Foolish little girls, fickle little girls, you
didn’t want her when she needed you. You’ve found another love, it’s him
you’re dreamin’ of, and there’s not a single thing that she can do…
Thus
is the circumstance Hillary Clinton finds herself in these waning days
of the 2008 primary season. The first women to be a viable candidate for
president has, unlike her rival Barack Obama who has been supported by
sometimes 90 percent of his fellow African-Americans, been met with
mostly disdain by her own demographic, women.
Young women who have benefited by some of the successes of the early
women’s movement have been happy to support Barack Obama. They are
satisfied with their lives as women in the twenty-first century,
seemingly unaware that they are still only capable of earning 80.4
percent of men’s median earnings, and finding themselves taking on more
and more of household duties as compared to men, even as they add
working outside the home to part of their daily chores.
Older women have been more or less split on the subject of the first
women candidate, warring among themselves on the pages of a woman-owned
political websites like
The Huffington Post, the owner, by the way, a
woman, a rabid supporter of that Sweetie of the Fourth Estate, Barack
Obama..
What
foolish little girls, what fickle little girls.
Yet
it is heartening to learn that in the eleventh hour of this contest
there are those women who do “get it” out across America. There are
those who see how gender bias has played a devastating role in this
primary season, only to be pooh-poohed at for their upset by the
chattering class, while the good ol’ boy’s club pummel their chests like
ape-men (is your hair standing on end at the gender-biased if not racist metaphor?)
when the issue of race inserts itself into the conversation.
Fifty-five-year-old Columbus, Ohio resident Cynthia Ruccia, is a
spokesperson and organizer for a group calling itself "Clinton
Supporters Count Too." She said the group -- numbering in the hundreds,
and organized in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan -- stands
ready to boycott the Democratic Party if Clinton doesn't win the
nomination, and will work against superdelegates who support Obama over
Clinton as a means of registering their displeasure with the party.
"We have a plan to campaign against the Democratic nominee," the group
said in a press release Thursday. "We have the (wo)manpower and the
money to make our threat real. And there are millions of supporters who
will back us up in the swing states. If you don’t listen to our voice
now, you will hear from us later."
"We're just at the boiling point," Ruccia said. "Women will sit back and
be quiet about things for a while, but we've had enough. Unless Hillary
Clinton is our nominee, we are not going to support the nominee."
Part
of their plan, she said, is a primary-night boycott of
NBC and
MSNBC
during next Tuesday's primaries in Kentucky and Oregon, particularly to
protest comments made by Chris Matthews that squawking Tweetie bird
look-alike who hosts Hardball-less with Chris Matthews on the Mysoginist-Sexist
Network MSNBC and has called Senator Clinton everything from a
“she-devil” to a “strip teaser” and says she is only a candidate because
her husband cheated on her.
They also plan to go after David Shuster, also of that network,
suspended after protests for his having accused Mrs. Clinton of pimping
daughter Chelsea on her behalf.
Imagine what would have happened if a journalist had accused Barack
Obama of pimping.
Taylor Marsh of
the blog,
TaylorMarsh.com and longtime staunch Clinton supporter had
this to say on the subject of a possible backlash the Democratic Party
faces from this powerful demographic block should Obama be the nominee.
“Make no mistake
about it, the Democratic Party has sent a signal to women that Hillary's
candidacy isn't historic. They're nonchalance over her fight about
Michigan and Florida, as well as the undemocratic nature of caucuses,
not to mention their breezy attitude about pushing her out before this
race is through has wounded a lot of people.
"Ted Kennedy
took his fight to the floor with far less of a case than Hillary Clinton
has today, yet she's being screamed at to get out. The Democratic elite
seem to be saying that the little women got their play in the political
pond, but let's get serious, shall we?
'With
the proclamation that Obama was the 'presumptive nominee' ready to
declare 'victory' on May 20th, the women of the Democratic Party were
once again proclaimed invisible and expected to fall in line for 'The
One' Try winning in November without them.”
I couldn’t have said
it better myself.