It’s a horse race & she lost. The level of continuing white hot fury, especially among her female supporters is (to the extent I can recall) unprecedented in modern politics. It’s so over the top that some are talking seriously about making votes for McCain as a form of vengeance for being thwarted.
Why the white hot fury? He’s still a democrat. Is there some “it was ours and you swiped it” entitlement vibe operating here?
It was a long and contentious race, and you can’t reverse that animosity overnight. The ire is unprecedented because such a long and close primary race among the Democrats is unprecedented, at least recently.
Most of those people will vote for Obama when the time comes, just like most of the Republicans going on about not being able to vote for McCain a few months ago will pull the lever for him.
It seems to be mostly old white ladies. I think it might be a generational thing, to a large degree. Just like Barack Obama said that his preacher was living in the past with his perceptions regarding race, I think women of a certain age are living in the past with their perceptions toward sexism. They think that Hillary was “pushed out because she’s a woman.” Just like some older black people still believe they see racism even where it doesn’t exist, women who remember the days before feminisim still think they see sexism even where it doesn’t exist. Hillary’s sex seems like a huge deal to them. They don’t get or believe that it was largely a non-issue to the younger generations. They don’t appreciate how successful they’ve been.
Also, a lot of them are racist. I think that goes for those older Jews in Florida too. A lot of old white people evidently can’t quite bring themselves to accept a black President.
What white hot fury? (Seems a bit hyperbolic.)
Clinton’s race (as well as Obama’s) is unprecedented in modern politics. Why shouldn’t people eager for the first woman president be disappointed?
Many good articles and threads have circulated as the extent to which misogyny and sexism were factors (if not the only or even main factors) in Clinton’s defeat. That adds insult to injury for a certain kind of supporter.
Aren’t there enough threads on this topic already (including the one started by you on the VP nomination)? Yawn…
Unprecedented? How about the white hot fury leveled against McCain by some very outspoken people on the right when he pulled into front runner status? How quickly we forget. But I don’t see these folks on either side as anything by a tiny minority of voters, and it’s easy to get all emotional when the race is over. Cooler heads will prevail in November, which is 5 months away.
If you’ve seen any of the coverage of some of her supporters in the aftermath of the Rules Committee decision and of her speech yesterday, you’ll see that it’s not hyperbolic.
Disappoinment is one thing, but we’re talking about people who are vowing to vote for McCain as retribution. If getting a woman elected is so important to them, it seems highly irrational to vote for a party which is a a hairsbreadth away from being able to overturn Roe V. Wade.
Sexism was no factor at all in her loss. Sure she faced some sexism, but (to my surprise, because I expected the opposite at the start of the Primary season), she faced far less sexism than her opponent faced racism. She had a few yoyos going to rallies with stupid signs, but Barack Obama got the full Willie Horton treatment from the right wing media (and from Hillary, for that matter).
I actually think it’s impossible to measure racism against sexism: these are highly contextualized problems that are difficult to measure in themselves and since they are very different they are incommensurable (do you have a special calculator at home that measures racism and then translates it into sexism as though moving from fareneheit to celsius? 
).
If you don’t think Hillary faced any sexism you might want to take a look at this little sample of media treatment of her campaign.
Let me rephrase that last sentence which is unfair since you didn’t say HRC didn’t face any sexism. I should have said if you don’t think she faced significant sexism take a look at this.
And while I’m clarifying my point isn’t necessarily that this kind of sexism made her lose (as my original post made clear). It’s just part of why feminist-minded supporters (of both sexes I might add) feel that she got a raw deal.
:eek:
What made her lose in my opinion is (ultimately) that people were simply exhausted by the Bush-Clinton continuum and wanted to close the door on that era. In fairness to Diogenes, while the issues of sexism and racism are not subject to perfectly comparable metrics even if you got Stranger on A Train or Matt to program them into your TI-82, it’s kind of over the top obvious that Obama was, and is, going to have much heavier weather to battle with the general electorate in being a black man than Hillary would have had in being a woman.
I would have thought the same thing, but Fox News Sunday (not surprisingly, I suppose) had a whole montage of crowd shots during the boos. The old white ladies were very well behaved, some applauding and some just quietly looking ahead. The rabble rousers were mostly younger and mostly male. One in particular waved both his arms as he booed, each hand thumping the air with his thumbs-down opinion of Obama. I would say he was in his early 20s. He was white, wore glasses, and had a sort of Fidel Castro fashion sense.
If Obama was in Hillary’s shoes would we be saying he got a raw deal because of his race? Can we infer that sexism is more difficult to get over than racism because of the outcome we actually do have right now?
