It’s not just about who gets the nomination this year. In spite of the obstacles, I feel like Hillary’s in a pretty good position. Her campaign continues to build. Her message is resonating with voters. And August is a long, long ways away.
But this election has exposed some things about the Democratic Party that many of us never wanted to see. And no matter how the nomination process ends I’m saying goodbye to some long standing political relationships.
By way of Taylor Marsh:
A Farewell to the ‘Hillary Nutcracker’ and Other Obscenities, By Marie Cocco
Most of all, I will not miss the silence.
I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven’t uttered a word of public outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.
As Taylor Marsh says:
Truth is that The Brokered One is in trouble. Not just because he can’t win West Virginia, even after Clinton is declared a goner. Not just because he’s a very weak general election candidate, while Clinton is the stronger. But because he sat around in silence as all the sexism and racism charges were leveled against Hillary, with his campaign doing some of the race baiting themselves, doing nothing about any of it, which Hillary’s supporters will not soon forget. He wasn’t the only one, but he sent the signal that it was okay. Lunch bucket Democrats will remember, even as some so called progressive proclaim they don’t matter anymore. That’s why he won’t be getting the votes of many HRC supporters if he’s the nominee. Frankly, I can’t blame them. This story is not going away.
This story is not going away
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Amen, sister!
I agree wholeheartedly. I just sent this letter to Marie Cocco:
Dear Ms. Cocco,
I love you for saying what you did about the sexism directed at Hillary in this campaign. I am a 64 year old woman and I have been absolutely appalled. Now the Obama campaign wants to know what they “can do” to get women to vote for him. I’ll tell you what -NOTHING! It’s like being raped and then being told to just “get over it.”
I think millions of women in this country feel the same way. The viciousness on the blogs is unbelievable. I would be horrified if this were the Republicans but these are supposed Democrats and “progressives” who are doing this.
I will not vote for anyone who arouses such hatred and venom in his followers towards women or anyone else. If the MSM and the Dems force Hillary out of this race and shove this guy from nowhere down our throats, there will be a rout in November and it won’t be Senator McCain losing.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Campbell
HALLE – FRIGGIN – LUJIAH
At first, I thought something was wrong with me, to the point that I even questioned my antipathy towards votin for Obama in Nov.
I’m a Democrat, I’m SUPPOSED to support he nominee, no matter what.
But that’s changed, because our party threw us away. Riverdaughter wrote that great “Unaffiliated” post that almost made me cry for the party that disowned us, but it empowered me to vote for Hillary, becuase even if my vote “didn’t count” for the primary, my FL vote WILL BE HEARD in November.
The scars are too deep.
I have already changed my registration to unaffiliated. I can no longer be part of the Democratic party after this primary season. The prejudice by the DNC in favor of Obama, Ted Kennedy and his “he needs someone like him for his vp”, the misogny, the terrible things said about Hillary by the Obama supporters, and Donna “Brazshrill” have all contributed to driving me from the party after 48 years. I still support Hillary and will be writing her name on the ballot in November.
The comments on the article at the truthdig site are awful — just more sexism piled high and deep.
Why should I vote for a party that hates my gender? It’s a betrayal of all the suffragists ever suffered for.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Democratic Party. What I’m starting to realize is, we brought ourselves to this point. We ended the 90s with one of the strongest Presidents in recent history. Our economy was strong. Our country was at peace. But do you know what I remember most about that time? The constant haranguing about Bill’s infidelity. I think the Dems were embarrassed. Instead of embracing all the good Bill did for the country, closing ranks and protecting it’s own, it approached the 2000 elections with it’s tail tucked between it’s proverbial legs. Gore should have won; I believe he would have if he had used Clinton. Instead he distanced himself, not just from the man, but from his message and Clinton’s message spoke to core Dems.
Did we learn from this lesson in 2004? Instead we put forth a candidate even more disconnected from the Clinton Dems. I see this Primary as the culmination of the remodeling of the Democratic Party. It shows me the brilliance of the Republican machine, that started us down this path and the brilliant gullibility of the Dem leadership who followed. Welcome to the New Democratic Party, the bastard step-son of the Republican party.
Gee Katiebird, you sound bitter.
You don’t have a gun, do you?
votermom: But truthdig is a bastion of liberalism. They can’t be (gasp) misogynists, can they?
