Oh and DrDeth, I appreciate your very cool head. 
So disheartening. Why did you have to reignite my anger at her!
This is exactly how I feel reading threads both here and on Daily Kos that keep rehashing the wrongs (perceived or factual) on both sides. Can we just shut UP about it, please? Our guy won, we need to calm everybody down so we can talk about Clinton’s supporters coming over to help elect Obama. We need to ignore Clinton supporters who keep trying to throw the old talking points at us instead of going off on them.
There’s a diary on DKos right now about Hillary urging her pledged delegates to come out for Obama. It’s a very nice diary, about a good event, but about midway in the Obama supporters get sidetracked when someone (on our side, I’ll disclose) throws in their laundry list of Clinton’s attacks on Obama and basically huffs and puffs and blows the thread down. Then the pile-on begins, with more Obama supporters throwing in their own posts of anger and disappointment and laundry lists.
This is not helpful! Obama has always been gracious and courteous in victory, Clinton has, since Saturday, at least, been gracious and courteous in defeat. Some of the supporters of both candidates, however, have been anything but.
Having read through the rest of the thread, I think I was wasting my time but I don’t have enough of a dog in this hunt to want to bother anymore. Oh well, at least it kept me awake to deal with the dog I do have, who is terrified of thunderstorms.
Which ones? I haven’t seen any answers in Suze’s posts? Why is this question so hard to answer? What did the DNC do to Hillary or her supporters that wasn’t fair – or at least, what do some of her supporters think the DNC did that was unfair?
I think there is far more overt racism, xenophobia and homophobia on Fox News than there is sexism (The bashing of Muslims and undocumented aliens are staples on CNN as well), but aside from that, I still don’t understand why the sexism on Fox is supposed to be the DNC’s fault or Barack Obama’s fault, or who these people think they’d be punishing by voting for John McCain.
I ask again, exactly who are these people mad at?
That’s true of every dog I’ve ever seen. Dogs are sweet critters.
With the Supreme Court teetering on the edge the way it is, I think you should try to recognize that you do have a dog in this fight, whether you feel “connected” or not (and I still don’t understand why an emotional connection should have any relevance).
We are completely talking past each other. What I was saying is that it doesn’t matter to me who’s mad about what. I actually thought some people did care and I was trying to help with that. It didn’t work, and I don’t really care that it didn’t, as I am not trying to convince anyone of anything - just to present one perspective that is largely silent on the Dope.
And if it helps, think of the connection thing as a hijack about the reasons people choose one candidate over the other. To me it’s relevant to the reasons people chose Clinton and are so irate over the nomination of Obama, but obviously your M does V.
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
Which ones? I haven’t seen any answers in Suze’s posts? Why is this question so hard to answer? What did the DNC do to Hillary or her supporters that wasn’t fair – or at least, what do some of her supporters think the DNC did that was unfair?
Perhaps you should try writing some of the blogs that Suse did. For myself I don’t know the answer beyond it having to do with Michigan and Florida.
And what if there is? That doesn’t make sexism any less wrong or hurtful.
It isn’t. Take a look at my list again. You’re still working through the confusion described in #15.
This is just a guess of course but I think they are probably mad at a range of powerful men who seem to have it so much easier because they are allowed inhabit power and privilege with ease–rewarded for seeking and gaining power rather than ridiculed and punished for it. I think they’re mad at a whole lifetime of people (sometimes women) making them feel diminished because they weren’t pretty enough, or compliant enough, or thin enough, or young enough or because their voice sounded a certain way or their breasts looked a certain way all while they wanted to be taken seriously and feel good about themselves.
I’m guessing that you are a straight, white middle-class man in his 30s or 40s, is that right? I can understand why for that men of that demographic (as for many women under the age of about 35) sexism seems to be history. But it isn’t. Sure there a lot of things worse than cablet tv sexism and its impact on the political process: famine and civil war in various parts of the world and global warming rate much higher for me and I avoid watching Fox News precisely so as not to make my blood boil (about the sexism and, yes, the racism, homophobia, and xenophobia). But the sexism makes me physically sick when I see it (as do the other things). And I do feel that deeply structured sexism, the kind that you might not even notice, has had an impact on my life (in spite of the fact that I feel very happy and lucky to be who I am).
I hope that helps.
