Enough About Us. What About Them?

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At the risk of offering yet another gender-based generalization, I'll wager that most women are ultimately pragmatic. And that for as many of us who define ourselves by the cut of our pocketbook, a lot more will vote what's in it. Sure we get a little tipsy at the symbolic value of seating the first woman president. But most of us will not cast a vote for that reason alone. As some of the newest wave of feminists keep reminding us, issues of class and race are as important to most women as gender is to the feminists that came before. The women who voted last Tuesday may have been saying less about themselves as women as they were telling us about themselves as voters.

I've loved every minute of the great big gender intervention we women have staged these past weeks—the frank discussions about public tears, brutish husbands and whether it's sexist or respectful to be asked to speak first. It's all been a long time coming, and it's focused the mind, and the women's movement, in all sorts of important ways.

But health reform and civil liberties and the Supreme Court and the war in Iraq and the economy are pragmatic problems, not symbolic ones. All this talk about women and America has been most illuminating, and I am now ready for it to be over. Hey, candidates? Enough about us, let's talk about you. And what you can do for us.

Dahlia Lithwick is a writer for Slate and Newsweek.

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Posted By: J.Richter @ 05/28/2008 4:23:46 PM

To those who keep infering hte democratic party did not want Clinton to win
- Look up until Feb 4. Hillary was ahead 270 - 180 in superdelegates. THIS IS THE PARTY!
- Bill and Hill are a democratic powerhouse with more access to donors than anyone in the party (Proof. Bill earned almost $100m in a few years after presidency).
- Democrats like to win. You saw the handwringing after Kerry 04 and even before. They know it wil be hard to elect a black man. They expected the system to take care of him like it did Sharpton, Jackson b4 him.
- Even the black vote was initially Clinton property. BO had 38% support as late as Nov 2007.
- And Clinton had more media surrogates than BO (inclding SNL, George Stephanopoulos - a former staffer and almost all ABC and yes even Keith at the beginning. BO started to get good coverage slowly including from Mika whose Dad was an advisor to BO and later even lost it there when Joe went for Hill till this day).
- Even the issue of Michigan and Florida is an example. The RNC made their rule and stuck to it. THe DNC kept waffling on theirs when Hillary was getting behind to leave wiggle room to install what they thought was a stronger candidate. If Hillary had won on Feb 4 or even leading today (and BO had Michigan and Florida) trust me no one would even go back to those issues.

So what's left. Someone suddenly woke up and decided to support this mixed guy with a muslim middle name because they like to lose. Let's not let the emotion of the day cloud our thinking!. Now why he won, that's a different story. But Hillary lost as much as he won due to her own competencies and deficiencies.
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Posted By: loriw @ 05/27/2008 8:52:36 PM

You want us to believe that Hillary can stand up to Big Oil but she couldn't even stand up to her own husband and tell him to keep the Big Willie in his pants and get back to running the country. Hillary couldn't manage her own marriage and now she wants us to put them both back in the White House. The
First Dysfunctional Family - Senator Clinton and Former President Bill Clinton.
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Posted By: ToadTreeHugger @ 05/27/2008 7:24:02 PM

Hillary can win in November, but the media is doing all it can to not only tank her campaign but her career now as well.

In contrast, Obama, who has outspent Hillary by 3:1 even 4:1, has lost five of the last seven primaries, lost all the battleground states, and punted the swing states. In the general election, the GOP will not only target Obama's Achilles heel, but will amplify it ten times. They already have enough ammo with Wright, but when you add Rezko into the mix, you have serious damage.

On the issues, Hillary is the only one standing up to Big Oil. She is the only one with an excellent environmental record. She has the best health care plan. She has stood up for human rights around the world.

In contrast, Obama voted for Cheney's energy bill. He voted for the Class Action Reform Bill of 2005 which makes it difficult for families to bring class-action suits against corporate polluters. He personally crafted a bill to not only water down regulations of radioactive leaks but to prevent local and state authorities from regulating nuclear power plants. He's in bed with the nuclear industry and fighting for its executives instead of the families that have been harmed by its negligence.

What's appalling is that Obama claims that he is above special interests, when in fact he receives more money from special interests than any other candidate. He is preying on youth and their idealism and he is able to get away with it because the media has been in the tank for him since day one, and we now live in an age of American Idol and MySpace.

Obama told large crowds of students how Cheney's energy bill was bad for America, but never once mentioned the fact that he voted for it, and the media never questioned it. He has boasted about authoring bills that he never he even worked on. He was caught in his double-talk with NAFTA and Iraq troop withdrawals. He made a pledge to use public financing a year ago, accusing the current political system of being corrupt, but now has his own political machine that is two, three, four times more powerful than anything we've seen before. He has financial sheisters like Penny Pritzker running his finance committee, and Exelon executives bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars for him.

There has been a double-standard in the media where everything that Clinton has said has been deconstructed and reconstructed to fit an ugly image. If she had a shadowy relationship with Rezko and a corrupt Chicago political machine, or had a 20 year relationship with Wright, or was making back room deals with the Teamsters or nuclear power executives, or was donating large sums to superdelegates to sway their votes, and was out all the while stumping about how corrupt Washington politics is, how bad special interests are, and how a change needed to be brought about, she would have been toast on day one.