“Equality for me, but not for thee!”
hey, found this on Larry Johnson’s No Quarter:
http://www.writehillaryin.com
Write her in!
@derridog, 5:16 PM
“I will not vote for anyone who arouses such hatred and venom in his followers towards women or anyone else.”
Exactly. The emotionalism this campaign has stirred up, is frightening, to say nothing of the emotions themselves.
Which brings me to another question: Why did Thatcher manage to get elected, while Hillary’s candidacy is causing such hysteria? Is it because women are more truly a threat now, 20 years later? Because this particular woman is more truly a threat? Something’s going on, and I don’t like the look of it.
myiq2xu, no. I don’t have a gun. I don’t mean to sound bitter.
It’s weird to think that one of the reasons I hesitated to support Hillary back when was that she’d be likely to replace Dean.
Now? It’s one of the reasons I’m desperate for her to win.
I’m sad really.
If I change my party affiliation to Independent, will that somehow trigger getting called for jury duty? That’s the only thing holding me back. (only half kidding. believe me, jury duty in downtown L.A. isn’t pretty).
I kind of hesitate to leave the party, though. After all, it’s my party, too. I am hoping that IF he is the nominee, an Obama loss in November will bring these idiots to their senses. I am hoping that Howie and Donna B. will go bye-bye, the Blogger Boiz will get their comeuppance, the man that kidnapped Josh Marshall will be prosecuted, etc. I want it to be Hillary’s Democratic party, not Creative Class PBR drinking Whole Foods Shopping Misogynist Blogger Boy Arugala Party.
It feels incredibly weird to know that for the first time in my 49 years, I am not going to vote for the president this November.
If I think too hard about it, I might cry.
I am hoping that when all is said and done a strong, forceful, feminine party emerges from this outrageous primary. What has been done to this female candidate, regardless of whether she has your voter support or not, is shameful. To let it stand will be sending our daughters and granddaughters the message that you take your pride into your own hands should you ever decide to run for public office. That you cannot count on the voices of other females to come to your aid since we have seen in this primary that many female voices chose to remain silent or at worst, joined in.
Whatever happens in this race, Hillary will stand as a beacon for women who took the abuse on behalf of others when God knows she had every reason to step away. Her willingness to put herself in harms way displays her strength and determination and opens the door for others. Just be prepared as the onslaught will soon follow. Until men begin to accept and respect the rights of women this is what awaits.
God bless our Hillary!
The long dark tea time of the soul. Isn’t this Richard Addams– Of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe?
My favorite quote from him:
“I love deadlines…. I love the swooshing sound they make as they go by.”
Kind of fits with this primary season. Let them swish by, they’re all just blips on the screen. Hillary will get the nod. Even the lowest motivation–self-preservation will make the automatic delegates choose her. And for the enlightened- she is the clear, and the only choice.
And she will have a sweet win this evening.
angelasmith, Douglas Adams wrote Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. And that quote. It does all seep apt, doesn’t it?
Pat, me too. I’m hoping that Hillary wins the nomination and the Democratic Party will grow up.
CC, write HIllary in, that’s what I plan to do.
I’m a little torn up about switching parties. in a way, it’ll be good that millions of Democrats leave, or that they DON’T vote for Obama in November.
Hopefully, those that don’t, will write in Hillary instead of voting for McCain.
Hey Katiebird, I just went and googled that, feeling that I was off. Yep. It’s Douglas Adams. Now I’m wondering who the hay Richard Addams is. But
Douglas Adams is the guy who gave that quote about deadlines. I used to have that quote above my desk… don’t know where it’s gotten to.
One thing this election has shown is that we have been so focused on beating the GOP these last 8 years we didn’t realize we need to put our own house in order.
The signs were all there after the 2006 election when the Democratic majority in Congress was worse than do-nothing, they were sell-outs.
The netroots turned out to be fauxgressives and they sold-out too.
On the bright side, Hillary has stepped out of Bill’s shadow and proven herself to be a strong leader worthy of our support.
Ann On wrote: “Which brings me to another question: Why did Thatcher manage to get elected, while Hillary’s candidacy is causing such hysteria? Is it because women are more truly a threat now, 20 years later? Because this particular woman is more truly a threat? Something’s going on, and I don’t like the look of it.”
Ann, I heard a British commentator express the same concern recently. He said that in Europe they’ve had women rulers for 1000s of years, and he didn’t get the way the Americans were carrying on over a woman president. It seemed ridiculous to him as I’m sure it does to a lot of Europeans.
