Racism v. Sexism

Sometimes someone says something that perfectly reflects your own feelings and beliefs. This is one of those times when we could not have said it better ourselves:

Race to the Bottom -- as published in The Nation Magazine, May 1, 2008

By Betsy Reed

"In the course of Hillary Clinton's historic run for the White House--in which she became the first woman ever to prevail in a state-level presidential primary contest--she has been likened to Lorena Bobbitt (by Tucker Carlson); a "hellish housewife" (Leon Wieseltier); and described as "witchy," a "she-devil," "anti-male" and "a stripteaser" (Chris Matthews). Her loud and hearty laugh has been labeled "the cackle," her voice compared to "fingernails on a blackboard" and her posture said to look "like everyone's first wife standing outside a probate court." As one Fox News commentator put it, "When Hillary Clinton speaks, men hear, Take out the garbage." Rush Limbaugh, who has no qualms about subjecting audiences to the spectacle of his own bloated physique, asked his listeners, "Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?" Perhaps most damaging of all to her electoral prospects, very early on Clinton was deemed "unlikable." Although other factors also account for that dislike, much of the venom she elicits ("Iron my shirt," "How do we beat the bitch?") is clearly gender-specific.

Watching the brass ring of the presidency slip out of Clinton's grasp as she is buffeted by this torrent of misogyny, women--white women, that is, and mainstream feminists especially--have rallied to her defense. On January 8, after Barack Obama beat Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, Gloria Steinem published a New York Times op-ed titled "Women Are Never Front-Runners." "Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House," Steinem wrote. Next came Clinton's famous "misting-over moment" in New Hampshire in response to a question from a woman about the stress of modern campaigning. For that display of emotion, Clinton was derided, on the one hand, as calculating and chameleonlike--"It could be that big girls don't cry...but it could be that if they do they win," said Chris Matthews--and, on the other, as lacking "strength and resolve," as her Democratic rival John Edwards put it, in a jab at the perennial Achilles' heel of women candidates. Riding a wave of female sympathy, Clinton won New Hampshire in what was dubbed an "anti-Chris Matthews vote."

Thus, feminist opposition to the sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton has morphed into support for the candidate herself. In February Robin Morgan published a reprise of her famous 1970 essay "Goodbye to All That," exhorting women to embrace Clinton as a protest against "sociopathic woman-hating." In the Los Angeles Times, Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake, wrote of older female voters fed up with the media's dismissive treatment of Clinton: "There are signs the slumbering beast may be waking up--and she's not in a happy mood." A recent New York magazine article titled "The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave" described how "it isn't just the 'hot flash cohort'...that broke for Clinton. Women in their thirties and forties--at once discomfited and galvanized by the sexist tenor of the media coverage, by the nastiness of the watercooler talk in the office, by the realization that the once-foregone conclusion of Clinton-as-president might never come to be--did too."

The sexist attacks on Clinton are outrageous and deplorable, but there's reason to be concerned about her becoming the vehicle for a feminist reawakening. For one thing, feminist sympathy for her has begotten an "oppression sweepstakes" in which a number of her prominent supporters, dismayed at her upstaging by Obama, have declared a contest between racial and gender bias and named sexism the greater scourge. This maneuver is not only unhelpful for coalition-building but obstructs understanding of how sexism and racism have played out in this election in different (and interrelated) ways.

Yet what is most troubling--and what has the most serious implications for the feminist movement--is that the Clinton campaign has used her rival's race against him. In the name of demonstrating her superior "electability," she and her surrogates have invoked the racist and sexist playbook of the right--in which swaggering macho cowboys are entrusted to defend the country--seeking to define Obama as too black, too foreign, too different to be President at a moment of high anxiety about national security. This subtly but distinctly racialized political strategy did not create the media feeding frenzy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright that is now weighing Obama down, but it has positioned Clinton to take advantage of the opportunities the controversy has presented. And the Clinton campaign's use of this strategy has many nonwhite and nonmainstream feminists crying foul.

While 2008 was never going to be a "postracial" campaign, the early racially tinged skirmishes between the Clinton and Obama camps seemed containable. There were references by Clinton campaign officials to Obama's admission of past drug use; the tit-for-tat over Clinton's tone-deaf but historically accurate statement that Martin Luther King needed Lyndon Johnson for his civil rights dreams to be realized; and insinuations that Obama is a token, unqualified, overreaching--that he's all pretty words, "fairy tales" and no action.

