My Thoughts Exactly

The Democratic nominating brouhaha seems to finally be drawing to a close. I'm tempted to say mercifully so, but I think that the process has been good for Democrats and America generally as well and if I am relieved that the process is winding down it is clearly the process that I will be glad to see go, not the two candidates.

I started out fairly non-committal in my support of a candidate (jeez, a year ago or so I suppose is when we really got started) and then backed John Edwards, because of his progressive, populist style policies and in large part because he was angry and promising to fight for change.

I voted for Hillary Clinton in the Maryland primary after Edwards failed to pick up any steam (he got hosed by the media and had the unfortunate timing to be the Southern White Male running with two historic candidates) because I like her health care proposal better and because she is also offering to fight.

I would love for Barack Obama to be the real deal, for his promise to be fulfilled and for things to get better. But I have never understood how that is supposed to happen exactly, and I am less than enthused with his message of post-partisanship and transcendence.

I am happy to classify myself as the 'angry left' and plenty of people tell me that we can't always be fighting and bickering and that we need to secure a majority and that we need independents to do so. And thats all well and good, but when do the Democrats currently in office every fight for me or my rights? Why will no one take a stand? I believe that most Americans, and all of the available polling supports this theory, will stand behind a Democratic party that refuses to kowtow to President Bush and his neo-con cronies. What we get now is some lip service, some placation, and then some capitulation and I fear that this pattern will be continued with Obama as President (again I'll be stoked if it doesn't, I hope that it doesn't).

It seems to me that a change will come via being at least a little bit pissed off, and drawing a line and holding to it, standing up for your convictions, and fighting back hard. I don't see how conciliation fits in here.

(Ezra Klein had a post early this morning that fits in pretty well with my thoughts)

This all only serve to bring us up to date, there are but a handful of primary contests left and Obama seems sure to be the party's nominee. I think that he is handling things quite well, I'm very pleased with his stance on the ludicrous gas tax holiday proposals, heartened by it even. I'm not actually worried about how either of the candidates will handle the situation. I'm confident that they will come together in a call for party unity and progress. I'm worried about their surrogates and supporters who seem much more bitter than either of the principles and who continue to deride the supporters of the other candidate. Now is a time for positive words and encouragement not blithe, derogatory calls for Clinton to pack it in. There is plenty of time yet and in the end I think (hope) that the Democrats will get all there ducks in a line and storm to new and higher majorities in Novemeber.

What I really wanted to say after all of this was that I continue to be disappointed in many of the candidates supporters, in their vehemence and narrow mindedness, in their willingness to see the opponent as a bad person. It's a shame really, and I think that most people who are acting this way are largely unaware of their actions and more importantly of the consequences thereof.

Far too many people who should know better have spent way too much of this campaign cycle disparaging Hillary Clinton and it saddens me and it pisses me off. The misogyny that has hung over her and gone unnoticed or at least uncared about is terrible and that so many people fail or refuse to see it disgusts me.

(If you are reading this and thinking to yourself what is he talking about, or demanding some examples, I'm sorry but that makes you part of the problem. You know what I'm not sorry you should be ashamed of yourself.)

I'd give you some examples all the same, but in this morning's Washington Post op-ed page Marie Cocco took care of it for me. These are my thoughts exactly...

Misogyny I Won't Miss

By Marie Cocco
Thursday, May 15, 2008; A15

As the Democratic nomination contest slouches toward a close, it's time to take stock of what I will not miss.

I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan "Bros before Hos." The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet.

I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won't miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item.

I won't miss episodes like the one in which liberal radio personality Randi Rhodes called Clinton a "big [expletive] whore" and said the same about former vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro. Rhodes was appearing at an event sponsored by a San Francisco radio station, before an audience of appreciative Obama supporters -- one of whom had promoted the evening on the presumptive Democratic nominee's official campaign Web site.

I won't miss Citizens United Not Timid (no acronym, please), an anti-Clinton group founded by Republican guru Roger Stone.

Political discourse will at last be free of jokes like this one, told last week by magician Penn Jillette on MSNBC: "Obama did great in February, and that's because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary's doing much better 'cause it's White Bitch Month, right?" Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski rebuked Jillette.

I won't miss political commentators (including National Public Radio political editor Ken Rudin and Andrew Sullivan, the columnist and blogger) who compare Clinton to the Glenn Close character in the movie "Fatal Attraction." In the iconic 1987 film, Close played an independent New York woman who has an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. When the liaison ends, the jilted woman becomes a deranged, knife-wielding stalker who terrorizes the man's blissful suburban family. Message: Psychopathic home-wrecker, begone.

The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a "she-devil" (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she's "looking like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court" (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).

But perhaps it is not wives who are so very problematic. Maybe it's mothers. Because, after all, Clinton is more like "a scolding mother, talking down to a child" (Jack Cafferty on CNN).

When all other images fail, there is one other I will not miss. That is, the down-to-the-basics, simplest one: "White women are a problem, that's -- you know, we all live with that" (William Kristol of Fox News).

I won't miss reading another treatise by a man or woman, of the left or right, who says that sexism has had not even a teeny-weeny bit of influence on the course of the Democratic campaign. To hint that sexism might possibly have had a minimal role is to play that risible "gender card."

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 publicly uttered a word of 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.

Would the silence prevail if Obama's likeness were put on a tap-dancing doll that was sold at airports? Would the media figures who dole out precious face time to these politicians be such pals if they'd compared Obama with a character in a blaxploitation film? And how would crude references to Obama's sex organs play?

There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for "change." But for all Clinton's political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.

Marie Cocco is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Her e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.

(This was certainly the best thing to show up in the WaPo's op-ed page in a long time by the way.)