Yes, if casual racist remarks were made openly on Fox, we should not be dismissive of them, and we should not be dismissive about sexist remarks either, but if Obama had lost the nomination and his supporters used the humiliating racist remarks on Fox as a reason to vote for McCain, that would be insane, do you not agree? There is no connection there!
Even if all the media (not just Fox) was racist to Obama, or sexist to Clinton, I still don’t see how this connects to the idea of voting for McCain if your primary candidate loses.
- “Due to sexist remarks in the media, Hillary lost, and therefore I’ll vote for the right-wing man”.
- “Due to racist remarks in the media, Obama lost, and therefore I’ll vote for the right-wing white person”.
Does not make any sense.
And besides, even though you and Suse constantly bring up the sexism and disillusionment of women as the reason for the defections to McCain, as I mentioned above, many of these women are doing so because they were successfully convinced by Clinton that Obama is a useless candidate and even McCain is better.
How does this:
relate to any sexism that Clinton may have experienced? She tried to totally obliterate his image as a viable candidate, and portrayed even the opposing party’s nominee as a better choice for president. She succeeded with many supporters. Those supporters would now rather vote for McCain. That is not surprising. We should not focus solely on disillusionment with sexism (in the media or elsewhere) as *the *explanatory reason of why many are defecting to McCain, when an equally important reason was her successful campaign to personally destroy him as a viable candidate in peoples’ minds.
<Dorothea I tried correcting your QUOTE tags, since your post was showing up as blank (at least for me)>
The above is all true and women are justifiably angry at this, but why this translates into “Vote for the other party’s nominee” boggles the mind, especially since (1) Your current party is not the sole source of this sexism, (2) The other party’s nominee is in fact a man, and (3) The other party has a worse history of voting on women’s issues.
Yeesh, Polerius, thanks. Not sure what happened there. Let me see if I can fix my own post very quickly so that it’s comprehensible.
Okay–this was all a reply to Diogenes
He asked
and I replied…
Perhaps you should try reading some of the blogs that Suse did. For myself I don’t know the answer beyond it having to do with Michigan and Florida.
He wrote:
and I replied:
And what if there is? That doesn’t make sexism any less wrong or hurtful.
He added:
and I replied:
It isn’t. Take a look at my list again. You’re still working through the confusion described in #15.
He wrote:
and I replied:
This is just a guess of course but I think they are probably mad at a range of powerful men who seem to have it so much easier because they are allowed inhabit power and privilege with ease–rewarded for seeking and gaining power rather than ridiculed and punished for it. I think they’re mad at a whole lifetime of people (sometimes women) making them feel diminished because they weren’t pretty enough, or compliant enough, or thin enough, or young enough or because their voice sounded a certain way or their breasts looked a certain way all while they wanted to be taken seriously and feel good about themselves.
I’m guessing that you are a straight, white middle-class man in his 30s or 40s, is that right? I can understand why for that men of that demographic (as for many women under the age of about 35) sexism seems to be history. But it isn’t. Sure there a lot of things worse than cablet tv sexism and its impact on the political process: famine and civil war in various parts of the world and global warming rate much higher for me and I avoid watching Fox News precisely so as not to make my blood boil (about the sexism and, yes, the racism, homophobia, and xenophobia). But the sexism makes me physically sick when I see it (as do the other things). And I do feel that deeply structured sexism, the kind that you might not even notice, has had an impact on my life (in spite of the fact that I feel very happy and lucky to be who I am).
Thanks again. More later.
I have no desire to go into Florida and Michigan anymore except to point out that the DNC *
capitulated* to her on those states, that she never had a legitimate complaint to begin with and that none of it had anything to do with sexism.
So is racism, and that’s had more relevance to this campaign, but Hillary supporters have had no objection to taking advantage of it (and Obama has not expolited sexism). It also makes no sense to blame the Democratic Party for a few stupid comments on Fox News.
yes, we can all agree that sexism is bad, m’kay, (and yes, I am a 42 year old, married white guy with literally 2.5 kids), but I still don’t see why they’re blaming the Democrats for any of it, or why they think it makes any sense to vote for the party which wants to turn things back. I can’t fathom why they’re willing to surrender Roe or capitulate in general to the party of intolerance and sexism. Those people they’re mad at are Republicans. Do they not understand that?
