zazen
zazen's Journaland excusing her unethical behavior because she is a woman is profoundly sexist
I appreciate what you're saying. I'm a lifelong feminist activist and have been on the receiving end of daily sexism and lots of male violence.
I got a lot of flack here on DU in 2007 for initiating a major protest against the "Hillary Nutcracker" ads that DU was running at the time by suggesting that no one would put up with an "Obama sex toy" ad. DU pulled the ads.
I've begun solidarity threads for her recently (as a Sanders supporter).
Her recent insinuation that Sanders was intentionally sexist was the most vile misappropriation of feminism I've even seen a Democratic candidate make. As someone who's advocated for battered women and sexual abuse victims for decades I was disgusted.
This is the height of cynical privilege. It's vile to trivialize the real suffering of females to attack some of the few male allies we actually have.
She doesn't get a pass for that, or for her collusion with Wall Street and support for invading Iraq, because asshole Republicans or even some Democrats attack her. There are billions of women who've been through so much worse. A lot are dead at the hands of men.
I don't get a free pass to lie and cheat and collude with oligarchs because of the misogyny I've experienced. I certainly am not automatically qualified to be POTUS. Neither is she.
She's lost me, for good.
partly the glasses enlarging his brown pupils, making him look angry/afraid
On a deeper level, I think he also seems a LOT more resentful than his brother.
W. showed resentment when his "entitlement" was threatened, but because W was so interpersonally clueless, he was oblivious to how much people mocked him and/or how he came across.
Jeb! seems to carry a lot more agitated resentment around with him--like he's more his Mother's son. He's not just entitled and grossly under qualified like his older brother. He's conflicted about it. . . whether because he secretly knows he doesn't deserve his privileges, or because he feels he deserves more than his brother. Don't know about that.
Do any other Bernie supporters feel better about voting for HRC in general election?
My frustration with HRC was really high going into this debate.
But I realized that I'd be happy with EVERY PERSON ON THAT STAGE in, yes, a Clinton-led cabinet (Webb, tightly reined, back in Defense, Chaffee at Interior, O'Malley as VP), with Sanders mobilizing monthly marches to hold their feet to the fire and help transform politics at state levels as well.
What struck me, a long-time radical feminist who opposes HRC on her neoliberal policies, is that as long as HRC can actually be REAL--can actually explain to us that she isn't just cynically manipulating people but has reasons for her reserve, her calculation, her position changes, and that she actually is human enough to get pissed off at the Republicans and has the passion to call them on their shit--I can tolerate her candidacy without flinching. In fact, I can be proud of her strength.
When she says she doesn't have a position yet on something, I can handle that if she consistently says she wants all of the information before she commits. If part of how she sincerely forms positions is that she waits to decide what reflects what the people want and what can actually get done, well, I can handle that. That's a strategy. One doesn't have to agree with it, but if there's a moral compass there, somewhere, I can handle it. I sensed last night for the first time in 15 years that she does have a moral compass.
And honestly, as much as I'm so grateful for Sanders' leadership of the nascent 21st century American economic equality movement (whatever it's going to end up being called, because it's not going away), I don't know how well that would translate into presidential leadership without a cadre of democratic socialists up and down the ticket. And I don't know how well he could manage that position. I think his role, and on some level he knows this, is as the John the Baptist/Jewish prophet-type agitator and mobilizer, and in this he's already won--we've already won--because WE'VE ALREADY GOT THE JOB. Whether we win a primary or a general election, we've got lots of work to do. The mass mobilization of Americans against the oligarchs is happening and isn't going away. A serious candidate for President is a self-avowed socialist and is mobilizing 15-20% of the electorate, many of whom are young and will become more committed to these positions as they grow older. This is awesome.
A passionate, pissed off Hillary, when held to economic populist standards by a nascent, vocal democratic socialist movement fueled through social media and community activism, will begin to get 'er done in a reasoned way. She IS highly competent across a range of fronts. She really is an impressive leader.
I do not like admitting this.
The idiot mainstream media's terror of "socialism" and their disregard of their own focus groups and polling results notwithstanding, I do see her as the next President of the United States, with Martin O'Malley as her VP (that might be the bone she has to throw to the economic populists, that and Debbie's head). He is one serious attack dog, when properly harnessed. Bernie can keep mobilizing the monthly marches to take back our country. No President alone is going to be able to do it anyway. And a President doesn't have time to mobilize--that's the job of the agitator. Bernie's better at whipping up the base than she is. We need both simultaneously.
I'll vote for Bernie in the NC primary and keep campaigning for him, because as he knows best, his candidacy is the way to begin educating other Americans that our system is broken and there are alternatives.
But this morning, I am a bit relieved, and hopeful, and reminded that we've all got our work to do. In the likely event that Sanders "loses," he and we are still "winning," because we need a lot more than the Presidency to make the changes that need to occur in this country. In that sense, let her be the negotiator, while we keep agitating. The long game is too important.
I think the red-baiting against Obama has ironically defanged the term "socialist"
The Tea Party has screamed "socialist" at Obama, a corporate Democrat, for so long without any understanding of what the term has meant historically that less informed mainstream Repubs and Democrats, raised or born during Cold War, who used to recoil at the term tend to tune it out.
I mean, when you repeatedly scream that someone with obvious pro-Wall Street policies, who steadfastly protected the free market in health care, a "socialist," many people who don't really understand the term are actually _softened_ to it. I mean, if THAT's socialism, then they don't care.
Some in the Republican party have gone more to the right because of this red-baiting against Obama and now associate anything left of rapacious unregulated capitalism with "socialism" and "communism"--but they're nuts anyway. We were never going to reach them.
Everyone else is beginning to think, "meh." It's kind of like the evolution of people around women's rights over the past 50 years. When woman-haters kept screaming "bitch" or "lesbian" or "slut" at strong women as if that's an insult (my constant experience in the 1980s--if you spoke up you had to be discredited with one of the three standard epithets), finally enough people said, so what if a woman's strong or if a woman loves other women or a woman has sexual agency? Why is that an insult? The screaming of the extremists finally backfired. The culture changed around them and what they think is an insult is either meaningless or has turned into a compliment.
And so it goes with "socialist." It's not the conversation-stopping epithet it was even 10 years ago. We can paradoxically thank the right wing crazies for some of that.
Less informed independents and more open-minded Republicans may think, well, they tell me Obama's a socialist, but I like and trust Bernie a whole lot more than Obama or Hillary, and he's actually talking about returning our lives to the prosperity of my parents and grandparents' generation, so let's try his kind of socialism.
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