not prohibit you from attempting to do so.
But I am pretty sure there are a whole BIG bunch of well-paid attorneys licensed to practice law who would be interested in your theory that being able to read a published law might put them all in the unemployment lines immediately. Fortunately, that shall remain their problem to solve, not mine.
Obviously, you are free to express your opinions on this site ~ as am I. Lucky for me NewWest.net does not seem to have any requirement that I need your approval of any comment I make ~ nor do you need my approval for any you wish to make. Ain't THAT a wonderful thing?!
If you wish to assign intents and motivations to any other person, including but not exclusive to me, that is sure apt to lead you into self-deception me-thinks ... but do so at will with my blessing if that serves some purpose for you.
As I previously stated: "If NewWest.net readers wish to accept your opinions and interpretations of the article in lieu of reading it for themselves that is most certainly their option and does NOT effect me one way or the other."
I must admit to being fascinated, though, by all the heartburn that article has given you.
"Interesting" ...
Big time lawyers are fine. On the other hand, it doesn't take a law degree to see that if a store has a sign reading, "No shirt, no shoes, no service," and the Washington Post publishes an article saying Obama entered the store wearing a shirt and shoes and got service, he didn't violate the sign. It's kinda not that complicated.
You talk as though these facts are buried under some mainstream media conspiracy to publish opinions not facts. They're not. The article states what it states. The link I posted states what the law is. These things are pretty easy to find in 15 seconds on Google. You can read the article and imply something in there suggests something in the law is violated, but you haven't offered any actual places where it did. You just say, "Well, I'm not a lawyer, but neither are you." Fair enough, but where was a law violated, in your "opinion"? And if it wasn't, why bother posting it or discussing legalities?
I'm not a lawyer, I'm just not a moron.
I can't read your mind, but I can read what you type, and I'm still not a moron, Rose Mary. The article you posted had nothing to do with the discussion, and it had nothing to do with any point already made. It provided equal time of nothing, and it refuted nothing. Nobody in this conversation had ever discussed Clinton's or McCain's fundraising tactics prior to your introducing Obama's as "equal time."
But you called it equal time. Yeah, that takes a mind-reader and a lawyer to figure out.
I never said anyone did anything illegal so give it a rest fer-pity-sakes!
If all your rants are because I used the words "equal time" take some Malox and some Midol and get over it!
If you want to be the "comment police" to decide who can post what, where, on this website take it up with the Editor!
In the meantime I'll just remain fascinated by all the heartburn that article has given you and repeat for one last time:
"If NewWest.net readers wish to accept your opinions and interpretations of the article in lieu of reading it for themselves that is most certainly their option and does NOT effect me one way or the other."
Thank God I still live in America!! I am ready for peace!!
God BLESS America!!! PLEASE!!!
Thank you for writing a well thought out and interesting piece.
I agree with the premise that Hillary should continue her campaign going as long as she feels she has a legitimate chance to be a factor in the race. Personally, I feel the is the second best candidate running for the office of President, and I would vote for her if I did not feel that Obama was a better choice. It is off topic, so I will not go in to why I think Obama is the better candidate (you can look at my blog and search for Obama if you are interested puntiglio.com/blog).
I couldn't care less if a candidate is a man, woman, black, white, green or even (gasp) married or Christian. What I do care about is they are the best available person for the job. But even having said that, I fully support Hillary's continued efforts toward her goals of being President.
As a side note, I would like to draw some attention to this quote:
"...Let us remember what we as women's rights supporters, are charged to do: SUPPORT WOMEN!"
The key word there is "women". Womens rights supporters (of which, I am one) are charged to support "women", not a particular woman. It is entirely possibly to be completely supportive of womens rights and not chose to align with a particular woman on a particular issue or candidacy. (I'm not saying you misconstrued these words or manipulated them, in fact I am quite certain this is not the case).
Having said that, Come November, if her name is on the ballot and Obama's is not, you can count on this vote.
Again, thanks for the interesting read!
Soren