I don’t have an answer for it. I wish I did. It bothers me greatly that for a number of years, America was moving forward in its view of the role of women. Now, I see us moving backward. What the heck! Let’s blame the media. They’re at fault for most everything else.
Hillary would be stronger in the ge, and have a greater mandate in office. She also has the brains to govern effectively, and, in a time when we enjoy massive political capital, would be able to advance the progressive agenda for decades to come.
He knows zilch about policy formation, snagged a few Clinton ideas and ruined them, by not supporting universal care and trashing bipartisanship with Wright and BitterGate; and he recites a dated liberal wish list that would do nothing to solve current problems. He would fail in office and cost us the congress and presidency in the next cycle. And it’s not clear if the party would recover in our lifetime.
That is why the msm have supported him from the start. They simply could not tolerate a skilled and knowledgeable Clinton in office when the opposition is so weak.
http://a-civilife.blogspot.com
I left the party for unaffliated. Make sure if you write in Hillary that your state allows it. Some states will give the vote to the party that person represented–in other words, Obama. So check with your registrar of voters before you do it.
The only way for Dems to understand that this will hurt them is to send in your new voter registration copy saying “erasure from Democratic party” or something like that. Obama keeps bringing them in, they say. No, he is driving us out.
It is kinda like an “Atlas Shrugged” moment. In the book all the ‘productive’ people start disappearing. Before long the world is falling apart, and the ‘productive’ people are off in their own world and they basically wash their hands of mankind. I really hate the book, it is a horrible diatribe against working together for the common good of the world. But the new Honora says what the fu#k, just try and get along without us. The Democratic Party will be a sad, drooping version of its old self. They need some tough love. If the unspeakable happens and Obama is the nominee, I plan on writing Dean on election day and telling him that I voted for no Democrats for the first time in my life. Once Obama loses, they will know why. I know that some have said that they will vote down-ticket, but I do not see Democrats supporting Hillary and I don’t feel like supporting them.
I got my registration form today so that I could change from Democrat to Independent. It makes me sad really, but the party I loved turned its back on me and all women.
On the other hand, it rekindled the fire of the 70’s to me.
My feminism is stronger than ever – and look out – I’m not afraid of anyone nor beholden to any party now.
Let’g go womyn – show ’em what we’re made of – we’re mas as Hell and we’re not going to take it anymore!
Vote No Obama – but Chelsea’s MAMA!
Okay Richard Adams wrote Watership Down.
Also applicable to the primary season. Those rabbits had to go through a hell of a lot before they got to their beautiful home. In most great novels, great movements in history, there is always a very difficult struggle before final success. We’re in the midst of the struggle– that’s all. Just wait until the beautiful part starts!
Thatcher won largely because they have a parlimentary government.
Also more novels–
Have you ever noticed what happens when real good comes to the fore? It is always met with resistance.
All the rot comes out to fight it. Hillary is taking on not only a real bag-o-crap in Obama, but the dead wood in the Democratic party, and the in-ept sick people in the media. Hillary is making them all go insane because they deep-down can feel she is so much better than they are. It drives evil people crazy when they are confronted with good. They have no vocabulary to deal with it…. therefore they just turn to sputtering hate. She will win the nomination.
There aren’t enough Obama Death-Eaters to stop us.
Hermione and Harry always win!
Honora,
I see this as an Atlas Shrugged moment in that all the self-named “Creative Class” types (Bowers, I’m looking at you) are probably the same Rand Libertarian fan boys who declare Atlas as “teh best book evah”! I think some of them may be viewing their “movement” as one and the same as Atlas Shrugged. Obama is their John Gault.
How soul saving to hear the voices of women protesting the way that HRC has been treated. The anger, the disbelief that one’s own so called “progressive” friends suffer such “Hillary Hatred” that they take leave of their senses. I love the new term “fauxgressives” provided by myiq2xu. I am adding it to my daily use vocab.
@Melanie, 6:06
“Thatcher won largely because they have a parlimentary government.”
Point taken. But did she stir up this kind of misogynistic hysteria?
(I kind of hesitate to leave the party, though. After all, it’s my party, too. I am hoping that IF he is the nominee, an Obama loss in November will bring these idiots to their senses.)
they left you!!leave the party! you can always come back…and then you may not want to…after may 20 i change my voter registration….i can absolutely tell you i don’t want to associate myself with these dnc people. this has been totally uncalled for all of it…as if the last 8 years have not been hell enough…this mess..and WE did not do it!
