Okay, varmints: vote for the lady or granny gets it.

Senator Clinton, Nov. 15:

"It's been inspiring. And I have to tell you, as I travel around the country, you know, fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. And so many women in their 90s wait to shake my hand. And they say something like: I'm 95 years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House."

If you don't vote for Clinton, you're going to crush the hopes of those frail, saintly old women and drive them into their graves of despair. They're gonna DIE, and you will have killed every last one of them personally. Not only that, caravans of little girls will be so despondent that their Dads had better be careful to not run over their lower lips on the long, long drive back home.

It's like that scene in "Blazing Saddles" where the two cowboy thugs are punching the little old lady, and they pause long enough for her to look into camera and say "Have you ever seen such cruelty?"

Are there more men who harbor sexism than women? Is either fair or justified? Much of the bemoaning of "sexism" and "misogyny" smack of misandry, but it's traditionally the lot of the downtrodden to grant themselves exemption from fairness. Take that from a serious lifelong liberal.

This approach is tiresome and it's got unintended consequences. Not all sexists are male, not all racists are white, not all assholes are conservatives, not all orientationists are straight and focusing on one's own afflicted status is inherently selfish. That should be clear enough.

It's long since time for a woman or a black president, but policies and character should be the determinants. Playing for sympathy is underhanded. Bandying about accusations to get one's way is anti-social.

Many people who play this card think they're getting away with something. They should rethink this; it can have some serious backlash and it lowers the debate to a juvenile plane and one that will not reflect well on their campaign. Yes, there are times to make a stand, but is this one of them? Is it worth losing an election just to rub everyone else's nose in a triumphal power-play?

Is it worth it to play this card for arguably the most conservative of all the current Dem candidates, especially when it's the one who's also got the highest unfavorables? Is it particularly fair to play this card AT ALL? If so, is it reasonable to expect to get away with the advantages without any downside?

And Edwards hints that only a white man can win.

It really is hilarious to me that Clinton is held to some higher standard by people who hate her guts.

He's said that it doesn't hurt to have someone who sounds like him, but he's talking about the accent.

These issues will be brought up, and they should; the point is how and to what degree.

I'm not holding her to any higher standard, and I don't back away from the accusation of disliking her pretty intensely, but it's more a form of disgust at opportunism and flagrant courting of the monied elite coupled with exasperation at her and her husband's pointless attempts to curry favor with those who actively seek to destroy them.

For all this revulsion at much of her character, I can still enjoy her sense of humor and acknowledge her skills; she also does care about people, so I don't think she's an across the board nightmare. Unfortunately, many despise such modulation, since it's much easier to dismiss opponents as full spectrum swine and dolts.

It's similarly amusing to hear her extreme partisans shriek in outrage at the kind of handling they routinely dish out to their opponents; it reeks of aristocratic pretensions and hypocrisy.

"We can't make John black. We can't make him a woman," Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, told an interviewer in one moment of discontent this summer. "Those things get you a lot of press."

Now, as Edwards lays out the closing argument of his primary election campaign -- that he is the most electable candidate and the most able to help fellow Democrats in conservative states -- race and gender are forcing him to tread lightly.

Edwards' claims are sensitive, given that he is asserting that he has more appeal to voters nationwide than do the front-runners, a white woman and a black man.

"He may not be saying it, but he's putting the argument out there that white male rural voters won't vote for a black guy or a woman," Taylor Marsh, a Democratic blogger and radio talk-show host, said in an interview. Marsh also recently raised the race and gender questions in a blog posting about Edwards' electability claims.

"Anybody who's considering not voting for Senator Obama because he's black or for Senator Clinton because she's a woman, I don't want their vote. I don't want them voting for me."

JRE, Charleston SC "debate", July 23, 2007

Race and gender are causing all three to tred lightly, yet it's an issue all around. The "You Go Girl" appeal in Iowa is a deliberate call for fractiousness along gender lines. The 40 Days of Faith in SC is a pretty direct racial and religious appeal.

I'm not joking when I remind you of his citing the accent; to a certain degree, that's playing upon prejudice by knowingly accepting as allies those who have a regional ax to grind and have a chip on their shoulders. It's not racial prejudice, though, it's regional: many in the South feel dismissed as hicks and marginalized and look disproportionately positively upon politicians from their neck of the woods. He knows that, and he acknowledges that, and he also knows and acknowledges that this is an impediment in places like Boston.

Hillary Clinton has certainly not played upon sympathies and bigotry as much as she could have, but probably as much as she can GET AWAY WITH. For her, the art of the possible is the art of the perpetratable. Obama has been a bit more coded, but the SC approach is an obvious attempt to pull the rug out from under Clinton; it certainly isn't to outmaneuver Edwards, he isn't actively courting the publicly religious vote like she is.

