Some comments have arisen regarding my reference to Geraldine Ferraro in the previous thread. Yes, I understand that she and Mondale teamed up to lose 49 states, really, why the hell is anyone mentioning her positively? so we should applaud her service to the Democratic cause, but let’s remember what this real civil rights icon stood for so we can evaluate her record fairly. Here is how she got elected to Congress in the first place:
Ferraro ran for election to the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 9th Congressional District in Queens in 1978, after longtime Democratic incumbent James Delaney announced his retirement. The location for the television series All in the Family, the district was known for its ethnic composition and conservative views. In a three-candidate primary race for the Democratic nomination, Ferraro faced two better-known rivals, the party organization candidate, City Councilman Thomas J. Manton and Patrick Deignan. Her main issues were law and order, support for the elderly, and neighborhood preservation. She labeled herself a “‘small c’ conservative” and emphasized that she was not a bleeding-heart liberal; her campaign slogan was “Finally, A Tough Democrat”. Her Italian heritage also appealed to ethnic residents in the district. She won the three-way primary with 53 percent of the vote, and then captured the general election as well, defeating Republican Alfred A. DelliBovi by a 10-percentage-point margin in a contest in which dealing with crime was the major issue and personal attacks by DelliBovi were frequent. She had been aided by $130,000 in campaign loans and donations from her own family, including $110,000 in loans from Zaccaro, of which only $4,000 was legal.[35][36] The source and nature of these transactions were declared illegal by the Federal Election Commission shortly before the primary, causing Ferraro to pay back the loans in October 1978, via several real estate transactions.[35] In 1979, the campaign and Zaccaro paid $750 in fines for civil violations of election law.
ATTN: White People
Ask one of your black friends, if you have one, what “neighborhood preservation” meant in Queens in the late 70’s and early 80’s. You might find it illuminating.
One of her major issues was the racially loaded school busing. Wonder where Gerry stood on this:
In Congress Ferraro balanced the conservative demands of her constituency with her own feminist and liberal politics. She voted, for example, against school busing and supported tax credits for private and parochial school parents.
A real pioneer, this Gerry Ferraro. She then went on to become the VP nominee under Mondale, and proceeded to lose 49 states along with Uncle Walter. In other words, she adopted Republican frames, and still lost. Again, such a pioneer.
And who can forget her stellar personal life:
Shortly after Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected Ferraro as his vice presidential running mate in the 1984 U.S. presidential election, Zaccaro became the center of controversy due to the couple’s finances and his refusal to release his separately-filed tax returns. Ultimately they were submitted, but the matter diminished Ferraro’s rising stardom and removed the momentum the Mondale–Ferraro ticket gained following the pick. Mondale and Ferraro lost the general election in a landslide to incumbent President Ronald Reagan, although political observers generally agree that no combination of Democrats could have won the election that year.
In January 1985, Zaccaro pled guilty to fraudulently obtaining bank financing in a real estate transaction and was fined $1,000 and was sentenced to 150 hours of community service. Zaccaro stated afterward, “My lawyers have advised me that since my client and I withdrew the loan application, since no one but I was injured, and since I received no benefit, they felt that they could successfully defend this case” but he said he entered the plea to spare his family more publicity and to “conclude the matter and try to return to private life.” In October 1986, he was indicted on unrelated felony charges regarding an alleged 1981 bribery of Queens Borough President Donald Manes concerning a cable television contract. A full year later, he was acquitted of all charges at trial.
Whoopsie. I’m sure Ferraro knew about none of this. I mean, no married couples ever talk about finances. Clearly, her behavior later on in life should force us to ignore her earlier transgressions, both financial and racial. Wait, what?
Let’s begin by noting that every presidential candidate in recent memory has tried to deploy identity in some politically advantageous manner. It is certainly true that Barack Obama attempted to leverage his own identity as a biracial black man in much the same way. It’s also true that through most of American history, whiteness was not simply the deployment of political advantage, it was the deployment of decisive political advantage. And yet while you could definitively say of that Roosevelt and Lincoln were “lucky” to be white, your statement would be myopic, and skip over many other attributes, the absence of which kept millions other white people out of the presidency.
