Let me try once again to explain to the doubters out there why I don’t care that Palin’s views on abortion are different than mine. Or that she’s a “Christianist,” as Asshole Andrew Sullivan keeps calling her. Or that she and I may not see eye to eye on many issues. The fact is, it’s 2008, and it’s about damned time a woman was a member of at least one of the two national presidential tickets.
The pundits are telling us that angry would-be Hillary voters won’t vote for Palin. The pundits are wrong. They will vote for Palin, and they are moving to the right for this election—the polls keep coming up McCain, after having been Obama, Obama, Obama. It’s not just a post-convention bounce. It is the excitement that having a female candidate is engendering (pardon the pun).
Those of you who don’t get it simply aren’t going to get it. It’s the same reaction I get when I try to explain the difference between Judaism the religion, and Judaism the culture. If you don’t get it, I am wasting my time trying to explain the differences. But let me try once more.
Year after year after year, women watch as the leaders of this nation, the leaders of corporations, and the leaders of the world all look pretty much the same: They’re men. There are precious few women in world leadership positions. And it’s not because we haven’t been out there for the past forty years. The feminist revolution has been around for long enough for women to be in leadership positions. And yet—we are not. And part of that reason is that the old boys’ network does exist. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. Name the last powerful woman in the Senate or House of Representatives whose name isn’t Clinton. Tell me what happened to Geraldine Ferraro after her run for VP. Tell me how many women are serving in the Senate now.
How many women Senators have there been?
Thirty-five.
How many women Presidential candidates? Vice-Presidential candidates?
Governors?
How many women have been the heads of the DNC or RNC? Secretaries of State? Ambassadors to important countries? Chiefs of Staff?
There has been a dearth of female leadership in this nation, but there has not been a dearth of women on leadership tracks to choose from—in spite of the constant refrain that is so. It’s almost like the same old stupid “Gee, where are all the women political bloggers?” discussion that gets rolled out every time some idiot wants to troll for links. We’re here. But that glass ceiling exists. It’s not our imagination. I work for a company that only has a female executive because they bought a company with a woman president. In 2008, I work for a company that had no women executives at all. Not. One. So do not tell me that women are simply imagining the barriers that still exist for women in the corporate and government structures. It’s pretty easily proven by the numbers.
Sixteen women senators. Women make up half the population of the United States, but only sixteen percent of the Senate. Granted, representation isn’t a one-for-one deal, but it’s effing 2008, not 1978. We’ve been in politics for long enough to have better representation than that.
So now perhaps you begin to see why Sarah Palin is so exciting to ALL women, not just women whose politics already agree with her. Even the women who hate her are secretly glad to see a woman on the ticket for the highest office in the land.
Women are going to vote for McCain for various reasons. But a fair amount of women are going to vote for him because he put a woman on the ticket. If you think that’s tokenism, if you think that’s patronizing, if you think it’s hollow symbolism, you haven’t been paying much attention to what most women feel.
We want to see Sarah Palin succeed, because it will move us forward in ways equally as important as Barck Obama’s candidacy has moved African Americans forward.
It ain’t tokenism. It’s about effing time.
Let’s not forget Geraldine Ferraro, who was also a VP candidate.
The fact that she ran with a boat-anchor doesn’t change the fact that she did run as the Democrat nominee.
But this doesn’t diminish anything you wrote.
You probably need to reread the fourth paragraph. Where I mention her.
I would agree for someone like Olympia Snowe or Kay Bailey Hutchison. Someone who has national experience and credibility. Also, you are right, this is not tokenism, it is far right fundamentalism. That is who she was chosen to appease because McCain was not allowed his top choice, Lieberman.
Incredible, so you are actually stating this cheap trick of the Republicans worked on you. I am a Dutch Feminist Democrat, I would never have expected any Democrats to fall for this trick. All over the world you can see the media playing a big role in elections and all they care about is excitement upto the last minute. But American females falling for this I would never have believed.
I’m not a Democrat.
Jeff, Lieberman doesn’t belong on the Republican ticket. McCain wanted him out of friendship, not out of any good sense. He would have alienated the base completely.
Meryl,
I don’t have anything against a woman in office, just one who is completely unqualified for it.
She has no substantive foreign policy or economic experience. I don’t look at POTUS as a place where I want on the job training.
I don’t like reading about her charging the state for sleeping in her own home.
I have a problem with people who want to ban books, doesn’t matter whether it was one or a 100.
And yes I know that she didn’t actually ban any, but she inquired about how to do it.
