Feminists for Hilary, or not?

Hillary would be a great president. She is considered to be one of the top 100 USA legal minds. All she has to do is stay away from scandal. However, predicting her win at this time is like predicting the weather on Tuesday November 4, 2008.

[img]http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2005/05/25/clinton-inside.jpg[/img]
[url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-26-hillary-poll_x.htm] Article & Poll[/url]

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Among those who were very or somewhat likely to vote for Clinton for president, there were:

•A big gender gap. Six of 10 women but 45% of men were likely to support her.
•Significant differences by age. Two of three voters under 30 were likely to support her, compared with fewer than half of those 50 and older.
•Strongest support from those with the lowest income. Sixty-three percent of those with annual household incomes of $20,000 or less were likely to support her, compared with 49% of those with incomes of $75,000 or higher.
•And big swings by ideology. An overwhelming 80% of liberals were likely to support her, compared with 58% of moderates and 33% of conservatives.

Among those surveyed, 54% called Clinton a liberal, 30% a moderate and 9% a conservative.

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Hmmm... I wonder which Republican she would run against... Maybe Colin Powell??? or is he too upset with Bush and would he be Clinton's running mate??? Now, that would be an interesting team...

[img]http://www.achievement.org/achievers/pow0/photos/pow0-019a.gif[/img]

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In 1994, Powell joined former President Carter and Senator Sam Nunn on a last-minute peace-making expedition to Haiti, which resulted in the end of military rule and the peaceful return to power of the elected government of that country.

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[ 19 October 2006: Message edited by: Sans Tache ]

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Originally posted by morningstar:
[b]
And lets not forget her mate; he's getting too old to be whipping out his little buddy at inopportune times[/b]

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morningstar, I DID NOT NEED THAT IMAGE IN MY MIND, thank you very much... (staggers off to vomit in the corner...)

To me, the Nineties proved what Hillary would be like as president. I can't see her being even a millimeter to the left of Bill, and if she's not, it can't be worth electing her.

Also(and this goes for both feminists and progressives in general)the problem with supporting Hillary is that she both gets slammed as an ultraleftist and gets the left slammed for supporting her(btw I've never seen her take a genuinely liberal, let alone radical, position on anything)and then leaves liberals and the left out in the cold.

I mean, this is the woman who didn't say A WORD to defend impoverished single mothers when Bill signed Rush Limbaugh's wet dream of a welfare bill. She sold women out on that and on everything else.

She'll be exactly like Bill if she runs, only she can't be charismatic, so she won't even have the compensatory benefit of electability.

[ 20 October 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 20 October 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Or probably Dennis Kucinich (my choice) or Bernie Sanders or Russ Feingold, etc.

But a vote for Hilary to me is like voting for Margaret Thatcher.

If the Dems nominate her, I stop voting in the two party system, perhaps for good. TINA - there is no alternative (borrowed that from Maggie).

Barack Obama (he who would bomb Iran) waits in the wings later. Don't you love how "acceptable" candidates get vetted in America? First question: will you support the corporate status quo? 2: Will you fight resource and profit wars around the world? and 3: Will you keep our secrets?

Clinton and Obama: yup, yup and yup.

They're angry down here, you betcha. But they're not going to demand any better. They vote and hope - like suckers in Vegas standing at the roulette table. Maybe if I just switch colours - maybe if I go with my lucky numbers. Hey, I'm still playing the game, right?

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Originally posted by Michelle:
[b] The only way the glass ceiling gets broken is by women or minorities who support the status quo in most ways. ... Then, as people see that, no, the sky didn't fall because a woman got elected to something, each successor can be a little less staid and a little more radical.[/b]

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Example?

The idea that women/ minorities would be more liberal/ radical in power is really not supported by concrete experience. In the last 30 years the members of the above groups who have come closest to the absolute centres of power -- Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, Hillary, Condoleezza, now Angela Merkel -- have been on balance right of centre.

The current Most Powerful Women in the world, Merkel, would move sharply to the right if her coalition did not stop her.

Thesis: the political distribution of elected women over time will reflect voters at large. Hence, loads of female Tories and Liberals, and here in Canada the usual 17 percent in the NDP.

[ 21 October 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]

Hillary battles a relative unknown for Senate:
[url=http://tinyurl.com/yk2k4h]http://tinyurl.com/yk2k4h[/url]

[ 21 October 2006: Message edited by: Geneva ]

I only saw Hillary give a speach once and I was very surprised to see someone every bit as good as a speaker as her husband. (He is concidered one of the best ever political speakers).
They still seem to be married and to still be supporting the same ideals.
So, for sure women should vote for her.
She will be the closest thing to Gore running for power so, you gotta hope she wins.