One can’t even award that level of “true” myopia to Geraldine Ferraro. As always, the original quote is instructive:
If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.
Oh wait. That’s Ferraro in 1988 describing a man fortunate enough to be born in grinding poverty to a 16-year old poor single mother and a deadbeat father. Jackson went on to become a presidential candidate, winning seven primaries, four caucuses and seven million votes, a historic feat made possible, not by skill, hard work or intelligence, but by all the advantages routinely and liberally afforded to black people raised in the Jim Crow South:
Twenty years later Ferraro had matured and endeavored to offer a more nuanced take:
If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.
This is not an indelicate rendering of some ruminative, long-winded truth. It does not simply assert, as Sutphen and Remnick did, that Obama’s diverse background helped him. It asserts that his skin color imparted a singular, decisive advantage, without which, Obama could not cope with the likes of Hillary Clinton. The necessary implication is bizarre. It holds that the party of Jack Kennedy would never have as its front-runner a handsome, male, Ivy League educated, Illinois senator, who edited the Harvard Law Review, had a picturesque family, and was a rousing speaker, unless he had the obvious, and indisputable advantage of being black.
Geraldine Ferraro is dead. The world and the Democratic party are better off because of that. I know, I know, I was an evil Republican during those years (I really was only 14 so couldn’t have done too much damage), so everything I say is awful. And I do recognize that it was groundbreaking for a woman to be nominated as a VP candidate. I just wish it had been a better woman. Maybe one who didn’t build her career on being a blue dog from New York who spent her life demagoguing race issues. But that’s just me.
And out of respect for the dead, we won’t even parse or repost her Fox news contributions in the last few years of her life.
Valdivia
Amen John. You have been so missed!
JordanRules
I love when you let it out like you did last night and just let go because I know the good sh*t will follow.
Don’t trip when you don’t feel like posting, trust that it will come. And when it does, I lurve it! Git ’em JC!
The prophet Nostradumbass
Well, Steve, what say you?
redshirt
Surely, there are Ferraro apologists here?
Villago Delenda Est
Faux Noise contributions?
Good grief, she sank that low?
ruemara
As a queens gal, a black woman, a labour type, a liberal and someone who has been pissed on for decades for the temerity to be black and smart and desiring a creative career, fuck Geraldine Ferraro. Every time I’ve ever given up and left where I’ve been slaving for less pay than my peers in the hope that things will pay off, I leave poorer and they promptly hire a race appropriate version of me that they then pay properly and get less out of. The only advantage of being black is permatan, curly hair and a fine case of the bitters. And I think you can be trained in the bitters.
BethanyAnne
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps!
Quaker in a Basement
Whew! I hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Cigarette?
Mark S.
What about a FDR/JFK dream ticket?
Villago Delenda Est
@ruemara:
No question there. Just look at the flaming wreck of the
HindenburgRmoney campaign.Ann Rynd
I had a personal run-in with her when I was doing jury duty and she came in with a film crew and tried to make everyone in the waiting room stand so she could do her shoot. When I called her on it, told her that these people needed seats and who the fuck was she to make 100 people stand while they figured out their bullshit, she acted like a schoolgirl with hurt feelings, denying she had anything to say about the situation, it was someone else’s decision, don’t pick on me etc.
She was a cowardly woman with only her ambition going for her.
That’s she’s dead is her only virtue.
N W Barcus
ATTN: White People
Ask one of your black friends, if you have one, what “neighborhood preservation” meant in Queens in the late 70’s and early 90’s. You might find it illuminating.
…because all Black people are connected somehow, in a jungle telegraph of some sort? “They” all know each other, think the same, watch the same shows?
With all due respect, and I do mean respect, WTF?
Methinks your rhetoric has got the best of you this time.
More to the topic, Ms Ferraro was arguably a very cynical ploy — more so than Palin but less than Lieberman.
When it comes to VP feminists I’d take Admiral Stockdale any day. Does anybody remember his VP debate? He was asked about abortion rights and he said (paraphrasing) “It’s up to the woman involved.” There was a long pause, I guess while everybody was waiting for him to add weasel words like “in case of rape or incest or her health is threatened” or whatever. And instead he just said, “Period.” Haven’t heard the likes of that before or since in any Presidential or VP debate…
eemom
Um, you do recall that this is an IDOL of one of your fellow FPers you are trashing here?
tee hee
hhex65
That said, I bet ’84 Ferraro could beat Romney.