From the point of view of Obama's supporters, the edge was taken off some of these conflicts by the mere fact of his stunning electoral success, built as it was on significant white support. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton and an Obama volunteer, recalls that for black Americans "Iowa was an astonishing moment--watching Barack win the caucus felt like Reconstruction. There was something powerful about feeling as though you were a full citizen." In democracy, Harris-Lacewell explains, "the ruled and rulers are supposed to be the same people. The idea that black folks could be engaged in the process of being rulers over not just black folks but over the nation as a whole struck me as very powerful."

Soon enough, however, that powerful idea came under attack.

"More than any single thing, that moment with Bill Clinton in South Carolina represents the rupture that was coming," says Harris-Lacewell. The moment occurred in late January, when the former President compared Obama's landslide win, in which he received a major boost from African-American voters, to Jesse Jackson's victories there in 1984 and 1988. Because the former President offered the comparison unprompted, in response to a question that had nothing to do with Jackson or race, the statement was widely read as chalking up Obama's win to his blackness alone and thus attempting to marginalize him as a doomed minority candidate with limited appeal. Obama was now "the black candidate," in the words of one Clinton strategist quoted by the AP.

By March, multiple videos of Wright, Obama's former pastor, had popped up on YouTube and had begun to play on an endless loop in the right-wing media. "God damn America for treating your citizens as less than human," Wright inveighed, reciting a litany of racial complaints. And he said in his sermon immediately following 9/11, "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

According to Smith College professor Paula Giddings, author of a new biography of Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions and the Campaign Against Lynching, Wright's angry invocation of race and nation tapped into a reservoir of doubt about the very Americanness of African-Americans. "American citizenship has always been racialized as white. Who is a true American? Are African-Americans true Americans? That has been the question," she says.

In Obama's case--given his mixed-race lineage, his Kenyan father, his experiences growing up in Indonesia, his middle name (Hussein)--questions about his devotion to America carry a special potency, as xenophobia mingles with racism to create a poisonous brew. The toxicity is further heightened in this post-9/11 atmosphere, in which an image of Obama in Somali dress is understood as a slur and e-mails claiming that he is a "secret Muslim" schooled in a madrassa spread virally, along with rumors that he took the oath of office on a Koran. The madrassa and Koran canards have been thoroughly debunked, but still they persist--and few have been willing to stand up and say, So what if he was a Muslim? For her part, Clinton, asked on 60 Minutes whether Obama was a Muslim, said, "There is nothing to base that on, as far as I know."

Giddings calls the Wright association a "litmus test" that Obama must pass, saying, "It will be interesting to see if a man of color, a man who's cosmopolitan, can be the quintessential symbol of America" as its President.

Obama initially responded to that challenge with his speech in Philadelphia on March 18. While condemning Wright's words, he placed them in a historical context of racial oppression and said, "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." (More recently, of course, Obama did renounce him.) But in the Philadelphia speech, called "A More Perfect Union," Obama also outlined a racially universal definition of American citizenship and affirmed his commitment to represent all Americans as President. "I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together--unless we perfect our union by understanding that we have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction."

A mere three days after Obama spoke those words, Bill Clinton made this statement in North Carolina about a potential Clinton-McCain general election matchup: "I think it'd be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." Whether or not this statement constituted McCarthyism, as one Obama surrogate alleged and as Clinton supporters vigorously denied, the timing of the remark made its meaning quite clear: controversies relating to Obama's race render him less fit than either Hillary or McCain to run for president as a patriotic American. A couple of weeks later, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen went so far as to call on Obama to make another speech, modeled after John F. Kennedy's declaration in 1960 that, despite his Catholicism, he would respect the separation of church and state as President--as though Obama's blackness were a sign of allegiance to some entity, like the Vatican, other than the United States of America.