I go to Clinton’s website sometimes to see the blogs, especially after the loss. And some of the women there are angry to an extent at Obama because they feel feel he stole the elction away from Hillary by somehow manipulating the DNC.
They even have a new website [the women from the HIllary site] called Puma Pac. You want Scary check out that site. Those people are trying to rally Hillary Supporters to McCain. One funny thing is that they chose the word PUMA, which is a derrogatoryword used for older women who seek out younger men. I think… 
Let’s all change our party affiliation to independant just so Obama doesn’t get elected, because we are all pissed off and ‘bitter’ that our girl lost. I wonder how many democrats, read lifelong dems, are actually going to vote for a republican. I doubt very many.
Because she told them she was ahead in the popular vote. Because told them not counting Florida and Michigan in the most completely biased and unfair way was undemocratic. Because she told them the media was against her and for Obama. Because she told them she was the victim of sexism AND reverse racism. Right now they feel like the entire world conspired to deny her the nomination, which she should have won if it hadn’t been for Obama, the DNC and the Media.
If you can’t take the heat…
It is an unfortunate artifact of reality that the first candidate to break a barrier is going to face attacks, scrutiny and petty bullshit that makes a lot of more enlightened people cringe. It just IS. Hillary, as the first serious major party female candidate, faced a lot of things that hopefully, future female candidates will not have to face. Unfortunately, I would bet that these patterns will die a slow death, as they usually do.
Likewise Obama, as the first major black candidate, has had to face a lot of the same kind of petty nonsense.
But it says something to me that I haven’t heard a whole lot of “I ain’t voting for no WOMAN”, but I just finished reading an article about Clinton and Obama in Appalachia, and there was a whole fucking lot of “I ain’t voting for Obama because he isn’t an American like me” (read: he isn’t white).
One of the major sticking points for me with Hillary and her fanatical followers is that “I’m taking my ball and going home”/“Help, help, I’m being repressed!” mentality. If you want to play in the big leagues, if you want to be the first to break the barrier and open the playing field for everyone else, then like Jackie Robinson, you have to put up with a great deal of unfortunate and unwanted bullshit - and you have to do it with grace and quiet perseverance. No matter how petty, stupid and outright unreasoning it is. You have to show that you are better than the people who attack you. Because it’s precisely that quiet grace, integrity, perseverance and demonstrated competence that is going to convince the masses that the screaming extremists are exactly that. That they are wrong, you’re obviously qualified and good enough, and therefore, all those other people who come behind you must also be.
The unfortunate backlash here is that if Clinton had followed the desired path of the fanatics and done anything but endorse Obama, it would not only have destroyed her political future, but it would have made it more difficult for the next well qualified female candidate, because the Media would immediately focus on that whole “If she doesn’t win, will women pack up and go home again?” angle, placing undue focus on the small number of fanatical female voters and ignoring the larger, more reasonable numbers of female voters.
Really? What makes you so sure? Let me make absolutely clear that I am not arguing 1) that Hillary lost primarily because of sexism or 2) that Barack has not faced and will not face racism.
Nonetheless, as I said, these are very contextualized problems. Because of his unsual background Obama’s blackness is not the same thing to the eye of many stereotypical white Americans (I’m thinking of the kind of white person who doesn’t think that s/he’s racist but makes all kinds of racially-influenced judgements nonetheless). What this means to put things very simply is that certain kinds of racism aren’t as effective against him as they might against, say, Jesse Jackson. I’d go so far as to say that Obama’s biggest problem for the general public (the great majority of whom aren’t racists of the KKK-joining type) isn’t so much racism (in the sense of black skin versus white) as xenophobia (the same kind of fear of otherness that hurts Muslims and anyone with a different-sounding name or unusual ethnicity).
By contrast, Hillary Clinton is every misogynist’s/sexist’s perfect stereotype of a feminist. As the clip I posted makes clear, people feel free to take all kinds of potshots at her because of her looks, voice, sexuality, etc. Although it’s absolutely true that Obama has been and will continue to be subjected to political strategies that will attempt to portray him as foreign, un-Christian, un-American, etc. (all of which will be racially coded), it’s not the case (as I think you’ll agree) that people can get away with cheap slurs (of the kind that are leveled at Hillary even on these boards).
Liberal, I’ll bet you $25 that the 20-year-old Fidel Castro-looking, booing Hillary-loving guy was a Fox News shill 
Chimera: "One of the major sticking points for me with Hillary and her fanatical followers is that “I’m taking my ball and going home”/“Help, help, I’m being repressed!”