There is a pattern here that I don’t like. There are other women who have experience who would be far better choices.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 09/09/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Oh puh-leeeeze. Its tokenism, its affirmative action, its bullcrap. Its just because Palin is a woman, that she got the nod. Huckabee or Romney were just as qualified. But alas, they don’t have a vagina.
Palin has done some important things in the short time she has been governor, getting a new ethics law through, renegotiating the gas pipeline contract to get a better deal for Alaskans, beating the big oil conmpanies into giving the Alaskans a better deal on oil revenues and rooting out corruption, including among the Alaska Republicans. Now what has Obama achieved? Zilch. He looks pretty and speaks wonderfully, if he’s following a script on the teleprompter. Otherwise he can hardly get his foot out of his mouth, even for softball questions. His hemming and hawing, umming and ahhing when speaking extempore make Dubya seem like Demosthenes by comparison. He has less experience at anything than Palin has.
And any Democrats who wants to claim that two years as governor is not enough for a Presidential candidate, that was all the experience in politics that Woodrow Wilson had when he ran for President in 1912. I do believe that Dems still think well of the man, though I can’t imagine why.
I do not vote on the basis of identity politics. Frankly, if a Jewish candidate were running on the same platform (insofar as you can determine what that is) as Obama I’d vote against him. I would not put his Jewishness above a patent advocacy of rotten and countreproductive policies, based on delusional ideas, which is what the Dem candidates are giving us.
I like to say that my preferred candidate for president in 1992 was a woman, but that for some reason Margaret Thatcher’s name wasn’t on the ballot. That’s the kind of woman candidate I want to see and will vote for. I will not vote for a woman because she’s a woman, a man because he is a man, or black or white or, for tha matter pink with purple polka dots (an unrepresented minority indeed). Nor will I vote for a Jew because he is Jewish, nor against him for that reason.
Obama will benefit this November from a lot of people voting for him simply because he is black. That is an unworthy reason, indeed a racist one. It’s a great pity that Colin Powell did not accept the Republican nomination for President in 1996. It was his for the asking, but he would not take it. It would be far better for the US if the first black President was a man of real accomplishments like Powell, and not a poseur.
Meryl,
I think you are wrong. I think Palin appeals far more to men than women. I hope I don’t need to explain that. Sheesh, a babe who can hunt, fish and raise lots of babies. Not to mention has a mind like a steel trap and an iron will who can get things, important things, done. Color me smitten (and I share your views on abortion and Christianity).
Polls are fluctuating daily and do not consider state by state results. Obama has been leading based on the electoral college all summer.
Meryl,a couple of points,before I get back to workFirst,she’s been extremely successful at what ever she’s done.That counts for a lot (to me).And as a governor(and even mayor) her jobs requied decisions.I think part of the left’s problem is ,even thouhg her experience is scant,it dwarfs Sen Obama’s.
(And I don’t agree with Mr Lonie.There is a time in America when an ethnic group can celebrate a wider acceptance in America by voting for their candidate.
Talking about ethics. Care to comment on why Alaska National Guard General Craig Campbell changed his story about Palin’s leadership a day before he is given a promotion?
By the way, the last two biggest ethics bills to pass the Senate and become law were in large part due to Obama.
“I don’t like reading about her charging the state for sleeping in her own home.”
Another pathetic attempt at slamming Palin. She took routine and entirely legal per diems for travel between the state capital in Juneau and her home 600 miles away (Alaska’s a big state, y’know). More to the point, she stopped using a fancy private jet and reduced these travel expenses by 80% from her Democratic predecessor.
Another pathetic attempt at slamming Palin. She took routine and entirely legal per diems for travel between the state capital in Juneau and her home 600 miles away (Alaska’s a big state, y’know). More to the point, she stopped using a fancy private jet and reduced these travel expenses by 80% from her Democratic predecessor.
Actually Gary it is not pathetic at all. She billed the state for 312 days of sleeping in her own home.
There are a lot of things in life that are legal that are not considered to be ethical or moral.
The fact that she took less than her predecessor doesn’t make it right or any less egregious.
She likes to position herself as being a reformer who is against pork barrel politics.
The reality is otherwise. Not to mention that she hasn’t any substantive experience in foreign policy or economics.
And that doesn’t get into any of the multitude of other issues that she is involved in.
I just wish that McCain was ten years younger and then I wouldn’t have to worry about a second rate candidate for VP getting a shot at the top spot.
You never know what can happen. Sharon got ill and that hack Olmert has made a mess of things.