In the Democratic debates, enabled by the moderators, Hillary Clinton has increasingly deployed issues of race and patriotism as a wedge strategy against her opponent. First, in the debate in Cleveland on February 26, she pressed Obama not only to denounce but to reject Louis Farrakhan--to whom he was spuriously linked through Reverend Wright, who had taken a trip with the black nationalist leader in the 1980s. In style as well as content, that attack was a harbinger of things to come. In the most recent debate, ABC's George Stephanopolous and Charles Gibson peppered Obama with questions such as, "Do you believe [Wright] is as patriotic as you are?" and, regarding former Weatherman Bill Ayers, a Chicago neighbor and Obama supporter, "Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?" Time after time, Clinton picked up the line and ran with it. "You know, these are problems, and they raise questions in people's minds. And so this is a legitimate area...for people to be exploring and trying to find answers," she said, seeming to abandon her argument that these issues are fair game now only because they will be raised by Republicans later and thus are relevant to an evaluation of Obama's electability.

The Wright, Farrakhan and Ayers controversies have been fueled by a craven media, and ABC's performance in the debate has rightly been condemned. But given that Clinton is the one who is running for President and who purports to represent liberal ideals, her complicity in such attempts to establish guilt by association is far more troubling. While she has dealt gingerly with the matter of Wright in the wake of his recent appearance at the National Press Club--accusing Republicans of politicizing the issue--she also took pains to remind reporters that she "would not have stayed in that church under those circumstances."

It's disappointing, to say the least, to see the first viable female contender for the presidency participate in attacks on her black opponent's patriotism, which exploit an anxious climate around national security that gives white men an edge both over women and people of color--who tend to be viewed, respectively, as weak and potentially traitorous. Says Paula Giddings, "This idea of nationalism and patriotism pulling at everyone has demanded hypermasculine men, more like McCain than the feline Obama, and demanded women whose role is to be maternal more than anything else."

For Hillary Clinton, the gendered terrain of post-9/11 national security politics has been treacherous indeed. As Elizabeth Drew observed in The New York Review of Books, Clinton took steps in the Senate, like joining the Armed Services Committee, "to protect herself from the sexist notion that a woman might be soft on national security." As a 2002 study by the White House Project, a women's leadership group, found, "Women candidates start out with a serious disadvantage--voters tend to view women as less effective and tough. Recent events of war, terrorism, and recession have only...increased the salience of these dimensions." Clinton has been quite successful in allaying these concerns, although she faces a Catch-22: her reputed toughness and ruthlessness have helped ratchet up her high negatives. The White House Project study found that a woman candidate faces a unique tension between the need to show herself "in a light that is personally appealing, while also showing that she has the kind of strength needed for the job she is seeking."

Of course, Clinton's decision to play the hawk may have had other motivations. Perhaps she really believed that voting to authorize the war in Iraq was the right thing to do (which is, arguably, even more worrying). But her posture in this campaign--threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran after being asked how she would respond in the highly improbable event of an Iranian nuclear strike against Israel, for example--has at least something to do with a desire to compete on a macho foreign policy playing field. It's the woman in this Democratic primary race who has the cowboy swagger: the nationalist and militaristic rhetoric, the whiskey-swilling photo-ops, the gotcha attacks for perceived insults to a working-class electorate (as in "Bittergate") that is usually depicted as white and male.

Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton's response to "Iron my shirt" was immediate and straightforward: "Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well." Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, "While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn't mean it's worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such."

While on occasion Obama's campaign has complained of racial slights, Obama himself has avoided raising the charge directly. Even so, Clinton supporters make the twisted claim that it is Obama who has racialized the campaign. "While promoting Obama as a 'post-racial' figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics," wrote Sean Wilentz in The New Republic in an article titled "Race Man." Bill Clinton recently groused that the Obama camp, in the controversy over his Jackson remark, "played the race card on me."

As for the way the Clinton campaign has dealt with race, Crenshaw says, "It started with a small drumbeat, but as the campaign has proceeded, as Hillary has taken part in things, more people are really seeing this as a 'line in the sand' kind of moment."

Among the black feminists interviewed for this article, reactions to the declarations of sexism's greater toll by Clinton supporters--and their demand that all women back their candidate out of gender solidarity, regardless of the broader politics of the campaign--ran the gamut from astonishment to dismay to fury. Patricia Hill Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland and author of Black Feminist Thought, recalls how, before they were reduced to their race or gender, the candidates were not seen solely through the prism of identity, and many Democrats were thrilled with the choices before them. But of the present, she says, "It is such a distressing, ugly period. Clinton has manipulated ideas about race, but Obama has not manipulated similar ideas about gender." This has exacerbated longstanding racial tensions within the women's movement, Collins notes, and is likely to alienate young black women who might otherwise have been receptive to feminism. "We had made progress in getting younger black women to see that gender does matter in their lives. Now they are going to ask, What kind of white woman is Hillary Clinton?"