BGinCHI
I’m pretty sure Ferraro was the inspiration for Danny Aiello’s character in Do the Right Thing.
GregB
So you are saying that Ferraro is a female version of Pat Caddell only dead?
Reading Caddell’s Wiki entry was such a compendium of utter and abject fail.
MacsenMifune
@Mark S.: How about LBJ riding Falcore.
Soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: To say that “she sank that low” is to assume that she was ever not that low in the first place.
She was a slime and a blight on the party.
KG
@hhex65: I’m pretty sure ’73 Agnew could beat Romney (or Headless Corpse of Agnew for that matter)
mattH
Nice one. Smoking crater nice.
Mark S.
@MacsenMifune:
I had to google that, but yeah, that would be tough to beat.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@GregB: It is isn’t it. There’s carter-and then everyone else who had ever hired him has lost. The malaise speech. Suing his own polling firm.
The Moar You Know
Death rate of humanity still 100%, I see.
Some pioneers are decent people. Neil Armstrong, for example.
Some, not so much, like Charles Lindbergh.
And Ms. Ferraro, a leftover from a now-forgotten and irrelevant time.
Liquid
The Baboons aren’t surprised. More like they have that sheepish expression.
I have no idea what I’m saying other than don’t surprise the Baboons.
ABL
I should come visit you in Bethany more often.
GregB
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
We should edit his entry to show him as a consultant for the films The Last Airbender, Heaven’s Gate and Ishtar.
Roger Moore
@MacsenMifune:
I’m pretty sure that JFK, Alien Hunter could manage it.
AA+ Bonds
owned
mdblanche
Geraldine Ferraro has become a footnote* to history.
mdblanche
@mdblanche:
*Geraldine Ferraro
Chris
@Roger Moore:
I see your JFK and raise you an FDR.
AA+ Bonds
Tonight I found out I can make Republicans livid by “accidentally” using female pronouns when speaking about Mitt Romney, about every third pronoun, and apologizing every time I’m corrected
It’s pretty not feminist but it worked very well compared to my usual tactics and that’s saying something in my case
AnotherBruce
It kinda makes me wonder how much of the black vote did not turn out because of Ferraro in 1984. It seems unreal to think of a 49 to 1 route these days. And it shows how much liberals had fallen out of political reality.
It’s good to be more real.
gussie
@AA+ Bonds: That’s totally sexist and offensive and I’m going to try it.
KG
@Chris: I want that movie to be real
Chris
@KG:
Hell yes!
Dee Loralei
I came to loathe Ferraro in 2008, but as a college aged-woman in 1984, I was so proud and happy when Mondale gave her the nod for Veep.
I’m just gonna go with people are complicated. People who have national aspirations and drive are even more complicated.
Though, there were times in 2008 that I would have punched her in the neck, and it looks as if in the 70’s I would have also. But in ’84 I was proud and happy and amazed and impressed that a woman had the possibility of becoming the Vice-President.
She was no Shirley Chisolm, but she was a woman of “substance” who commanded respect on a national stage. And at the time the only other women on that stage were Anita Bryant and Phylis Schaffley.
I seriously am peeved that it took another 24 years for another woman to make a serious run for President, and for another different woman to be nominated on a national party ticket.
My Great-Grandmother was a member of The National Women’s Party and worked tirelessly for decades to get the franchise for women.And then continued working for the ERA. She eventually joined the Republican Party and was on the RNC for decades. But her sons admitted in ’84 she woulda voted Dem for Geraldine Ferraro.
So lambast her for the racist shit she said, but never denigrate her for being on the first major party ticket with a woman!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Chris: That trailer is too awesome.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Dee Loralei:
Who has done the latter?
AxelFoley
When Cole is on, he is ON.
Well stated, my friend.
papa pilgrim
@Dee Loralei: Those younger than 50 can’t comprehend your point.
The other way to look at it: Without Geraldine Ferraro could there have been a Sarah Palin in 2008? That’s something she should be remembered for.