Thank Melissa McEwan for “fauxgressive.”
I wish I could claim credit but I’m not one of the “creative class.”
Sad isn’t it, how the faugressives said “we need to be better organized” to fight the GOP, but trhen they decided to hijack the organizations to advance their own ambitions.
I don’t think I could ever leave the Democratic Party…but I will be sitting down w/ a nice legal pad in front of me figuring out how to fix it soon…
As far as “misogyny”: I recently e-mailed my local editorial page editor about them running four anti-Hillary editorial cartoons in a row. I don’t mind them running anti-Hillary cartoons (well…you know…), but four in a row seemed a bit much.
I told him, “hey, we got it, people don’t like Hillary, let’s move on to something else.” At the end of the e-mail, I added, “…and I won’t even go into the misogyny argument.”
He e-mailed me back (disclosure: I know him and used to work at the said paper) saying that it was the news of the day, and that’s how cartoons are chosen, just like Rev. Wright cartoons were chosen. Then he took me slightly to task for using the m-word, calling it a “barnyard epitaph.”
So did I got too far? At first, I thought maybe (dang you, e-mail and giving my tongue free thought!). But this is what gets me about these cartoons…one of them was innocuous enough. But most of them draw her fat, angry, and over all bitch-y. I’ve seen the woman three times in person in the past month…she’s not fat! Nor angry! …and I haven’t seen her be bitch-y yet (though I’m sure she’s capable!).
But the depiction of her in most cartoons is blatant, at least to me. Maybe I’m too nuanced in examining the socio-psychological depictions of Sen. Clinton (and, by extension, all powerful woman) in editorial cartoons, but to me there is a message of misogyny either intended by the artist and/or able to be conveyed by the viewer. B/c “bothersome” women are fat, loud, etc. I mean, drawing her skinny and smiling (like she is)…god forbid!
And what does it come down to? That sexism is all right. It’s acceptable. I mean, if this was done on a racial basis, we all know what would happen, b/c race is a “charged” issue. I mean, Imus says three words and all hell breaks loose. But sexism? Meh. No big deal, right? And the difference, I’m sad to say, is that some women are complicit in it, whereas there are not that many self-racist blacks. And sex does not have the solidarity that race does (what would this country look like if 91% of women all voted the same way?!?).
I guess, also in disclosure, I’m a guy…so what do I know, right?
…anyways…
cloudy03:
Welcome to the New Democratic Party, the bastard step-son of the Republican party.
The truth in that makes me so sad.
I don’t think that Obama or Dean or Brazile or Pelosi realize, even now, the extent to which the attacks on Hillary have hurt and offended and angered so many American women. As usual, we are taken for granted. We may hold up half the sky, but something tells me we’ve been holding up more than half the Democratic party at the core level. When the sky starts to fall down around them, what are they going to do?
As for what Obama can do to get me to vote for him in the GE, should he get the nomination? Not a damn thing. Despite my feelings about the way his campaign has benefited from and participated in the misogynist hailstorm directed at Hillary, and despite how he fought down the possibility of a revote for MI and FL, I made a queasy deal with myself a few weeks ago: If Obama, as a man who was raised by two women (mother and grandmother), as a husband to a woman, and as the father of two little girls, came out and categorically denounced Keith Olbermann’s vicious little fantasy of a “super super superdelegate” teaching Hillary what happens to uppity women…if he did that, then I would vote for him in November if I couldn’t vote for Hillary. But, of course, that would have caused a rift with his very own propaganda outlet, MSNBarack, so why would he do that? I mean, it’s not like he actually cares about women, but I guess he didn’t realize that he’d need our votes. Oh, well. Now he can go whistle for my vote.
it is a horrible diatribe against working together for the common good of the world. But the new Honora says what the fu#k, just try and get along without us. The Democratic Party will be a sad, drooping version of its old self.
Isn’t it always the women who work together for the common good, and the boys who just take the cookies without bothering to ask who baked them (let alone say thank you)?
Know why the Libertarians need our party? Look at the Libertarian party. Nobody has invested in building it up into anything. Everyone wants to take, but nobody wants to give. No volunteers working toward a larger goal, because their only real goal is “equality for me and screw you”.