I think femanists should vote for Hilary because she is a woman. Nobody knows anybodys hidden agenda in american politics.
And weighing up hilary or a guy, I am guessing that her being a woman thrumps anything they say.
I cannot help noting that supposedly progressive usa has never had a woman chief yet a whole bunch of muslim countrys have had. How can that be?
Just voting her in to the job breaks down a whole bunch of preceptions and barriers in society.

I was hoping that Feingold would run, he has a lot of courage, and seems to take fairly principled stands regardless of the political ramifications.

When you actually take away the foreign policy aspect, Hillary is not so bad. I think that she will help poor Americans substantially.

Sadly, like every US president in the last half-century, she seems intent on exploiting and bullying other nations for the best interest of Americans.

But it is true, that every female candidate seems to have a need to show that she isn't squeamish by being as pro-war as possible within the contexts of the party.

Then again, all the mainstream Dems are pro-war.

Feingold has never run for the nomination, and Kucinich got about 2% of the vote last time.

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And the board Hillary Clinton sat on was rabidly anti-union, was exploiting sweatshop labor around the world, discriminating against women workers, forcing workers to labor off the clock and destroying communities that did not want them. This should not be a shock: Clinton was a partner in the Rose law firm, one of the most active anti-union law firms in the country.

So, the question still remains: what did Hillary Clinton do—or, not do—when she served on the board of Wal-Mart? Maybe, if her memory was refreshed, she could tell us how she protested the company’s relentless union-busting, expressed feminist outrage at the widespread discrimination against women and was horrified that the mushrooming wealth of the Wal-Mart family was made possible on the backs of slave labor around the world.

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[url=http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0207-34.htm]http://www.commondreams....

I didn't know that Molly Ivins died.

That's very sad to hear. I had a great deal of respect for her.

Maybe if we get her in, it will open the way for others it wouldn't be possible to get in otherwise?

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[b]Originally posted by Michelle:[/b]
Anyone following the little dustup with Obama and Clinton re: David Geffen's remarks about the Clintons at a fundraiser he held for Obama?

Clinton is saying Obama should give the money back. Obama is saying the Clintons had no problem with Geffen when he was raising THEM money and sleeping in the Lincoln bedroom at their invitation. Ha!

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Obviously, I don't think Obama should give the money back, but aren't Geffen's comments emblematic of the general public's (American and Canadian) view of women in politics? Geffen asks "And God Knows--is there anyone more ambitious than Hilary Clinton?" What? Because she's running for president? And Obama's doing it for our own good? Was Bill not ambitious?

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The initial comments by Mr Geffen were first reported in the New York Times.

He said: "I don't think that another incredibly polarising figure, no matter how smart she is, and no matter how ambitious she is - and God knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? - can bring the country together."

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[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6384821.stm]BBC Article[/url]

The real criminal thing about the comment is its insidiousness. He just kind of slips in the "ambitious" comment in an otherwise true comment. But why does he thing she's "polarizing"? Because Republicans hate women more than they hate blacks?

I support the candidates who benefit women, not who necessarily happen to be women (though of course, being an example for women as a woman certainly counts a certain amount towards benefiting women).

I don't want more women CEOs, I want less CEOs. The women (and men for that matter) Hilary speaks for -- the anti-worker, pro-war, etc. sort are not the people who deserve my solidarity. We should be promoting all the wonderful, positive female role models that do exist on the left (it's not like they're lacking) instead of trying to find one in this war monger. The fight is to make the progressive women the "electable" women, and not trying to pretend the "electable" women are progressive.

Joshua Frank wrote:

Perhaps the worst of the Democrats still embracing the illegal war is Senator Hillary Clinton. And despite her unwillingness to engage the antiwar community, she still receives substantial support from those who say they don't support the occupation.

On June 3 Clinton won the coveted ballot line of the Working Families Party in New York, even though the WFP was one of the first to oppose the war on Iraq four years ago. It was a sign of what's to come as Hillary sets herself up for a presidential run down the road, where alleged antiwar groups like MoveOn.org will likely rush to defend Hillary against a Republican challenger, despite her deadly foreign policy positions. But let's hope Hillary never makes it that far.

Capitulation, like the WFP's last week, only serves to make Hillary worse than she already is. Not that the Democrats will ever come out in opposition to the Iraq war, but they surely aren't going to do so as long as the antiwar movement supports them simply because they aren't Republicans. And the WFP even had a legitimate alternative in Jonathan Tasini, Clinton's antiwar primary challenger.

[url=http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10390]Source[/url]

"If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from."

So says New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who appears to be campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination on the theme that [b]she would rather be wrong than president[/b].
....

At the very least, [b]Clinton's steadfast refusal to admit that she was wrong to vote to give George W. Bush the power to launch a preemptive war against Iraq[/b] sets a new standard for stubbornness.

[url=http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0220-27.htm]Read the whole columnm[/url]