If Edwards was to make an analogous appeal to the "You Go Girl" approach, he'd be lynched in a cybersecond, and he should be; as a member of the traditionally privileged group, it would be beyond just tacky. We live in a time of adjustment, and white males need to cede some power, as virtually all Democrats agree. This is happening, and he's a part of it.

As for Senator Clinton, there's obviously real and honorable solidarity here, too, and it would be a great leap forward to finally have a woman president, but there doesn't seem to be much compunction about eliciting the support of misandrists, either. It's a dirty little secret, and all is swathed in the joyous beauty of group pride, completely denying any hint of sexism, anger and vengeance.

Such is the lot of the downtrodden: the system is unfair, so any tactics are justified. Others, of course, must toe the line.

:popcorn:

if she represents the dreams of women from 10-95 years old.
Millions of Grannys deserves to see dreams fulfilled.

Please tell me you're joking.
Is that really a reason to vote for her? How does that differ from people who voted for GWB because they thought that he was the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with?

It's the curse of the downtrodden.

Don't you understand the implications?

They're positively deafening.

It's just a weird failing: for me, policies and character trump gender and ethnicity.

instead of repeating the last 20 years of disastrous 'white male' rule

Hillary doesn't get a pass on that because she's a woman.

The first vote I ever cast was for Mondale/Ferraro in 1984. I'm not opposed to a woman in the White House. I'm opposed to Bush/Clinton dynasties and globalcorporatist policies.

Yikes.

we'll see if they have been equal disasters

Elizabeth I held power for 45 years, and she was a pretty ruthless character; there's plenty of blood on her hands. Catherine the Great had 34 years of aggression, bloodshed and all sorts of expansionist mayhem. Then there's Victoria: plenty of wogs lost their lives for the betterment of the Empire whose sun never set in her 63 years of colonial abuse. Mustn't forget about dear Indira Gandhi, either: she jailed, killed, warred, maneuvered and eventually got herself assassinated in her approaching 20 years of power.

Sure, it can be argued that these poor women have had to be so much tougher to withstand the animosity of their cruel male rivals, but isn't this EXACTLY what Senator Clinton is doing? Her militarism easily outstrips all other contenders except the Republicans, and it smacks of the same strutting pomposity that had the neocons embark on the ludicrous adventure to out-macho a bunch of Arab males.

Historically, the record of women rulers is NOT particularly "nice".

It's hard to keep up with the accusations when they keep changing all the time.

it started with 90 yo granny wanting to see a woman in the white house. I think that was more than 20 years.

We've had 7 white male disasters in a row - it wasn't one disasterous male in power for 20 years, it was repeat disasters male after male after male.

Catherine or Victoria or Elizabeth or Indira show individual failure or success not an established pattern because they were not successors in a particular political environment.

Also to my knowledge, most of them were not elected, they inherited their position so again its not comparable to the situation in the US.

First you change the subject, then you change the criteria of your change, then you heap on another factor; this isn't a debate or discussion, it's more like the biathlon at the Winter Olympics: shooting at things and then skiing off to shoot at other things.

Silly me, but "rule" sounds a bit more fitting for discussing monarchs than elected officials, anyway.

By the way, when you say "7 white male disasters" in a row, do you mean terms, or individuals? I presume you mean terms, and concede that Carter was and is a decent guy. Otherwise, you'd be taking us back to Johnson. Just out of curiosity, which do you mean?

These four women are part of a continuum of government in their respective countries, and as such bring their personal pluses and minuses with them and are part of a larger whole.

If you wanted to restrict the discussion to elected officials when you hijacked the topic, you might have said so; I'm more than willing to take up most gauntlets thrown at my feet. Obviously, if you restrict the criteria enough, there are no examples from which to draw. Still, if one contends--as one infers by using the spat epithet of "'white male' rule"--that white males are inherently more evil than women rulers, one should be willing to face the analysis of what women rulers we have at hand. For elected ones, there are three of the past few decades who stand out as every bit as creepy as the last few American Presidents, and more than most of them: Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher.

If males are to be damned by the bad apples among them, women need to stand up and take the same responsibility. I'd rather have Pete Stark than Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and I'd rather have Jan Schakowsky than any Male Republican Representative and most Democratic ones. Love Barbara Boxer; can't stand Kay Bailey Hutchison. Don't much care for Dianne Feinstein but can't think of any Republican I'd rather have.

The issue I took with you was the blanket dismissal of "'white male' rule"; that's a rather sexist remark, but somehow it's okay with you and with many others. I disagree; to me, playing fair is a two-way street. Beyond that is the lurking insinuation that women would somehow be less evil than men, and that smacks of a claim of emotional and moral superiority. I see no evidence of that whatever; virtue and shitheadedness are equal opportunity traits across gender as far as I can see, and those who contend otherwise I contend are bigots.

Hell, if you're going to deflect a thread and bring up something else, at least stick to it; otherwise it's just sniping and obfuscation.

I suspect the Germans might well agree with me.