When nobody works together to build anything, what do you end up with? They’re all out for themselves and who cares about anyone else. So they’ll take this party and do what they can with it – and we must not enable that. Not just because we are worth more – but because the world counts on women to save everyone from selfish little boys who want to eat all the cookies.
because the world counts on women to save everyone from selfish little boys who want to eat all the cookies.
Oh – and no disrespect to the men intended!
But this election has exposed some things about the Democratic Party that many of us never wanted to see.
Well said but it is time to go leave the Party. And maybe something good comes out of this sham of a Dem Primary, maybe it’s the final blow that brakes the stranglehold the two Party’s have on our country, on our governance and our pocketbooks, the rose colored glasses hopefully shattered trust destroyed the illusion of fuax principal gone they had to fix their own race. We should never have been electing representatives based on manufactured wedgies or Party labels designed to divide the power of the people instead of voting our interest. While we have focused on tearing each other apart for Party affiliation our Politicians have continued to bankrupt and corrupt good governance.
Obama’s tacit approval of the “no respeta a nuestra gente” ad is not going away.
The furtive finger is not going away.
Michelle Obama’s reflating of debunked accusations is not going away.
Josh Marshall’s daily slants and smears are not going away.
Jesse Jackson Jr’s “she never cried for Katrina” is not going away
Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein’s paranoid delusions are not going away.
Kevin Drum and Brad deLong’s capitulations to government of the media by the media and for the media are not going away.
Markos and his merry band of scoundrels … they can just go away.
P.S. Matt Stoller, Chris Bowers, and the Creative Writing Class … are they still here?
Blame us, of course! Bad, bad little Democrats. Don’t you know your place? I honestly think that this is good for our party on some level. We need to weed out all the rotted stink and get back to the core values that made us all Democrats to begin with.
/The Democratic Party will be a sad, drooping version of its old self./
The Democratic Party has been a sad, drooping version of its old self for about 40 years.
And great point about the Libertarian hijacking of the Democratic Party, dovetailing conveniently with the corporate/Wall Street hijacking of our very PUBLIC airwaves.
Thanks to this site, and to Taylor, Anglachel, Melissa, JeralynBTD, and Larry J. and a few others, I don’t have to keep asking “Where’s the outrage?”
OBTW, aren’t some of you women the same ones who experienced a certain “click” moment–or quite a few such moments–around 1971, was it? Following on the more parochial but earth-shifting “click” registered by the SDS women in 1968? What ever became of those little epiphanies? Will we see in November?
The Obama Nutcracker here:http://madinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2008/05/unmissed.html
Thatcher won because she was a rabid right-winger who had no interest in women’s issues. The UK media supported her all the way because of that. Thatcher wouldn’t have made a speech saying that women’s rights were human rights and human rights were women’s rights, and it would have gone against everything she held dear to have done what Hillary did and go on TV and promise to tax the rich. The UK media hates Hillary just as much as the US media does.
Hlllary has always supported women’s issues. She runs as a woman who believes that women are equal to men and who doesn’t lie about the sexist obstacles she faces unlike so many successful women who keep up the pretense that there is no such thing as misogyny in order to stay on the right side of their male masters. She’s a threat to the misogynist boyz club which is why they are trying so hard to bring her down.
I helped create the “Mad is Hell” video along with IndyRobin.
I created a NEW VIDEO: “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!”
It’s about Obama’s silence on sexism against Hillary Clinton and his own sexist remarks.
If you approve of the video, I’d appreciate your help in spreading the video by creating a post on the video and ask that you and your readers go to youtube to RATE, COMMENT & mark FAVORITE the video.
Thanks.
Man, I heard that. I can’t read those guys anymore. All I ever look at is Friday Catblogging.
I am now an Independent. When we finally had a majority; our Congressional leaders did not have the backbone to stand up to the Repubs and do what they were elected to carry out. We waited and waited, but they never carried out their promise.
I will never forgive Kerry, Kennedy, Dean, and Brazile, the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the Democratic Party. If Hillary is not the presidential nominee, I vote McCain. I will not vote for any Democrat who sat silently to the side and allowed the assault on HRC an her supporters. In truth, I see Obama as another #43; he is smoke and mirrors.
I will not write in Hillary, because she will not win that way. No write-ins, because Obama could still win that way, They must lose or their treatment of Hillary will be acceptable forever after. My only fear is that she takes the VP, so like so many woman she does the work while he gets the glory.
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