NARAL - a Non-Profit activist group devoted primarily to the preservation of Women's right to access to abortions, but also to other "women's issues" - officially announced its endoresement of Barack Obama the other day.
That seems like a rather bland and ordinary announcement, hardly worthy of notice, since Obama is clearly going to be the Democratic nominee, and thus the only remaining viable Presidential Candidate who shares their view with regard to their primary mission. The reaction was anything but.
In response to this announcement, there came a storm of indignation from all corners of the blogosphere, as well as their own website. Members were outraged that NARAL would have the temerity to throw its support behind Obama before Clinton withdrew from the race. Why?
It is because Hillary is a far stronger proponent of the right of women to obtain legal abortions? Not that any of them claimed, and not that I can tell.
Is it because Hillary's stand on "women's issues" is demonstratively stronger than Obama's? Again, not that I was able to find, either in their claims or in the stated positions of the candidates.
The reason - explicitly stated by these writer, themselves - was because Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Obama is not. What kind of a reason is that? How can members of a movement claim the high ground morally and intellectually, then take such a narrow, bigoted position?
Early on in the primary process - through the month of February - the prevailing wisdom was that these two remaining candidates were so close in their positions that the chances of either distinguishing themselves in a debate would be small. (The pundits ignored the two candidates' historical positions on the Iraq war.) But as the Texas and Ohio primaries approached, Hillary Clinton embarked on a crusade to separate herself from her opponent, and she succeeded - in spades.
In the process, her campaign began to seek out and exploit wedge issues designed to win over white voters, and sought to invoke fear as a motivating factor to support her. She went so far as to imply that John McCain would be a better President than Obama. In other words, Hillary adopted Republican talking points and methods in quest to damage Obama enough to win the nomination for herself.
In the process, Hillary managed to win those states where such appeals were most likely to impress a significant number of voters. While she managed to lure away some of Obama's support, much of her support came from primary voters unlikely to vote for either of them in the general election, but who were either concerned enough about the potential for an Obama Presidency to attempt to block it in the primaries, or who were interested in merely wreaking havoc on the Democratic Primary process. But in the end, the gambit failed.
These moves clearly distinguished her from Obama, with rare and brief exceptions, but not in a way most liberal voters could be expected to approve.
One might think that this would be reason enough for a liberal group to consider moving toward Obama. Not for these members. For them, nothing Hillary had done or said was enough to overcome her single overriding quality that left her head and shoulders above Obama in their view: Her lack of a Y chromosome.
Not only did they disagree with the decision, they disagreed so vehemently, they are threatening to throw the election to the Anti-Choice McCain in the fall. There is no better adjective to describe this rage than the word "irrational".
What is it with these people? DO they not understand how destructive "identity politics" has been in this country? Do they not understand that "identity politics" on behalf of any single arbitrarily-defined "group" is as harmful as "identity politics on behalf of White Protestant Men?
America needs to grow up in a hurry if we are to have any chance of avoiding complete catastrophe by the end of the decade. No better time to start than now. No better place to start than here.
ADDENDUM: Well, this is pushed off the front page now - just as the western two time zones are brewing their coffee. I have not been around long enough to gather enough readers for a realistic chance at gaining a "rescue" mention tonight, so, I am humbly requesting that those of you who find this post worthy of a wider audience, please link to it and/or quote it freely in other posts and blogs, when and where the subject arises.
Thank you very much!
