Dios mio, Senator Clinton. How I admired you as a young girl. You were my role model, yes: A strong, unafraid, fiercely independent woman whose great compassion, intellect and accomplishment inspired me as a teenager to never allow being female to make me feel secondary; to have perseverance in all things worth trying to achieve, no matter how improbable; most importantly, to find ways to turn a disadavantage into an advantage.
Believing I could set high goals for myself and meet or exceed them, as you showed me, by example, was not only possible, but a matter of determination; for this, I owe you a debt of gratitude. I ran track in high school and set new marks for achievement, made The National Honor Society, became a Big Sister, volunteered for community service and spent my weeknights reading to the elderly and writing letters for people whose understanding of English was limited.
So how did we get to this impasse? How did we come to a point that I, one of your biggest fans, feel nothing but pity, disdain and embarrassment for you? How did you lose my vote, my hours of volunteer work, my every-payday-like-clockwork contributions?
feminism
Main Entry: fem·i·nism
Pronunciation: \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1895
1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
You were a shining beacon of feminism to me. I'll admit it: I felt your husband was weak and ineffective late in his term, but you had the strength and excellence in all things to compensate. When you ran for Senator, I cheered you on. When you ran for President, I was thrilled. You had worked hard, for a very long time, but even better, you worked with efficacy and brilliance. It was an honor to think of President Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"When Hillary Clinton announced she was running, I was like, hands down, that's it. I'm voting for her. Then I see that stream of light that is Barack Obama and at first I was like, what, is he crazy? I felt pressure on both sides," said Coleman, 36, a stay-at-home mom who works part time as a wedding planner. "She's a woman -- how could I not support her? He's a black man -- how could you not support him?"
Coleman, who is African American, pondered the Clinton-Obama question after church every Sunday for weeks with her husband, brother and sister-in-law. Their talks usually came to a single question: Is sexism or racism the bigger issue in America?
For Coleman, the answer was pretty easy. It took her a full day to think of an instance when she had faced sexism, finally recalling a time when she managed men who had difficulty taking direction from a woman.
To this, I would agree with Ms. Coleman in theory. Our generation isn't living in the times of Marilyn French's The Women's Room. Sexism, when it comes, can be so subtle, so socially engineered and artificially flavored that we don't even recognize it until we're left with a memory like a bitter aftertaste. Not always, but sometimes. The needle of racism is much more familiar.
But she didn't have any trouble remembering stinging encounters with racism. "Even now, I can have both kids, be wearing a fabulous outfit and carrying a gorgeous purse, and be in an elevator and someone will still clutch their purse," she said.
And that is a big part of the reason she voted for the black man instead of the white woman.
"She is still breaking barriers, and her inability to win the nomination is not a result of her hitting the glass ceiling, so to speak, but more of, maybe this time the needs of the people were met with another candidate," Coleman said.
Ms. Coleman, women who blog, tell me, please. Since when do we try to scare each other (using the triple hitter of "your children are safe," the post-9/11 George Bush cynicism and last, not least, attempted conciliatory Mom knows best? I submit to you: We don't. You get our votes by being competent, qualified, strong, but you will never get them by trying to scare us or make our children (who are, after all, our lives) targets of terror.
If the idea is to peel off Obama supporters, and perhaps some of his African-American voters, it’s likely to fail since all she is doing is indirectly mocking them for connecting with his campaign style and its underlying "hope" message. Source: The Moderate Voice.
During the NOW tour across Ohio, the makeup of each audience was almost exclusively white, middle-age women, many of whom had joined the organization in the late 1960s or 1970s. NOW's infrastructure has faded in Ohio, where only a handful of cities still maintain active chapters. Nationally, the organization maintains about 500,000 members, a number that has remained fairly steady since NOW was founded in 1966. As the organization's membership ages, leaders have lowered membership fees and started chapters at colleges in an effort to attract younger women.
"The heyday was really when we were fighting for the Equal Rights Amendment, and none of the chapters are as strong as they used to be," said Diane Dodge, NOW president in Ohio. "It's a different time. There's a sense of complacency."
