Archives for 2008

Not really sure what to make of this drivel from Maureen Dowd:

Now Barack Obama faces a true dilemma: how best to punish Hillary Clinton.

After 15 months of fighting her off, as she veered wildly from bully to victim, as she brandished any ice pick at hand, whether racial, sexual, mathematical or marital (in the form of her Vesuvian husband), Obama must decide the most efficacious means of doing to Hillary what she has been trying to do to him: putting her in her place.

Her last resort is to continue to press the “Psssst — he’s a black man” tactic. She insisted to USAToday, after the North Carolina and Indiana slide, that she has a broader base, citing an Associated Press article “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

The piece gets worse.

One of the things Obama supporters would be wise to remember is that when Clinton supporters and her campaign point out that a lot of people hated Hillary before this campaign even started, they aren’t lying. Dowd is one such example- she was brutal to the Clinton family throughout the 90’s, and she has been just as brutal the past year and a half. It is easy to understand how at this late point in the game, Clinton and her supporters feel she has not been given a fair shake by many in the media, and the reason they feel that way is because she hasn’t. That doesn’t mean that any distaste for the direction the Clinton campaign has taken is unwarranted, but it would be good to remember that it is not wholly unnatural for Clinton supporters to be, well, bitter, at this point.

Additionally, the “advice” Dowd gives is just horrible, and the rhetoric even worse. A consistent base of Hillary’s support is not going to react well to attempts to “punish” Hillary, or to “put her in her place.” I can’t imagine any more loaded rhetoric than that, and feminists and Hillary diehards would be right to be livid by any attempts to do that. I happen to think that Hillary’s campaign is over and that she is doing more harm than good, but she does not need to be “punished” or any of that nonsense- losing something you have worked for for all these years is hard enough. She also has every right to continue on until the last primary, and it is sort of absurd to assert that continuing your campaign is something that is, in and of itself, something that should be “punished.”

Fortunately, if you have seen any of the 100 Obama interviews since Tuesday, Obama is having none of it, refusing to even field questions about who his running mate will be, as the race is not over:

“We do not have this nomination locked up, so we’re still competing. She’s going to do very well in West Virginia and Kentucky – she will win those states in all likelihood by significant margins. We feel like we’ve got a pretty good shot here in Oregon. We’re going to be campaigning in Montana and South Dakota and Puerto Rico. Until I’m the nominee, I don’t want to speculate on running mates.”

This is the right approach, and people need to remember that a lot of people have invested a lot of time and money in trying to get Clinton nominated, and we will need their votes in the future. Adopting Dowd’s attitude and loaded and sexist rhetoric about “putting her in her place” is not only offensive, it is counter-productive.

*** Update ***

See also:

In addition to the obvious projection, I trust you can see what’s going on here. If Obama doesn’t choose Clinton as a running mate, it’s because he wants to “put her in her place.” If he does choose Clinton, it’s because he wants to “put her in her place.” See, when you’re setting up the inevitable endless stream of columns about how Obama is really an womanly effete elitist woman who’s probably lactating even more than Al Gore, you win either way! The country, not so much.

So tired of this crap.

Not HelpingPost + Comments (134)