David Koch
don’t forget her race baiting of Obama in 2008
Steve
I’ll say it again: Joe Biden was an anti-busing candidate back in the day. You want to make it your litmus test for racism, you go with that.
Geraldine Ferraro had a mixed record and plenty of negatives, but she was still a trailblazer as the first woman on a major-party ticket, and that’s a really big deal. John could have found someone better to piss on.
Here’s what President Obama had to say upon the passing of this horrible racist woman:
John Cole
@Steve:
Biden changed, while Ferraro got worse as she aged and was this close to cutting holes in her pillow cases before appearing on Fox. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
Jeebus.
dogwood
I never really thought of Ferraro as a trailblazer of the highest order. She didn’t run for VP she was tapped for the job. Getting picked isn’t the same as being elected. Had the ticket prevailed and had she served successfully as VEEP, then she might be a true trailblazer.
Dee Loralei
@The prophet Nostradumbass: No one honey. I wasn’t really trying to erect a straw man here or to burn it down. I was just saying her racist blatherings and rabble rousings were racist, But she was still the first woman on a major party ticket, and that should also be applauded. I just didn’t want anyone to forget that footnote during the vilification of Geraldine Ferraro. Because that was also a BFD.
The woman is dead, she can no longer get redemption. She can’t ask for forgiveness, nor can she receive it. However, we can still offer it.
PS, thanks for following me on twitter, I enjoy you!
Dee Loralei
@papa pilgrim: Thank you. That’s all I was trying to say. Without Geraldine, could Hillary have stood a fighting chance, or would she have gone the way of Shirley Chisolm? And without Ferraro, would McCain have picked the TundraTwit?
Deplore Geraldine’s race baiting stuff back in the 70s to win the Congressional Seat and her shit in 2008 and beyond. She deserves every bit of enmity that entails. But allow her that one brief shining moment when she gave her acceptance speech at the DNC in ’84 for every woman in your life.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Dee Loralei:
Thanks! I try to be interesting, but I do fail a lot.
Steve
@John Cole: Ferraro actually became quite a bit more moderate during her career in Congress. And she was unapologetically pro-choice – as a Catholic, no less – from day one. Does she get credit for that? Oh no, sorry, I forgot that we’re only picking the bad stuff.
Ferraro said a few nasty things during the 2008 primary, no denying that. It was a nasty primary and a lot of people said a lot of things. Didn’t stop President Obama from saying that his daughters will grow up in a more equal America because of her. Read what the President said again, and tell me if you don’t feel the slightest bit of hesitation about lumping her in with Lester Maddox?
The rhetoric in this post is really indefensible. The world is a better place because she’s dead? Come on, John, you can be better than that. Acknowledge that there have been a lot of deeply flawed figures who nevertheless played pivotal roles in moving the country forward.
hitchhiker
I will be killed immediately after posting this, I know. I still can’t help myself.
Gloria Steinem (January 2008):
THE woman in question became a lawyer after some years as a community organizer, married a corporate lawyer and is the mother of two little girls, ages 9 and 6. Herself the daughter of a white American mother and a black African father — in this race-conscious country, she is considered black — she served as a state legislator for eight years, and became an inspirational voice for national unity.
Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After less than one term there, do you believe she could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?
I don’t defend Ferraro for anything. I got no oar in that water. But I’m one of the people who could never see what she said as racist, any more than what’s quoted above is racist.
Mnemosyne
@Steve:
Robert Byrd joined the KKK as a young man. So that means that he and Jesse Helms had the same racial views for their entire lives? Or are we allowed to point out that one of the people in question figured out it wasn’t 1978 anymore and the other one never did?
David Koch
Biden may have been against busing, but he was a life guard at a public pool in a black neighborhood.
Why the vice president is “a big f***ing” deal in Delaware, especially among African Americans.
if you saw his recent address to the NAACP you could tell his genuine connection with blacks.
ABL
@N W Barcus: I would be willing to bet you that any black person reading this post understands what he means.
Steve
@Mnemosyne: So Ferraro was a stone-cold racist until the day she died? Really nice of President Obama to say she made the country a better place for his daughters, wasn’t it. If only he knew her dark racist heart as well as you do.