The sense of progress unraveling is profound. "What happened to the perspective that the failures of feminism lay in pandering to racism, to everyone nodding that these were fatal mistakes--how is it that all that could be jettisoned?" asks Crenshaw, who co-wrote a piece with Eve Ensler on the Huffington Post called "Feminist Ultimatums: Not in Our Name." Crenshaw says that, appalled as she is by the sexism toward Clinton, she found herself stunned by some of the arguments pro-Hillary feminists were making. "There is a myopic focus on the aspiration of having a woman in the White House--perhaps not any woman, but it seems to be pretty much enough that she be a Democratic woman." This stance, says Crenshaw, "is really a betrayal."

Frances Kissling, the former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, attributes this go-for-broke attitude to the mindset of corporate feminism. "There's a way in which feminists who have been seriously engaged in electoral politics for a long time, the institutional DC feminist leadership, they are just with Hillary Clinton come hell or high water. I think they have accepted, as she has accepted, a similar career trajectory. They are not uncomfortable with what has gone on in the campaign, because they see electoral campaigns as mere instruments for getting elected. This is just the way it is. We have to get elected."

The implications of all this for the future of feminism depend significantly on the outcome of the primary, says Kissling. "If Clinton wins, the older-line women's movement will continue; it will be a continuation of power for them. If she doesn't win, it will be a death knell for those people. And that may be a good thing--that a younger generation will start to take over."

Many younger women, indeed, have responded to the admonishments of their pro-Hillary second-wave elders by articulating a sophisticated political orientation that includes feminism but is not confined to it. They may support Obama, but they still abhor the sexism Clinton has faced. And they detect--and reject--a tinge of sexism among male peers who have developed man-crushes on the dashing senator from Illinois. "Even while they voice dismay over the retro tone of the pro-Clinton feminist whine, a growing number of young women are struggling to describe a gut conviction that there is something dark and funky, and probably not so female-friendly, running below the frantic fanaticism of their Obama-loving compatriots," wrote Rebecca Traister in Salon.

It's not just young feminists who have taken such a nuanced view. Calling themselves Feminists for Peace and Obama, 1,500 prominent progressive feminists--including Kissling, Barbara Ehrenreich and this magazine's Katha Pollitt--signed on to a statement endorsing him and disavowing Clinton's militaristic politics. "Issues of war and peace are also part of a feminist agenda," they declared.

In some sense, this is a clarifying moment as well as a wrenching one. For so many years, feminists have been engaged in a pushback against the right that has obscured some of the real and important differences among them. "Today you see things you might not have seen. It's clearer now about where the lines are between corporate feminism and more grassroots, global feminism," says Crenshaw. Women who identify with the latter movement are saying, as she puts it, "'Wait a minute, that's not the banner we are marching under!'"

Feminist Obama supporters of all ages and hues, meanwhile, are hoping that he comes out of this bruising primary with his style of politics intact. While he calls it "a new kind of politics," Clinton and Obama are actually very similar in their records and agendas (which is perhaps why this contest has fixated so obsessively on their gender and race). But in his rhetoric and his stance toward the world outside our borders, Obama does appear to offer a way out of the testosterone-addled GOP framework. As he said after losing Pennsylvania, "We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes. Or we can decide that real strength is asking the tough questions before we send our troops to fight."

As comedian Chris Rock quipped, Bush "fucked up so bad that he's made it hard for a white man to run for President." Rock spoke too soon: many are hungry for a shift, but the country needs the right push to get there. Unfortunately, from Hillary Clinton, it's getting a shove in the wrong direction."

Clinton and Obama on Equal Marriage Rights

Earlier in the primary season we wrote an article about the various candidates' position on marriage rights.

At the time, there were six candidates. Now (with the exception of Mike Gravel, who is now running as a Libertarian and is still 100% supportive of full and equal marriage rights for LGBTQ people) there are three.