Chimera, Where have you been for the last 24 hours? Everywhere on the internet Hillary’s gracious exit and strong support for Obama are being lauded. That there are very miffed supporters for a camera to pan to, that the media will find them and play them up for the drama I don’t doubt in the least. But Hillary herself is not threatening to take her ball away and she’s urging her supporters to join the fight.
IMO this topic has been played out to death and what remains of importance (Hillary’s own position) is already yesterday’s news. Hey, but maybe the emotions of middle-aged feminists are more interesting to men on these boards than I had ever imagined.
Just in case your curious, these people seem to exchange ideas at the website hillaryis44.com
These people refuse to vote for Obama and will write in Hillary in the election. This is even after Hillary endorsed him and specifically tried to prevent this from happening.
Philsophr, as we all know, there are all kinds of people on the internet. And as you know from our interaction on the VP thread I personally think it’s important for Obama’s campaign to reach out to Hillary’s base–and what’s more they’re already doing it.
The question on this thread is why the why the “white hot fury” and my answer has been that where it exists the misognynist treatment that Hillary’s received is a big factor. Insofar as the answer is “what sexism? what misogyny?” what’s clear to me is how little some people understand what sexism and misogyny looks like and feels like.
As to the question…
"If Obama was in Hillary’s shoes would we be saying he got a raw deal because of his race?"
I think the answer is probably yes. Do you doubt it?
As it happens, Obama hasn’t gotten a raw deal and I sincerely hope that he doesn’t in the general election. But all this discussion about the angered feelings of (some) feminist Hillary supporters is to my mind somewhat counterproductive.
To me it’s not in the least mysterious why these highly energized Hillary partisans who have given their heart, soul and money to her campaign feel angry and disappointed–a few enough to launch what’s doubtless a legless campaign to get feminist Democrats to vote for McCain.
What can be done to alleviate this problem such as it is–to make these people feel that their candidate is respected and is being brought to the fold–is, as far as I can tell, probably going to be done.
Obama’s loss would have been easier to swallow for his supporters, I think. He’s young, he’s new, he would have a realistic second shot, many of his supporters have not been political for that long, etc.
In contrast, Hillary has been a standard bearer for many people (women of course included) a long while. People have been looking forward to this run in some ways since she was in the White House with Bill. The idea was always there for many of her supporters that Hillary would be the one to break the gender barrier in presidential politics. It’s been a long time coming and now it will be hard to let go.
I don’t doubt that some older women I know will never vote for Obama because he’s in the unfortunate position of having won this election, this extremely important, symbolic election for them. These are not issues voters, these are women who feel that a woman has been wronged. Therefore issues arguments will not appeal to them- they must be assuaged by the candidate herself, a celebration of Hillary in the press, things that are already happening to a degree. Obama is the interloper, he’s jumped the gun, he was in the way, he was installed by the system/media- I think all of these complaints are more important than racism in the backlash against Obama.
Over the next few months, however, without constant reinforcement from Hillary, and in fact with her working against it, the echo chamber will lose some of its integrity, and folks will trickle out, leaving a higher density of extreme folks, which will cause more to trickle out. In my opinion, Obama and his staff* have largely been very respectful of Hillary and her supporters, and this will reflect in the success he will have with people who polled Hillary.
For most of them, in the end, Obama will be the lesser of two evils, which is a position we are all familiar with.
*edited- originally I had “Obama and his supporters” here, which is unfortunately incorrect- there has been a lot of vitriol towards Clinton and her supporters from Obama supporters (myself included). But the campaign has been very careful to be noble and has largely succeeded in my view.
[QUOTE=Dorothea BookChimera, Where have you been for the last 24 hours? Everywhere on the internet Hillary’s gracious exit and strong support for Obama are being lauded. That there are very miffed supporters for a camera to pan to, that the media will find them and play them up for the drama I don’t doubt in the least. But Hillary herself is not threatening to take her ball away and she’s urging her supporters to join the fight.[/QUOTE]
I’ve been right there, watching the news and reading the comments.
You’re right, she did bow out and endorse Obama, and in doing so, she did the right thing. Four days after doing the wrong thing by not conceding and continuing to refer to herself as “the stronger candidate”, even when she had obviously lost. For my money, I’d bet that quite a few Democratic party leaders and peers of hers weighed in during those four days to tell her that if she didn’t change her tune, she would not only be injuring the Democratic Party, but destroying her own career.
Moreso, it’s the shrill voices in the comments and media saying “Boo hoo, I will vote for McCain or not vote at all!” that I reference, and my opinion that Clinton isn’t being strong enough in distancing herself from that extremism. It is my firm contention that if this continues, it will damage future female candidates for higher office.