This diary entry deals with a letter from a friend who is a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton. As a Obama supporter, I want to publish this letter because it gives real insight into the anger and disappointment that Hillary's supporters are now experiencing. Rather than dismiss this anger, I think we have to understand it if we are to bring the Democratic Party together for victory in November. As any psychologist would tell us, you don't diffuse a person's anger by telling them that they are wrong or that they shouldn't feel that way. Healing begins by listening. Let's listen..........
Letter from a Hillary supporter......
What I feared would happen has happened. Obama's candidacy was made by
the media into a divide on race, despite Obama's campaign theme of united
change and hope. In doing so, they made sure that Hillary Clinton as a
feminist liberal white woman would not get the nomination from her party.
When sexism and racism put liberals in the position of having to be seen as
one or the other, liberals opted out of racism and into sexism. That the
Democratic Convention will nominate its candidate this year on the 48th
anniversary of a major Martin Luther King Jr speech was the nail in the
coffin for Hillary's nomination. To choose a white woman over a black man,
if you are a super-delegate, on that day of all days, would be political
anathema. Hillary would have had to go into the convention with not just
barely enough pledged delegates to be nominated, she would have had to have
such a substantial number that it would have become pointless to challenge
credientials or otherwise disqualify her supporters' votes. As it was, even
if she had taken the last two states with her, she would have had to keep
her super delegates and get a few other uncommitteds and Obama supporters to
cross over. Leaving it to the superdelegates to be the swing factor, they
would have had to support Obama or be tarred with the racism brush.
Especially on such an anniversary!
candidate will be nominated for the President, it puts front and center for
anybody with "eyes to see and ears to hear" the fact that sexism is the only
form of bigotry that remains acceptable in this country at all points on the
political spectrum! Women of both colors worked tirelessly for the freedom
of slaves in the 1840's to the 1860's, and then when they sought their own
freedom from chattelhood, they were told no, that's different! They waited
another 70 years until the Constitution was amended to guarantee them the
vote in all of the United States. Once more women--of every color--are set
back, possibly for another generation or generation and a half. I don't know
whether to rage or grieve over that. Maybe I should do both.
The sad truth is that if Obama had been white or Hillary had been black, she
would have won, based on clear and strongly articulated policies, toughness,
experience, and fundraising ability (name recognition counts heavily in that
area), party connections, favors owed her from the other side of the aisle,
maturity, business savvy, being somebody's wife and somebody's mother while
doing all this (yes, it IS still different from being a husband and father,
even when you have money...).
Putting her up against McCain, a white man, the issue would not have been
race, but her policies, because then the sexism in attacking her for being
or not being feminine, for being her husband's wife, for having her daughter
campaigning loyally for her, would be extremely evident. There being no
other bigotry-tar bunch to trump it, sexism would be in play, and then a
vote for McCain would have been a vote for sexism. Just as now a vote for
Hillary was seen as a vote against African American leadership.
In point of fact Obama started out not playing the race card, but promoting
his qualifications and ideas. The media fanned the thing about his pastor's
comments into a major deal, and then Hillary's fate was sealed by the
process becoming all about racial divisions.
Hillary can do a lot of things that men can do. She has a man's degree, a
man's profession, a man's experience, a man's toughness, she even wears
pants! (Yes, we DO put them on one leg at a time, just like guys do!), but
what she cannot do is make herself an African American! If proving herself
equal to and/or better than the other (male) candidates could get her
elected, Hillary would have won. But that wasn't really the point with her
party or with the media.
The point was that a black man was preferred to a white woman. Neither her
white skin nor her female sex was desirable to the party. Not this year!
And it grabs no ratings, by comparison, with the media. No matter what
Hillary had done, if she had to do it all over again, she really could not
have won. Not this year. Not after Obama's pastor got into it and
crystalized the race issue beyond anybody's ability to return the campaign
to the issues--to what each candidate would do for the country and where
they would lead us.