First, straight (no pun intended) talkin' McCain is all over the map but he makes it absolutely clear that during his presidency he will never sign a bill granting marriage rights, nor will he allow LGBTQ couples to have access to the thousands of federal rights and benefits that marriage would provide:

• On July 14, 2004, as the Presidential election was heating up and the Repugnicans were using the marriage issue to get votes, McCain said this: "The constitutional amendment we're debating today strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans" and he voted against it.

• In 2005, when Republicans in Arizona decided to amend their state's constitution to ban equal marriage rights, McCain said he "supports an initiative that would change Arizona's Constitution to ban gay marriages and deny government benefits to unmarried couples."

• In March of 2006, as he was gearing up for his own run for the presidency, McCain told the now deceased Reverend Jerry Falwell that he would support a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman if a federal court were to strike down state constitutional bans on gay marriage.

Recently, both Clinton and Obama have restated their positions on the issue:

At an LGBTQ fundraiser in NYC last month, Obama told a group of about 125 gay men and lesbians that he did not think it was “politically feasible” to secure marriage rights for same-sex couples in the country at this point. However, Obama did say that although he understands that LGBTQ people want full marriage rights, he favors civil unions for now but will leave open the possibility that his position might evolve in the future.

And just a few days ago, Clinton made clear her position. Like Obama, Clinton does not support full marriage rights. And she believes specific marriage laws should be left up to individual states to decide upon. However, Clinton promised that if she is elected, she will "defend gay rights and eliminate disparities for same-sex couples in federal law, including immigration and tax policy.

We think it is a clear that whether or not Clinton or Obama is elected president in 2008, in addition to fighting for a more equitable health care system, better education policies, more stringent EPA standards, etc., both of them will also be open to granting federal rights and benefits to LGBTQ couples.

The bottom line?

Vote for the Democrats in November!

A Tiny Ripple of Hope

Forty years ago today, in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis Tennessee. All across America, cities were burned as hundreds of of Blacks -- angry and frustrated over the loss of their beloved leader -- lashed out against years of injustice and bigotry.

That night, in one city where violence was expected but did not erupt, Robert F. Kennedy, gave an unplanned, unwritten and amazing speech calling for calm and understanding at a time when fear and anger abounded. Kennedy pleaded with the mostly Black crowd not to resort to violence and to instead pick up the baton that King had handed to them in order to continue his work for peace and racial and economic justice:

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

In other words, one small, seemingly insignificant act, word or event can start a revolution.

Over the years -- especially after Ronald Regan began to dismantle the social safety nets that were constructed to protect the poor, elderly, the children, the disabled, etc. -- we've wondered when Americans (as Tracy Chapman predicted) would finally rise up against injustice:

"Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take whats theirs"

With the economy spiraling downward, an illegal war raging in Iraq, record job losses, foreclosures at an all time high, a crisis in health care and education, with criminals holding the highest offices in government with little or no outcry or oversight from Congress and the media, finally and at last, we're talkin' about a revolution.

By "revolution" we do not mean a gigantic social conflagration. We are not advocating a violent revolt. Instead, we dream of a revolution resulting from an ever growing dissatisfaction with an oppressive status quo. This dissatisfaction (we hope) will exert so much pressure on the political and economic system that is currently so incredibly unjust that it will crumble from the force and the numbers of those who are no longer willing to accept systemic injustice.

Are we seeing that revolution now? Is the Obama candidacy an example of a new kind of revolution? How else to explain a phenomena whereby millions of poor and disenfranchised American's have pooled their otherwise paltry economic resources to support a grassroots candidate who has managed to become a front-runner in a race for the highest office in the land?

Especially when you consider the odds against such a thing happening.

Of course there are those who believe that Obama's campaign is not actually a "bottom-up" phenomenon. They suspect that there is a nefarious and powerful force that has propelled Obama from obscurity to top-ranking presidential candidate in just a few short years. Others believe Obama is beating Hillary Clinton in the primaries because the media and his supporters are misogynistic. Some believe Obama supporters have been mesmerized by his Svengali -- or even Hitleresque -- orating skills.

But in order for the above to be true, Jimmy Carter, Teddy Kennedy, Bill Richardson, Alice Walker, Caroline Kennedy and many other thoughtful and intelligent folks (including us) would have to be duped or in on the conspiracy. I can assure you we are not misogynistic, mesmerized or hypnotized, nor are we part of a grand conspiracy.

