Trying to Shove Hillary Aside (commentary by Marie Cocco)

[Apollo11]

Real Clear Politics - April 01, 2008

Trying to Shove Hillary Aside

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON -- Have you noticed something similar about those Barack Obama campaign surrogates and the media soothsayers who have started a drum-beat to force Hillary Clinton out of the Democratic presidential contest? Hint: They tend to share a certain anatomical attribute.

(...)

Since we're talking boy-talk here, we might as well get right into their rhetorical comfort zone: Obama now is ahead by a field goal in the third quarter. But the fourth quarter has yet to be played and who knows what the score will be at the end of regulation? So here's their plan, hatched in the locker room: Push Clinton off the field now so that Obama can take his early victory lap.

Obama denies that he is personally behind this strategy. But let's face it. The pronouncements by Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., both big-name Obama supporters and superdelegates, that Clinton needs to limp away with her head held low looked terribly orchestrated.

Leahy was particularly odious when, after declaring Clinton had "no way" to win the nomination, he offered her a very warm seat. It happens to be one she already holds and it is, of course, comfortably below the glass ceiling. "Frankly, I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate," Leahy declared.

(...)

Maybe it is true that Clinton has no realistic way to win the nomination. But Obama hasn't won it either -- and contrary to the myth his campaign has spun, Obama can't win without superdelegates to put him over the top.

Somehow the Obama campaign has come to believe that insulting Clinton is the same as beating her. It isn't. And insulting her supporters -- especially women and, in particular, working-class women, who have clung to her candidacy all these months -- isn't much of a general-election victory strategy. Women were 54 percent of the electorate in the presidential election of 2004. Without their support, Al Gore would not have won the popular vote in 2000 and John Kerry wouldn't have come so close in 2004. Women voters put Democrats in control of Congress in 2006.

So, the Obama campaign can continue trying to get its allies in the media and various party pooh-bahs to push Clinton aside early. Or Obama can welcome the fight -- and win it like a man.

www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/the_men_try_to_shove_hillary_o.html

[papau]

1. the sexism of the media and the boy's club of politics and their groupies is expected

[susankh4]

2. Sadly, that is correct.

And I think it's why we fight so hard for her. We are fighting for all of us.

[Fredda Weinberg]

3. Exactly. HRC is our symbol, just a Barry is for AAs n/t

[susankh4]

4. I'll never give up on her!

And the Dem party better know it.

I am seeing a combined ticket coming back into view. For a while I thought it was not gonna happen... but I believe the tone of both camps is changing....

[aquart]

5. I wish I'd seen a change in tone.

What little I allow myself to see now is just appalling garbage. Basically the same crap they fed us when we wanted to vote, own property, have rights to our children, go to school, go to college, go to graduate school, work in the professions, get equal pay...still working on that one...

And when they try to tell me I'm not a team player because I won't beg Hillary to give up and crawl away? Fuck their condescending asses.