It would also be nice to see some of these women acknowledging Obama’s own historic accomplishment in this race, in the face of even more bigotry. Their hatred of him personally (and their hypocritical willingness to embrace the most scurrilous, bullshit smears about him) makes no sense whatsoever.
It really boils down this emotional argument:
-
Hillary should have won. She’s a (white) woman and it’s the (white) woman’s turn.
-
Obama won instead because the DNC superdelegates side with him. He’s black, so clearly the powers-that-be like blacks better than (white) women. This is not fair. They should be rallying around Hillary, not this Obama person. What a slap in the face to her.
-
Hillary was fighting against Obama, not McCain. Therefore, McCain is at worst neutral and at best, a good guy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
-
Thus, I’M GONNA VOTE FOR McCAIN!
All this stuff about sexism and the media and MI and FL is irrelevant, in my mind. I think it really comes down to who was competing against whom.
Same with the Supreme Court justices. What average person, whose political involvement is limited to voting for president, really thinks about that kind of thing in deciding who to vote for?
Well, for one thing I think McCain has been successful in portraying himself as not-so-rightwing. Indeed, the media constantly portrays him as a maverick centrist.
For another, I think some of that small number of Hillaryites who plan to vote for McCain may feel that if Obama loses to McC then perhaps Hillary can be nominated in '12. (Just a wild thought.)
But setting those potential motives aside, I think you’re trying to reason about something that isn’t especially rational doing it within rather narrow parameters. Perhaps it’s more like this…
“Due to the fact that my dream has been dashed, that the woman I think so highly of has been kicked around and discarded, beaten by someone who hasn’t really paid his dues yet after she was subjected to such harsh, sexist treatment, I’m mad as hell–so mad that I can no longer vote for a party that does not seem to care about me or respect people like me and which screwed up in Michigan and Florida.”
Or something like that.
Honestly, though, I’m not wiretapping PUMA headquarters, this is just the vibe I get from checking out their site and reading a few things.
I don’t think that particular point does and I don’t think either of us suggested that sexism was the only factor involved–just a constant and deep source of aggravation, alienation, anger.
Maybe. But consider that it doesn’t actually take much convincing to notice that Obama is a relatively young candidate. That is, those prone to worry about the experience issue will do so and the best offset for that, as far as an Obama-McCain competition goes, will be for O to show how talented he is vis-a-vis M. If he can do that I don’t think Hillary’s out-of-date opinion on the matter will ultimately count for much.
Perhaps–but isn’t this question somewhat academic? The main thing is try to convince this particular group not to defect, right?
Look, Obama’s got to convince that whole country that he’s not inexperienced: not just a small number of disgruntled Hillary supporters. But the latter group is special in that it can be appealed to partly by reaching out to disappointed feminist sensibilities.
Think about what Obama himself said yesterday: noting that Hillary had run a historic campaign that would make things better for his own daughters and all women. I’m sure he also said things in that speech which highlighted his vision and experience. But whereas all voters need to here the second argument it’s the “PUMAnians” that need especially to hear the first.
You may of course think differently–and that’s just fine.
You had me until this point. If you had finished it with “so mad that I can not vote for the person whom she lost to” it might have been understandable.
But, you finished it with “so mad that I can no longer vote for a party that does not seem to care about me or respect people like me”.
This is not understandable. As Diogenes has asked, what specifically did the party do that shows these women that it does not care about them and does not respect them?
Just because Hillary lost is not an indication that the party does not care about her female supporters and does not respect them. What did they expect, for the DNC to change all the rules, just so she has enough votes to win?
Your vibe is probably correct and (I want to state this is as respectfully as I know how) is as disconnected from rational thought as anything Ive seen in national politics over the past half-century. You’re reading what Hillary supporters are saying, and you’re interpreting it dispassionately enough, and you’re coming to a sound conclusion that Hillary’s supporters are deranged, severely damaged, self-destructive women who are considering working for a man who wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade and, if they succeed, will have the power to do so.
Their candidate ran an awful campaign for months on end. She lost. People have been running poor campaigns since politics started–usually their supporters turn against the losing candidate, but this time (since the candidate herself cannot have her flaws displayed, or even admitted to) she is somehow victorious, and someone–the media, the opponent, the awful sexist voters, Howard the Duck–must take the blame.