Could it be that voters are so accustomed to powerful political parties -- with the help of big corporate money, easily hacked-into voting machines and the media -- choosing our candidates for us that can not bring ourselves to believe in a real grassroots revolution?

After 7 years of Bush saying and doing whatever he wants while Congress and the media say and do nothing, American's may be suffering from "battered spouse syndrome."

Perhaps we have come to believe we deserve another abusive, political party annointed candidate who will rearrange a few chairs and perhaps do a few things differently but who will ultimately still be accountable to the big donors and party fat cats who paved his or her way to the presidency.

But what if a candidate manages to rise up from the grassroots -- supported by a majority of the people -- to overcome the party machine and win?

Will we join the revolution or belittle it?

The Bottom Line

Whoever gets elected as President in November, each candidate must first win their respective party's nomination.

John McCain has made it over this hurdle and is now wandering the globe making gaff after gaff with virtually no opposition.

And although Clinton and Obama must first wrestle the nomination from the other, both would be well served to spend the next few weeks or months talking about themselves, their positions and policies as they also highlight the problems with McCain.

After all, the whole point of an election is supposed to be about giving voters time and information that informs us about each candidate so that we can make the best decision.

So, shut up already about what is wrong with the other Democrat!

Tell us what you will do about the economy, the war(s), health care, the environment, our infrastructure, Social Security, Medicare, education, LGBTQ equality, and on and on and on...

The bottom line is this -- we need a Democrat elected as President in November.

Period.

Cherry Picking the Facts

We are finding the controversy over Jews and Obama quite baffling.

To prove that Obama is anti-Semitic, folks are pointing to the expressions of some of his supporters (Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan) as well as the family lineage and past statements of some members of his foreign policy advisory team such as Merrill McPeak and Robert Malley.

The problem is, cherry picking the relative anti or pro Jewish stance of a candidate's supporters can cut both ways.

For every news article, editorial and blog post that claims to "prove" Obama is anti-Semitic or will govern in a way that harms Israel, there are equal numbers that say the opposite.

What about the fact that Obama's campaign advisor is David Axelrod, a Jew from Chicago who has been with him since his days as a civil rights organizer on the streets of Chicago?

And did you know some of Obama's closest friends are Jews? According to Obama's Chicago neighbor Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf:

"Many people remain concerned that Obama isn't committed to Israel. Some want him to fall in line behind the intransigent, conservative thinking that has silenced Jewish debate on Israeli policy and enabled the Bush Administration's criminal neglect of the diplomatic process.

Clearly, though, anyone who thinks Obama waffles on Israel hasn't been paying attention. In 2007, he spoke to AIPAC about "a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." Today, his website states clearly that America's "first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel."

For my part, I've sometimes found Obama too cautious on Israel. He, like all our politicians, knows he mustn't stray too far from the conventional line, and that can be disappointing. But unlike anyone else on the stump, Obama has also made it clear that he'll broaden the dialogue. He knows what peace entails."

And were you aware that leaders of most major Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the Orthodox Union, B'nai B'rith, etc., have come out and said they do not believe Obama is anti-Semitic?

Rather than spending all of our time trying to paint Obama as the candidate whose foreign policy will be harmful to Israel, lets work together and get a democrat elected in November.

As long as Democrats and Progressives are busy bashing Clinton and/or Obama we allow John McCain to sail on to victory. And lest we forget, that really WILL be harmful to Israel.

John McCain is a warmonger. He doesn't know anything other than war. As long as bombs , armies, occupations and threats are the first tools we reach for when building a Middle-East foreign policy program, the more likely we will be to see the real destruction of Israel.

In fact, one of McCain's most ardent supporters -- Reverend Hagee, whose stated desire is to see Israel engage in an apocalyptic nuclear war with Iran -- is calling for that very thing. Watch:



And for the record, there are articles and posts online right now that claim Hillary Clinton is affiliated with anti-Semitic supporters and advisers and that her church is leaning in that direction.

The point is, with the advent of the Internet, we can find an article that supports any view we wish to espouse -- whether positive or negative -- about a particular candidate.

And where does that get us?

John McCain, that's where.