Byrd apologized time and time again for his KKK membership, which was something like 80 years ago, by the way. Can you find any record of Biden apologizing for running as an anti-busing candidate, at the exact same time Ferraro was doing the same? Even one apology?
gwangung
I think this is a less useful way to go about it, since people of color, like most people, are sensitive to insincere apologies.
More crucial is the substance of actions in the years afterwards.
Now, is Biden a friend to the black community now or not?
ABL
@Steve: So in your wacko-verse, the first black president was supposed to call out the first female vice-president as being a stone cold racist after her death?
Come on, dude.
ABL
@gwangung:
Precisely.
Yes. One only need watch his NAACP’s speech and the warm reception he got to understand it.
suzanne
@papa pilgrim:
Barf.
How I long for the day when women can be as nakedly self-interested as men, and one’s accomplishments/failures are one’s own.
Ferraro sucked, but FFS, she’s not to blame for the Quittah.
Steve
@ABL: I believe he would have been much less effusive in his praise if he thought she was a stone-cold racist, yes.
@gwangung: I’m pretty sure Biden could have found time, just once in the last 35 years, to say he was wrong to oppose busing.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@ABL: he could have released a statement calling attention to her policy failures and implying that she was over her head. But expressing sympathy to her family so that it would all be good.
gwangung
@Steve: I’m pretty sure you missed my point.
Dee Loralei
@suzanne: Ferraro was the first PUMA an argument can be made that McCain only picked Sarah because he thought the PUMA’s and all Dem women would flock to vote for ANY woman. He was wrong, but, ya know? He was banking on me thinking with my #uterussistersolidarity to vote for her.He was wrong.
Steve
@gwangung: No, not in the slightest. But the logic on display here is something like 1) she was an anti-busing candidate in the 70s 2) she said a bunch of racially charged stuff in the heat of the 2008 primary 3) therefore she was obviously a stone-cold racist until the day she died. I think people have the capacity to be a lot smarter than that. Or maybe because this is the Internet we feel like “the world is a better place because she’s dead” is just a normal, unremarkable way of saying we weren’t all that fond of someone.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
@hitchhiker: Well I guess I’d have to ask. Does she have a disciplined campaign team and a strategy to harvest delegates? Since she’s a national symbol, why not?
Steve
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace: It’s good to see someone is willing to take the Republican position that the only barrier to minorities and women is their willingness to work hard.
gwangung
@Steve: Now I’m sure you missed my point.
Though I think you’re on stronger ground discussing Ms. Ferraro in relationship to her own record and Cole’s comment on that, as opposed to making an analogy that didn’t parallel very well.
Steve
@gwangung: Your point, as far as I can tell, is that we should look at the totality of someone’s record. Well, let’s do that. John’s statement was that Ferraro “built her career on being a blue dog from New York who spent her life demagoguing race issues.” That’s what he said – about the same woman who President Obama praised effusively when she died – that she SPENT HER LIFE demagoguing race issues. And the evidence that she was nothing but a racemonger is, well, the fact that John thought a few offensive comments on race were the only things in her life worth talking about.
Was Ferraro a Blue Dog, as John says? Well, let’s go to the tape. She was a pro-choice Catholic, at a time when there was a lot of dissent on abortion in the Democratic Party and that was a pretty outspoken position to take. Not a Blue Dog thing to do.
She supported government spending to build a strong social safety net for the poor and middle class. Pretty much the opposite of the Blue Dogs and their austerity fetish.
She was pro-environment. She opposed Reagan on Star Wars and his adventures in Central America. She was strongly pro-labor.
And yeah, she was the first woman to appear on a major-party ticket, which is still a really big deal.
She had a mixed record. She was very far from perfect. But she doesn’t deserve to have people saying that the world is a better place since she’s dead.
I’m very happy we’re in a better place in 2012 with President Obama. I’m glad we don’t have to kiss the ass of the white working class any more with all their racial resentments. But you know, over the years, we had to elect an awful lot of imperfect people to keep the conservatives from tearing everything down. If we can come to terms with the mixed legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson, I think we can refrain from consigning Geraldine Ferraro to the ninth circle of hell.
