I wonder
January 29, 2008
I wonder if I could sum up my problems with identity politics in a neat 400 hundred words or so.
Ah, here we go.
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, and the Family and Medical Leave Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.
And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). “They” are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future.
The ultimate betrayal.
I would have been more than a little shocked if Teddy went for Hillary. Teddy and the Clintons represent two separate spheres of influence in the Democratic party, with the Clintons occupying the moderate-right,and Teddy representing what passes for “progressive” . If you’ve read this blog before, I’m sure you have gleaned that I have little sympathy for Democratic moderates. It is their rule that gave us NAFTA, welfare “reform”, and –let’s be honest– every despicable capitulation we’ve had to bear over the past 7 years.
Hillary Clinton is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party. If you want to vote for her simply because she happens to be the right gender, I’m not sure we have much to say.
How uplifting has Condeleeza Rice’s career been?
