18 Replies to “She’s Still Right”

  1. Huh. I actually really disagree with Steinem’s op-ed, and here’s why:
    1) I think it’s clear from the article that she’s voting for Clinton because she’s a woman — she even suggests that older women who voted for Clinton are more radical than younger women who didn’t. Which is insulting to young women and insulting to me. Not voting for Clinton doesn’t mean that one is in denial or trying to escape the “sexual caste system.” It may mean simply that those young women have a different opinion about which candidate they think would be best. I resent the suggestion that I should vote for a woman just because she’s a woman.

    2) Despite her protests to the contrary, I think that she’s back in the ol’ race vs. gender pool, and I don’t think that’s a terribly useful debate. We’re in a win-win situation here, imo. The two frontrunners in the Democratic party are a black man and a white woman. This is huge! It’s ginormous! It’s awesome! Can’t we just let it be awesome?

    Mostly I think she’s being disingenuous. She says that she’s not engaging in Ye Olde Who’s Got It Worse debate, but then goes ahead and does it anyway. I’d like this article better if she just came out and said, “Women have it tougher than men and women should vote for Clinton because she’s a woman.” Because she’s saying that anyway while pretending she’s not.

    Feministing has a good post on this: http://feministing.com/archives/008363.html#more

  2. Women do have it tougher than men, even black men.
    Will I vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, no, I’m totaly undecided so far I have not heard one thing for any politician that I believe they can make good on.

  3. Whether Ms. Steinem is right or wrong, I know why my preference is not for Senator Clinton. It’s not because she is a woman.

    I would *love* to have a woman running this country, just not this one. I do not trust Clinton, mostly because of her botched health care plan in the early 90s (secret meetings with attorneys and health-care wonks…no doctors, no nurses, no one on the “front lines?”).

    She has also not apologized or fully explained why she voted for Bush’s Mess-O-Potamia.

    And even if Senator Clinton does get elected, do you realize how much of the old crap from the 90s these Republican monkeys are going to dig up and revisit?

    The next President of the United States is going to be picking up a lot of messes, and I don’t think Senator Clinton is the one for the job.

    Big caveat: as incredibly reluctant as I am about Senator Clinton, if she ends up becoming the Democratic nominee, I will vote for her. It sure as hell beats having Huckabee or Willard in the WH.

  4. I’m not so sure that Hillary Clinton was the bona fide winner in NH. I’m not saying that she stole it necessarily, it might have been the Rethugs since they’d rather run against Clinton than Obama. Don’t forget, 60% of the precincts in NH use eminently hackable/riggable Diebold optical scan machines, the same ones that are hacked in the HBO documentary Hacking Democracy.

  5. Someday I hope to hear that people are voting for a candidate and no one mentions making history, electing a woman or electing a black person. Are we all equal or are we not?

    Christine

    P.S. Clinton dumped her cat Socks when the cat ceased to be useful as a stage prop. I could never dump my cat – ever.

  6. Leah B, didn’t the exit polls say Obama was the clear frontrunner? That’s what makes me suspicious. The “drive-by” media strikes again, LOL

  7. No, it was the pre-election polls that said Obama was the frontrunner. The exit polls, the day of the election, were much more favorable to Clinton.

    I kind of like Edwards myself, but there’s no way he’s going to get the nomination.

    Donna

  8. First off, Chris Matthews is an idiot. Secondly, “voters in every town in New Hampshire cast their vote on a paper ballot, and in more than half of the towns in New Hampshire, the paper ballots are counted by hand.” according to DHinMI @ Daily Kos. Neither Obama’s or Edwards’ staffers, or any credible independent sources, have noticed any discrepancies in the voting patterns, and if they did, it’d be easy to figure out the vote was rigged because of the paper trail.

    Are you really trying to say that Clinton’s campaign managed to both rig the counts AND convince the media’s exit pollers to lie. And not only lie, but to lie with percentages that MATCHED the counted totals?

    Clinton’s campaign is organized, but they aren’t magicians. It’s much simpler and much more likely that Clinton just plain won NH.

    I wish Obama won too, but let’s save election rigging theories for the cases when it’s actually likely. Florida 2000? Rigged. Ohio 2004? Rigged (probably). NH 2008? Not a chance in hell.

  9. Leah, please re-read my posts.
    First of all, are Obama’s and Edwards’ staffers even looking for discrepancies in the voting patters? Those who actually *have* looked for discrepancies have in fact found them: http://www.legitgov.org/nh_machine_vs_paper.html
    Secondly, I’m not saying Clinton’s campaign did anything – as I said in an earlier post it could have been a Rethuglican plot since they’d rather run against Hillary in the fall than Obama because they figure they can more easily beat Hillary. As Mark Crispin Miller points out, they Nixon’s goons saw to it that the dems nominated McGovern back in ’72 for the same reason: http://markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com/2008/01/karl-rove-explains-why-hillary-won.html And as I said in another post, the exit pollsters adjusted the exit polls to conform to the “results”. They didn’t lie per se, they weighted the polls so that conformed to the “results”.
    None of this is proof of anything – but I think the whole thing is certainly strange enough to be worthy of further investigation – like say, a hand count of all the optical scan ballots, or at the very least a random audit of a certain percentage of precincts. Without that, we’re left with “faith based” voting, in which we have to take voting machine vendors’ word for it that their machines are counted the votes accurately.

  10. Faith? You’re saying the election was rigged based on the fact that the primary polls were off.

    Guess what? Primary polls are unreliable.

  11. As I said, unless there is a hand count of all the ballots, we will never know for sure if it was rigged. Polls may be unreliable, but how could *so many* polls get it so wrong, and why was the RAW exit poll data wrong? That’s why I say, it’s faith based – we are putting our faith in a private company with long standing ties to the Republican party – Diebold – to accurately count votes, even though their machines have proven to be eminently hackable and riggable without anyone being the wiser.

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