Then when it was apparent Obama had already been nominated--by the
media--and the Party leadership(who are still mostly men) wimped out and
rolled over--so the media could have a nice pre-scripted convention around
which to sell lucrative ads, instead of an unpredicatable, unruly,
unscripted actual floor fight for several days--i e a REAL convention, like
they ALL used to be---Hillary did the handsome thing and pledged to "work
her heart out for Obama", and pledged all her supporters would too. She
didn't hem and haw and say, "well, you know there are lot of women and union
members out there who are not happy. I don't know...I'll have to check with
them..." She unequivically supported him! She also said that she would be
open to the vice-presidency. Which would demand that all the party back that
ticket. No excuses.
But what happened? The words had hardly left her mouth before the media was
rounding up people to opine about it being a BAD idea! A bad idea to unify
the party by putting all factions on one ticket?? And scrounging around for
people to say what other choices were so much better (including former
senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, who is known as a conservative Democrat! not
exactly a good fit for a progressive agenda like Obama's. Who, dare I point
it out, is white, like Hillary! Of course, Sam Nunn doesn't have her
liabilities. He isn't female and he isn't married to Bill.).
The main objection to her being vice president is the same as the main
objection the media had to her being President---if she's in the White House
(again!), what will we do with Bill?!? If she had been President I think she
would have found him a job that took him far away from the White House and
out of the public eye most of the time. Like an ambassadorship or heading a
long term international commission of some sort, one with such a technical
agenda that if it got covered at all it would be on the inside pages of the
business section...and not at all or hardly ever on the broadcast news!
Which is what a President Obama administration could do also, if she were
vice president.
But the media could not stand for that! And the Party won't stand up to
them. Having succeeded in destroying her bid for the Presidency, they cannot
bear the idea of her being anywhere near it. They had to snatch that away
from her too before the Party or Obama even began making any statements
about it. Having crowned Obama, picking an "heir presumptive" is seen as
their privilege too.
I have HAD it! With the Party and with the media. Unable to decide which is
the more responsible and therefore the more despicable in their treatment of
Hillary and, by extension, ALL the women of the United States, who comprise
substantially more than 50 per cent of the electorate , I am calling down a POX on BOTH their houses.
What is even sadder is that if the Republicans could have scripted the sort
of primary campaign that would benefit them most in the general election,
this would be it. Perhaps the fine hand of the Neo-Cons did help the process
along as the Democrats foundered on the rocks of the race issue.
TheRepublicans stand to benefit a lot by cross-over backlash . Not that I
think most of Hillary's supporters would go out and vote for McCain out of
spite, but I think it entirely possible that many of us "women over 50"
would just stay home and not vote, and also would keep our wallets tight
shut when the fundraiser letters go out. It may not hurt as much as an
actual vote FOR McCain, but it sure won't help Obama carry the electoral
votes he needs to carry in the states that Hillary won in the primaries.
Which brings up the question, how liberal is the" liberal media" really? And
how much influence do the NeoCons have on them?
Was the big love-fest with Obama's African American identity actually a
NeoCon strategy to get the weaker candidate to run against McCain? Is it
really a historic moment proving we are a less racist country or is the
African American candidate being promoted BECAUSE he is really more likely
to LOSE against McCain, because conservatives don't have as much aversion to voting against an African American as liberals do? And if a substantial
number of Hillary supporters sat out the general election, that would leave
the field to the sort of conservatives who DON'T want an African American
President, and those who are just not all that excited about the potential
history allegedly being made. People who are more concerned about making the
economy go, getting and keeping a job, getting out of an expensive and
pointless military adventure without making things worse than they are
already. People that Hillary was likely to persuade to cross over and vote
against "four more years of the same failed policies".
Obama is the darling of young liberal voters but when it comes time to cough
up the campaign money, how big a factor are they?
And compared to the numbers of people over 50, of both genders, who turn
out to vote EVERY year, and who have a lot of cash, who would be more likely
to take votes away from McCain in November? Obama or Hillary?
Feel good while you can and celebrate this historic moment. It may be
over on Election Day in November.
I will turn out and vote for Obama. Because eight more years of Neo-Con
authoritarianism is totally unacceptable. And because indeed an African
American President is truly a milestone in racial progress that no one can
dispute.
But right now I am, as a woman and feminist, feeling profoundly disgusted
and hurt by the fiasco that has been the Democratic Party nomination
process. And nobody is talking about the elephant in the room( Sexism). Again