Moon Over Hypocrisy

On the subject of crazy ministers, we see now that the rantings of Jeremiah Wright will be the never ending story that the rabid right and their water-carriers will employ to bring down Barack Obama.

This non-story will continue until Hillary Clinton wins the nomination. When that happens, you can be sure that those wing-nuts will quickly shift gears to harp endlessly on a subject they love more than life itself -- old and new Clintonian "scandals."

None of it will end until the American people are so perplexed and confused that they will vote for war-monger and George W. Bush wannabe, John McCain.

This method of battering a candidate with lies, half-truths and sound bites is proven to work. The American people have come to depend on pundits for giving them their opinion. It is so much easier than finding out the truth and doing your own critical thinking on matter as vital and complex as war, global warming, the Middle East conflict, the economy, race relations and religion.

And although Obama is counting on American's to do what is right, they will more than likely do what they have been doing since the start of the dumbing down of political discourse -- whatever Rush Limbaugh and the wing-nut bobble-heads at Fox tell 'em to do.

Still, we will try to do what we can in our own way to reveal the right-wing hypocrisy on the Reverend Wright matter.

And we start today by asking that readers of this blog respond to any and all articles and news stories on the Reverend Wright with comments about Reverend Moon -- a right-wing Republican billionaire supporter who claims that "the country that represents Satan's harvest is America" and who has made many other anti-American statements.

We offer several sources for you to cite that show that there is enough religious wackiness to go around. For example, in this article, Robert Parry of Consortium News writes:

"Besides the estimated $3 billion-plus invested in the Washington Times, Moon has spread money around to influential right-wingers, often coming to their rescue when they are facing financial ruin as happened with Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell in the mid-1990s. [See below.]

Moon also has paid lucrative speaking fees to political figures, such as former President George H.W. Bush who has appeared at Moon-organized functions in the United States, Asia and South America. At the launch of Moon’s South American newspaper in 1996, Bush hailed Moon as “the man with the vision.”

Moon has key defenders, too, in the U.S. Congress, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2004, Moon was given space in the Senate’s Dirksen building for a coronation of himself as “savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.” [See The Hill, June 22, 2004]

Though primarily allied with the Republican Right, Moon has tossed money to some African-American ministers to gain favor with a key Democratic constituency.

Moon’s multi-billion-dollar political investments, in turn, have shielded him from sustained scrutiny since 1978 when he was identified by the congressional “Koreagate” investigation as part of a covert Korean influence-buying scheme. As a result of those findings about his finances, he was convicted in 1982 of tax fraud.

Ironically, however, as Moon implemented the influence-buying blueprint exposed by the “Koreagate” probe – investing in U.S. media, politicians and academia – he became an untouchable. He founded the Washington Times in 1982 and quickly put it into the service of Republican power."

And another article describes Moon's efforts to obtain access to power:

"To buy the access he craves, Moon has paid out millions in speaking fees to an array of powerful people, including the elder Bush, former President Gerald Ford and members of Congress. Through innocuous-sounding groups with names such as Interreligious and International Forum for World Peace, the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles and The Women's Federation for World Peace, Moon passes out awards to various civic leaders, then invites their members of Congress to attend ceremonies where their constituents are honored. Last week President George W. Bush visited Philadelphia where he was hosted by a local supporter, the Rev. Herb Lusk. Three years ago, Lusk was among those on the dais with Moon, receiving the "National Service Award" from the Washington Times Foundation."

Among the dignitaries in Washington that have successfully been wood by Moon is Senator Hillary Clinton who praised him and his work as late as September 2007.

So, the bottom line is this -- if we are going to vilify Obama for his religious associations, lets at least be fair and do the same for his opponents on the left and the right.

How is Hillary like George W?

Like most Americans -- especially progressives -- after 8 years of Bush II following 8 years of Clinton-esque triangulation, preceded by 12 years of Reagan and Bush I, we are desperate for real change in Washington.

That is why we are supporting Obama for president.

We are really impressed with the way he has been conducting himself in this unfortunately divisive primary campaign.

As rumors abound -- on the Internet and in the media -- that:

• Obama is a Muslim;
• he does crack and gives blow jobs in the back of limos;
• he is a good friend of domestic terrorists and Louis Farrakhan;
• he is anti-Semetic;
• he's the antichrist;
• and -- even worse -- that he only got where he is because he is lucky enough to have been born a Black man!
  

