Thursday, February 11, 2016

And Now A Word from a Female Feminist For Clinton

There is an article on slate (link) which describes how a woman who was a giant Obama backer now is  a Clinton Backer.  And it is so accurate - so on point as to how I feel (although I was a Hillary backer in 2008) that I had to include part of it.
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The whole thing is here, but here are some key takeaways.
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...[first part of article] ...

But it’s still a problem, for her and for those of us who want her to win. Part of what’s so frustrating about being a leftish Clinton supporter is that much of what her progressive critics say about her is true. She’s a hawk. She spoke in favor of welfare reform during her husband’s presidency. She believes Wall Street has a significant role to play in the economy. She’s cautious and calculating.

There are other things about her that are also true. By most accounts, she accepted her husband’s pursuit of welfare reform grudgingly, after her attempt to create a universal health insurance program was blamed for the disastrous 1994 midterms. Her overall voting record in the Senate was to the left of both Obama and Joe Biden. She’s defied her billionaire backer Haim Saban to enthusiastically support Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. She has been a staunch, consistent defender of reproductive rights.
For a progressive, how you reconcile conflicting truths about Clinton depends, to some extent, on how much you empathize with her. Supporting Clinton means justifying the thousands of concessions she’s made to the world as it is, rather than as we want it to be. Doing this is easier, I think, when you are older, and have made more concessions yourself. Indeed, sometimes it feels like to defend Clinton is to defend middle age itself, with all its attenuated expectations and reminders of the uselessness of hindsight.
Empathizing with Clinton, however, is a painful business. It means wincing along as she endures yet another round of public humiliation, another batch of stories about women’s indifference to her feminist appeal, another explosion of punditry about her lack of charisma. It means being constantly reminded that people on the left as well as the right find aging women pathetic. It means watching the Sanders phenomenon, in most ways a hugely welcome renaissance of American socialism, with dread as well as delight. There was no shame for Clinton in losing to Obama. But the fact that she’s fighting for her political life against Sanders, a man who initially joined the race more to make a statement than to contend for power, is a mortifying public rebuke.