Some Loser
@gwangung:
He’s not missing the point; he’s being intentionally obtuse. The world may be better off because of her influence, but that still doesn’t mean she wasn’t a racist asshole. It is embarrassing and contemptible that anyone is trying to whitewash her crimes. His arguments are barely above that of a wingnut’s. When someone points out the flaw in his logic, he resorts to false equivalencies. This is not a person arguing in good faith.
Seriously, fuck that lady.
NickM
I’m a bit late, but this — especially the summation that the world is better off with her dead — seems to me grossly unfair. No doubt Ferraro was a pernicious force in the 2008 primaries, but so was Bill Clinton. Her record in Congress, just from a quick Google search, showed that she had a 79% lifetime Americans for Democratic Action score in 1983, a 74% ACLU score that year, and scores between 89 and 100% from the AFL-CIO during that time.
Anyone elected from a white ethnic neighborhood in Queens in the 70’s and 80’s was going to be in favor of [yes, a code word] “neighborhood preservation.” They were also in favor of kissing babies. The Republicans, just by the nature of their coalition, meant something different by it. And the Republican wouldn’t have voted with the ADA or the AFL-CIO almost all the time.
I’m no defender of everything about her record, but this is just so over-the-top it needs to be called out. Lay off the Tussin. The anger is much better deployed against living assholes anyway.
Lavocat
Man, when you dance on someone’s grave, you go all in, motherfucker!
When the long knives come out, I want you on our side.
Maude
@ruemara:
You are good at what you do. Some get jealous and out the door you go. You’ve been cheated.
I will prolly rant about this today.
Terry
Thing is, there were a lot of more qualified Democratic women in Congress that Mondale could have chosen. Barbara Jordan for one, or Pat Schoeder if he didn’t want to pick a black woman.
Cervantes
@Terry: Pat would have been great on the campaign trail — and in the White House.
chopper
@Steve:
whoopdee fucking doo. your argument is predicated on the idea that the president could have just as easily spoken about her flaws and the fact that he didn’t means he thought very highly of her. that idea is horseshit.
if cheney croaked tomorrow obama would probably end up speaking at his funeral, and he would go out of his way to say nice things too. would that be evidence that dick cheney was a nice guy? of course not. it would be evidence that obama is generally not so stupid as to be an asshole at someone’s funeral.
chopper
@Or something like that.Suffern Ace:
yeah, that’s exactly the sort of thing a classy guy like obama would do.
Allan
@Steve: The answer to why President Obama said gracious things about Geraldine Ferraro is twofold:
1. First, note his title. He’s fucking President. Presidents say gracious things about Americans who have died. (Side note: John Cole is not fucking President and operates under no such constraints.)
2. The racist rants of corrupt asshole Geraldine Ferraro completely and utterly failed to block Barack Obama’s quest to obtain that office and title. Obama said gracious things about John McCain after humiliating him electorally too. That doesn’t mean John McCain isn’t a nasty bitter old coot.
TooManyJens
@hitchhiker: I’m not really seeing the parallel here. Steinem was pointing out that while Obama lacks racial privilege, he still has male privilege, such that a woman in the exact same situation as him would not get the opportunities he got. Ferraro was arguing that Obama was privileged because he was black/biracial — that he was benefitting from “reverse racism”, basically. These claims are not the same thing.
gluon1
@Terry:
This cannot be allowed to stand.
When @Dee Loralei: noted, “that it took another 24 years for another woman to make a serious run for President”. The first thing I thought to point out was that Schroeder set women back decades with her disastrous run in 1987. She is a horrible woman in general, but her tearful breakdown confirmed all the worst bigotry of the “The ladies are too sensitive to be in charge” crowd.
There were things I didn’t care for about Ferraro, but she was a strong woman who stood for many good principles. @Steve, @hitchhiker, and Dee Loralei are right that this post and thread are not treating her as she deserves.
mike
@Mark S.: Timing is everything but that Shirley Chisolm wudda made a heckuva VP candidate
Jay
@Steve: Ferraro didn’t just oppose busing, she supported changing the constitution to ban it. She was a racist. That President Obama said nice things about her only proves he is a better man than I or Cole or many others here.