Exchange between Gwen Ifill and Doris Goodwin on MTP

Here is something supporters of BOTH campaigns should keep in mind:

MS. IFILL: Just something, keep in mind what her audience is at this stage. Her audience, assuming she's trying to get out of this campaign with something intact and with some sort of power base intact, her audience is the truly, deeply angry women out there, who I run into, and I know who you hear from, who say, "How could you do this to us? We"--I, I talk to a woman who said she had planned a dance at an inauguration of the first woman president before she died, and now she'll never be able to do it. They believe that Hillary Clinton is not the beginning of the road, but the end of the road for women in--and--with a shot at the White House.

My thinking is, we didn't know two years, or we never heard of, a couple years ago that Barack Obama would be in this position. We didn't know eight years ago that she was going to be in the Senate. So things change a lot. But the despair and the anger and the fury about this is real. And that's what she's speaking to.

MS. GOODWIN: But, you know, despair and sadness is understandable, but resentments, when you let resentments fester, I think it poisons a part of you.

MS. IFILL: Mm-hmm.

MS. GOODWIN: And what you don't want women to take away, instead of seeing her as a champion who actually did some great things for women, see her instead as a victim, it doesn't help the next women coming along. So I just wish those resentments could go on--could go away.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24815500/page/3/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24816493#24816493

playing the victim all of the time does nothing for women in any venue. Hillary has done us no favors.

Some of Hillary's supporters have become professional victims. But unlike many here, I'm not trying to woo them. Let them cast a protest vote, and deal with the consequences of it. If Obama can win some of them over, I say good for him. If not, then I say screw 'em. The Clinton campaign's hubris early on, was insulting to everyone else in the race. The very media, that they now despise, kept telling me how Hillary was inevitable. Because of her dominant media coverage, and seemingly bottomless warchest, a lot of much better candidates than Hillary were dropped by the wayside.

Any other candidate would have been forced out by the party elders by now. No one should have to kiss her supporters' butts just because they were outmaneuvered. Many of us supported other candidates before we got down to the final two, if we can't come together to support the presumptive nominee, then so be it.

:edited for spelling correction

on Lincoln and how he brought his opponents together in his administration and that he wants to do the same thing.

in Washington. I think he's sincere about wanting to hear all sides, even the ones that he may not agree with.

from the so-called feminist movement. I consider myself a feminist, but I don't want to lead an angry, bitter life.

So, these women who Hillary are speaking to are clinging to their outmoded feminist thinking, huh?

is that like everything, feminism has evolved. Unfortunately like Goodwin said, the people who cry sexism do more harm then good for the next woman who runs for president.

I think it was also said by someone else on MTP that you can be against Hillary Clinton and at the same time not against having a woman for president (I'm paraphrasing from memory).

telling women that they better vote for her because she was a woman.

It's ludicrious on face value; does that mean all the men voters are supposed to only vote for a man?

Women have evolved, not the feminist movement unfortunately.

I've run a city council campaign, in fact for a blind woman with a strange first name. She didn't expect anyone to vote for her because she was a woman. In fact, she was a virtual unknown and still got almost a 1000 votes. The problem is expect something because you feel it is OWED to you.

as people in pursuit of the American dream....

the frontierspeople didnt think that way. What has happened?

happening. Far too often, Clinton's most ardent supporters have fallen on that as an excuse for every nasty or stupid thing she's done, instead of recognizing mistakes as that. It dilutes the term. And sexism *is* still alive and often acceptable. But we can't fight it if every time it's pointed out people have been trained to roll their eyes.

I don't want to be/act like a man. I want to be respected as a woman, mascaraed eyelashes and all.

If her campaign stands for anything, it is the resentments of women over 60, often resentments born in their childhood, teens or early adulthood. She has constantly appealed to that demographic on the basis of those resentments.

Hillary could have played a much more important role, but she chose to go the low road. Her campaign is built on anger and resentment.

Although I fit her demographics in almost every other way, I don't have the anger/resentments.
I realize we live in a sexist society! There wouldn't be feminism if there weren't issues. But, demanding special privilege, based on ANY inherent characteristic (First Lady, woman, other) is not liberating for anyone.

I don't see that Hillary has brought one ounce of feminine power to the occasion.

Edwards based on his ideas and populism.

I chose him over the other, including Clinton, based on my political beliefs and not on any fear or hatred of any other candidate.

When he dropped out I started looking for a viable alternative and because of the voting in other states my choices were narrowed to two, Obama and Clinton. I was glad that my party had narrowed its choices to a black and a woman, it was like a dream fulfilled but it was also a difficult choice since neither is ideologically in sink with my politics.

Literally until two days before out primary I was flip-flopping daily but finally settled on Obama not because of Obama but because of Hillary and the tactics I began to see in her campaign.

The observation of Ms Ifill and Ms Goodwin in the OP exactly matches my observation of the arguments put forth bu Clinton apologists her at DU and I say that as someone who could easily have fallen into her camp as into Obama's. I have no ax to gring here save that as a Democrat wanting very much to see this nation put back on the "right track".

even though I fit her demographics in every other way.

but wise nonetheless.

Maybe, when they're pondering the missed opportunity, these angry women will acknowledge that electing the wife of an ex-President whose path to power was assured by him is more befitting of a dynastic, authoritarian culture than what we hopefully have become. If it's any consolation, she lost to an outsider, which is what women have been all these years. Hillary made herself into the institutional favorite and was undone by an insurgent. All of these angry women were rooting for the Establishment at the end of the day, an Establishment that was threatening to warp our culture with its dispiriting Bush Clinton Bush Clinton castle building.

Stagnation is what was lost at the end of the day, you angry, resentful Hillarians.

supporters fail to see, is that this is not a referendum on A WOMAN candidate, it is a referendum on THEIR woman as candidate.

I have never seen a more pouty, angry, victimized group of people in my life.

Good grief. :eyes:

(before the hounds attack, I am a white woman, nearing 50)

that others are NOT voting for her just because she's a woman. And they add this to the examples of sexism they have seen out there regarding her--of which there have indeed been a few--and they then claim that she is losing BECAUSE of sexism and misogyny.

that women are angry and militant (hysterial and poisioned).

Bitter, angry, You are damn right. But not for the reasons you think or wish, so you can continue to minimize me as a woman.

n/t

:loveya:

But, not really after seeing how she moderated one of the Kerry/Bush debates.

She doesn't represent me one bit whatsoever.