Reading articles about what Clinton's candidacy means for my gender, I realized I'm one of the women some older feminists resent, the young women who by "no longer feeling the urgency of the women's movement" are undermining its legacy. Now, decades later, it's "You go, girl!" for a woman on her way to the presidency and we kids, the beneficiaries of countless gender reforms made before we could pick up a Barbie, act like we don't see the big deal.
If I had fought the fight in the 1970s, I might hate me, too.
It's a question all American women and blacks must have asked themselves at least once during this extraordinary campaign: By not immediately latching on to the candidate who could smash the ancient white-maleness of the White House with your under-represented, sometime oppressed identity, are you being a foot soldier for a nation of individuals, not labels? Or are you just abandoning yourself?
Undecided? Disenchanted with your tactics, Senator? Oh, I could tell you stories that you'd deny and denouce and reject. Stories whispered to me in line at the bank, shouted over the backyard fence, confided in late night phone calls. If I can't vote for Clinton, am I still a feminist? And no one considering Obama that early on; the plan was: "I just won't vote." They don't want to end up crushed under your heel now that it's obvious you'll do whatever it takes and then some to get your way. These are people who would have walked to Pennsylvania to GOT(HRC)V last week.
And now, you've lost them; you've lost so many of us.
Has this rhetorical firestorm had an effect on the political decisions of college-educated white women? I don't know. But I do know that many of these women have succeeded by meeting or exceeding society's expectations. And the movement quality of the Obama campaign has certainly raised expectations of commitment to its candidate well beyond those of a normal political campaign. This has to be generating powerful peer pressure.
The commentary can feel like something close to intimidation, a gantlet of verbal punishment meted out to anyone who dares to disagree. It's well established social science that women on the whole are much more averse to political conflict than men are, so it's fair to speculate that avoiding that gantlet may be one more reason women are tilting toward Obama. --Source: The Washington Post
No one would begrudge your winning honestly and fairly. It's the shaming and scolding and desperate campaign tactics that make people want to give up. They'll say they've fought for years to be heard but it's never happened before, so why would it happen now? Senator Clinton, you'll never convince me you don't know this, and it's not calculated to discourage the already Jim Crow'd and Trujillato'd and Castro'd to the point of defeat and unworthiness. Yeah, you knew this.
Instead, Clinton delivered, in B-plus (at best) manner, her generic stump speech: she has experience and she would be ready to go as president on Day One. She took a few of the usual pokes at Obama, noting "we need a president who won't just call for change... but a president who will produce change." She said voters should not make a "leap of faith" in selecting a nominee. She did shift one of her rhetorical standards. Instead of offering herself as ready to lead, she declared she was ready to win. Noting that she has been pursued by conservative antagonists for years, she maintained she was the candidate best "able to withstand the Republican attack machine." She added, "The one thing you know about me after 16 years of taking all their incoming fire, I am still here."
The message: they will crush Obama, so you better vote for me.
That's not exactly inspirational. But what else does she have to offer? She has been making the experience argument for a year, and Iowa Democrats said, thanks, but no thanks. Source: Mother Jones
It occurs to me that your campaign consistently appeals to our worst fears.
"The question is not about picking up the phone," Obama said. "The question is: what kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We've had a 'red phone moment'. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer." Source: ABC
Your AUMF vote was a moment when you could have led but didn't. I have no doubt that had you and former President Clinton taken a stand, questioned the salespitch you didn't question, insisted on diplomatic resolution with the same effort you insist entitles you to be our next president, this nation would have followed your leadership by example and strenuously objected the war in Iraq.
"They (Mr. Obama’s campaign) just think that all of a sudden out of the blue with no qualifications whatsoever they can try to take away what other people have worked for very, VERY hard their entire lives." --Ohio, February, 2008
Can you imagine a male politician breaking down in public the day before a crucial vote - and expecting it to help?
It's time feminists realized that Clinton is a dream gone sour. If you believe in women in politics, in female leaders who lead by themselves, on their own merits, with no strings to pull and husband-presidents to rely on, do yourself a favor and vote for Obama.
One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one.
