1a. Obama could/should pick a woman, but not Hillary Clinton. Several good choices from swing state senate and governors.
1b. He must NOT pick a misogynist anti-female male such as Jim Webb, or others who are anti-choice. That will give women excuse to stay home or even vote for McCain, especially if McCain selects a woman (even if that woman is anti-choice).
2. Very scary for Democrats if McCain picks a woman. That is the only McCain VP choice that makes a difference. It could actually swing some of the supposedly outraged Clintonista white women to McCain, despite his and his party's immensely anti-female personality and policies (anti-choice, anti-equal pay, misogynist horndog (called wife c*&t, cheated multiple time on fist wife, etc.) militarism, supreme court choices, etc).
3. Some argue that Clinton believes that Obama cannot win and is positioning herself for 2012. Let us be clear: If Obama loses (with Clinton having already undercut him), there is no way she get the nomination in 2012. There will be new people running, including new women, and Clinton (both of them) will be remembered as having destroyed the Democratic party and the country.
1 comment:
You're calling Jim Webb a "misogynist anti-female"? Upon what do you base that? Have you ever bothered to read the man's works, perhaps even the article upon which I'm sure you're basing your comment, you know, the almost 30 year old article he wrote for the Washingtonian? It sounds to me like you're repeating the charges made during the vicious Senate campaign of 2006, charges concocted by George Allen's Rovian campaign manager and a staff of dirt-diggers who diligently went through every word of his books and lifted phrases and statements of characters in his novels, published them as evidence of his misogyny and perversion, and attributed the attitudes of fictional characters to him.
I'm a 50 year old female Virginian who actually read the Washingtonian article when it was first published and at the time was pretty annoyed. I've since come to realize that the article was not anti-woman, but anti-women at the Naval Academy due to a combination of Webb's remembrance of what it was like to fight in Vietnam and some assumptions then existing that women could not bring themselves to do the terrible things required of people in combat, that they would not be able to get the compliance of men under their command, and that they would not be able to command men effectively. Webb has since stated several times that he has been shown wrong by the work of our women in the military and now expresses great support for our women warriors' efforts. He was NEVER anti-female even at the time of the article, having written of looking forward to the day when a woman would be President and expressing great admiration for Margaret Thatcher. Moreover, as SecNav he opened up more billets for females than anyone before or since. The first African American female admiral made commercials for him in his Senate campaign, saying that he was the one who opened the way for her promotion. The first and only female Green Beret was also a fervent supporter in his campaign.
Read Webb's works before you denounce him as anti-female. Read his proud accounts of his mother and grandmother and their toughness in holding together his family. Take a look at what he has written over the years about women's courage and stamina. Sheesh, that smear campaign is going to follow him until he dies, but the least progressive bloggers can do is try to find out if they've gotten a true picture before repeating Republican talking points.
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