Asymmetric arguments are silly. One can only argue actuality against actuality; when one argues reality versus a hypothetical, it always works out to the advantage of the hypothesizer.

Are you being ironic or not?

There was nothing hypothetical about my post - Thatcher and Merkel are about as real as you can get. There have been plenty of very good female national leaders, but those two alone prove that it's not a solution to all problems.

Yes, I was being silly; I'm in complete agreement. I remember years ago in college being accosted by the idealists of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade and having the same recurring dynamic: they contrasted the evils of the American System to the theory of Marx; I wanted to talk theory versus theory or America versus the Soviet Union. This, to them, was completely unfair...

The implication that women are somehow more noble, nurturing or more warlike when in power really doesn't hold much water, although we could certainly use a little more data.

a beer buddy has no qualifications.

Hillary has qualifications and the bonus of opening the door for millions of women.

"It's similarly amusing to hear her extreme partisans shriek in outrage at the kind of handling they routinely dish out to their opponents; it reeks of aristocratic
pretensions and hypocrisy."

I always said they were Hillaryous.

By the way, I don't think Iowa women are falling too hard for the Clintonian gender card. If they were, Hillary's support among women wouldn't be dropping as
evidenced in last week's ABC/Washington Post poll.

what a piece of work is man.

this is standard campaign rhetoric. Nothing unusual about it. All candidates play to their targeted audience. All candidates try and sell themselves to the voting public. You distort in a most dishonorable way when you write:

"If you don't vote for Clinton, you're going to crush the hopes of those frail, saintly old women and drive them into their graves of despair. They're gonna DIE, and you will have killed every last one of them personally. Not only that, caravans of little girls will be so despondent that their Dads had better be careful to not run over their lower lips on the long, long drive back home."

Hardly surprising from you.

and indeed very telling. Hope you're wearing the iron plated under ware my good friend.

I also have to laugh, because this is this is very "inside" to me. I hate to say it. But among many volunteers, this is kind of a joke. We have an imaginary old lady. Mostly we joke like this because we meet so many little old ladies that love our guy. And say they would never vote for Hillary.

I don't think it makes us members of the He Man Woman Haters club to discuss it openly. After all, I feel when she said "I'm your girl" she brought the issue of her sex into the picture.

But I do want to say. I like women. They are at least 50% of the good people I know. But if she is going to bring it to the table, then it's an open discussion, right? Or is she the only one that gets to talk about it. But I have to say, I have no problem with her gender, it's her last name that troubles me.

Give me Barbara Boxer.

First off, this post of yours is VERY inflammatory, but since my thread-starter is more than a bit provocative, the stage is somewhat set for such things.

I haven't brought intelligence into the discussion at all; I'm talking about the fractious wedge issue of reducing the primaries to a referendum on gender. To attempt to put words in my mouth that suggest that I believe blacks are intellectually inferior is playing the race card in a serious way. I don't believe that. This IS what you're doing here, after all: amping the discussion up to this level in an attempt to slam shut the door of discourse with a passive-aggressive accusation of racial bigotry.

7/8ths of Americans have a vastly different opinion.

Among Hispanics, it's Clinton 63% favorable and 20% unfavorable, Edwards 35% favorable and 16% unfavorable, Obama 33% favorable and 13% unfavorable.

Among non-Hispanic whites, it's Obama 53% favorable and 31% unfavorable, Edwards 45% favorable and 38% unfavorable, Clinton 41% favorable and 57% unfavorable. THAT'S 57% UNFAVORABLE. Worse, the undecideds are 16% for Obama, 17% for Edwards and ONLY 3% for Clinton.

(I'm not a big fan of Gallup, by the way; I think they tend to skew quite a bit to the right. They ARE a somewhat credible organization, though.)

In a different survey, Rasmussen just gave Clinton a 52% unfavorable rating. How does one win a two-way race with that number?

Rather than playing games here, just what ARE you saying? Do blacks know something the rest of us don't? Are THEY smarter? (That would seem to be the inference, especially since you brought up the issue of intelligence.) Is it that she's perceived to have their interests more in mind? Why do blacks give a higher rating to Clinton than Obama? Also, is 48% approval all that bad for a white guy with a southern accent? (That IS an issue, isn't it?)

If she wants to use cloying tactics like this, fine, but there's a downside to it.

As for your reduction that someone pointing out unscrupulous and greasy ploys like this is most probably a racist, that's extremely anti-social. Does EVERYONE who disagrees with you have a sheet and a noose in the closet? Do I have to protest love for Alan Keyes, Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Donnie McClurkin and J.C. Watts to not feel the wrath of political excommunication?

(Edited for correct polling source)

http://www.gallup.com/poll/28006/Clinton-Most-Positively-Rated-Candidate-Among-Blacks-Hispanics.aspx

to be labeled "bleeding heart" and then ignored by many voters than some candidates. Others want someone who is called "pragmatic" more than "bleeding heart".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9ahbHVuag

other than that the rest of a pile of shit.