For a lot of us who supported Obama, Hillary’s refusal to quit was infuriating, since we wanted to get to the main event. A lot of her supporters were convinced that she was done in by sexism, and though that’s not the whole truth (I still say she would have won going away if she had voted against the war), it is true that her treatment by the media, and here I think mainly the broadcast media, was well larded with sexism. A reader passed along this article to me, (Woman in Charge, Women Who Charge written by Judith Warner at the New York Times. As she states:
It’s a cultural moment that Andrew Stephen, writing with an outsider’s eye for the British magazine the New Statesman last month, characterized as a time of “gloating, unshackled sexism of the ugliest kind.” A moment in which things like the formation of a Hillary-bashing political action group, “Citizens United Not Timid,” a “South Park” episode featuring a nuclear weapon hidden in Clinton’s vagina, and Internet sales of a Hillary Clinton nutcracker with shark-like teeth between her legs, passed largely without mainstream media notice, largely, perhaps, because some of the key gatekeepers of mainstream opinion were so busy coming up with various iterations of the nutcracker theme themselves. (Tucker Carlson on Hillary: “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” For a good cry, watch this incredible montage from the Women’s Media Center.)
. The point is made in a humorous way on the not so mainstream Daily Show:
One of my favorite examples was the reaction to her slight show of emotion in New Hampshire. It is now apparently fine for a man to cry, but not a woman.
It’s true that there was not such blatant racism directed against Obama. That had to be done in a subtler way, but it was there nonetheless. It was certainly present in, for instance, the unstated assertion that he was personally responsible for the political positions of any and all black people he knew, or even didn’t know, and in the various memes focused around the argument that he is just not like “us”, “us” always basically boiling down to white people.
But it remains mystifying that some women, like the batshit crazy Geraldine Ferraro, (what is it about losing Democratic VP Candidates?) are now saying they will vote for John McCain. It defies logic to blame Barack Obama for the media’s sexism, and, as Arianna Huffington Points out, such a vote is the ultimate example of cutting off the nose to spite the face:
I get the anger and the disappointment. But to quote SNL’s Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers: Really? You’d rather vote for John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman’s right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade “must be overturned”? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be “a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement”?
Really?
In Clinton vs. Obama, the policy differences were minor (hence the overriding focus on minutiae like flag pins, Bosnian sniper fire, and the real meaning of “bitter”). In McCain vs. Obama, the differences are enormous. Staying the course in Iraq vs. ending an unnecessary and immoral war. Universal health care vs. less regulation for insurance companies. Rolling back the Bush tax cuts vs. making them permanent.
…
The simple arithmetic of these findings suggests that just filling in McCain’s actual voting record and his publicly stated positions on a handful of key issues has the potential to diminish his total vote share among battleground women voters by about 17 to 20 percentage points.
Clearly, when it comes to this key issue, the more voters learn about McCain, the less they like him. So let me add to the educational process:
Since 1983, in votes in the House and the Senate (where he has served since 1987), McCain has cast 130 votes on abortion and other reproductive-rights issues. 125 of those votes were anti-choice [pdf]. Among his voting lowlights:
He has repeatedly voted to deny low-income women access to abortion care except in cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life (although McCain is now wavering on trying to put these exceptions into the party platform).
He voted to shut down the Title X family-planning program, which provides millions of women with health care services ranging from birth control to breast cancer screenings.
He voted against legislation that established criminal and civil penalties for those who use threats and violence to keep women from gaining access to reproductive health clinics.
He voted to uphold the policy that bans overseas health clinics from receiving aid from America if they use their own funds to provide legal abortion services or even adopt a pro-choice position.
Of his anti-choice voting record, McCain has said, “I have many, many votes and it’s been consistent,” proudly adding: “And I’ve got a consistent zero from NARAL” through the years. And last month he told Chris Matthews: “The rights of the unborn is one of my most important values.”
Ferrraro, by the way, argues that Obama has himself been sexist. It’s hard to see how you make that case. It’s certainly easier to make the case that the Clintons made overt appeals to the racist vote, and predicated their argument for her candidacy on the claim that a black person could not win, a claim Obama never made about women.
I think Obama will be making the same points as Huffington. His main task, especially in the early going, will be to chip away at the media engendered myth that McCain is a different kind of Republican. He has to define McCain. Maybe after tomorrow, with Hillary safely out of the way, he can start that process with her female supporters. Who knows, maybe she’ll deliver on the promised support and help him.