Throughout it all, Obama has remained above the fray -- refusing to get in the gutter with Clinton. And there is a wealth of anti-Hillary fodder to tap into if he wanted to do so. We are impressed that he has resisted gutter politics as he is also being besmirched with much mudslinging.

Hillary's dirty campaigning style is enough to make Karl Rove proud.

And just as she is running a Rove-Bush style campaign, we see evidence that a Hillary Clinton presidency may very well be Bush-like as well.

How do we know what kind of president that Hillary Clinton would make? We don't. No one can read the future. The best we can do is try to analogize what might happen based on the information we have now.

For example:

1. Bush waged a war without a long-term plan because he believed it would be a cake-walk. Hillary ran a campaign without a long-term plan believing she would be the front runner throughout and that she would be the only Democrat standing after Super Tuesday -- in other words -- winning the Democratic nomination would be a cake-walk.

2. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" and 5 years later we are still at war. Clinton declared herself the winner and offered the VP spot to Obama -- even though she is losing the race to him. Obama has won more states, has more pledged delegates and more popular votes. It is now mathematically impossible for Hillary to beat Barack yet she still claims to be the front runner.

3. Bush 's economic strategy has broken the American bank. The economy is in the toilet and we are awash in debt. Clinton's campaign ran out of money in mid-February forcing her to loan herself 5 million dollars. Barack on the other hand has spent his campaign money wisely. He has broken all fund raising records and has used the money to get out his uplifting message of change and hope.

4. Bush surround himself with incompetent and blindly loyal (for a little while) cronies who have little or no experience and who are loathe to tell their boss and the American people the truth. Clinton hired old and loyal friends who had little experience running a campaign and who spent her money as though the campaign would be over on Super Tuesday. Again, for the most part, Obama's staff has been respectful -- and when they are not -- he wastes no time to remove them from the campaign.

5. When members of his cabinet and staff -- or even one of his most ardent supporters (remember Ken Ley and Jack Abramoff?) have f'd up, Bush quickly distances himself -- claiming he barely knew them or that their errors were not his fault. Just as Clinton did when Geraldine Ferraro, Bill Clinton, PA Governor Ed Rendell and other supporters have played the race card -- overtly or subtly -- against Obama. So far, no one in Obama's camp has resorted to making mysogenistic attacks against Hillary. If you disagree with this point (and we are not referring to the media) please let us know and we will happily make a correction.

6. The best word to describe this Bush administration might be "secretive." Second only to Bush in surrounding themselves in secrecy are the Clinton's. How can we hope for change if we are kept in the dark about how policies are being made and for whom?

7. When it seemed as though he couldn't win the majority of popular and/or electoral votes in 2000, Bush simply stole the election to become President anyway. It seems Hillary is willing to do the same if she does not receive the majority of votes. She is pushing to have delegates seated in Michigan and Florida even though she previously agreed that those primaries would not count. She is also threatening to steal the nomination by getting the super delegates to nominate her even if she does not win the popular vote. We fear she will not give up her pursuit of the White House even if she eventually loses the Democratic nomination. Hillary and Bill want to win so much that it seems they prefer that McCain win so that Hill will have another shot at it in 4 years.

This begs the question -- if Hillary and Bill want to win so bad that they would stoop to destroying the Democratic Party and presumably maintain an illegal and unethical war that sends thousands more to needless deaths, why even have an election in the first place?

Whats all the campaigning about if Hillary is just going to screw it up anyway?

We should just let her have it if she wants it so bad that she feels the need to snuff out hope as though it were some annoying bug.

Obama has waged a brilliant campaign and against all odds -- against the Clinton machine and the un-level playing field -- he has shown himself to be a strong and competent leader.

We predict here and now that if Hillary loses the Democratic nomination, she and Bill will take all their marbles and -- rather than go home -- she'll run as an Independent thus ensuring a win for McCain in November.

Ugh. Hope we are wrong!

Rushing toward Defeat

As the Democratic Candidates battle one another, the criminals in the White House hold press conferences, eat breakfast and live their lives without fear of prosecution. In fact, it now seems likely that the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate will give more power to the Republican President as another war hawk presidential wannabe waits in the wings for his chance to "bomb, bomb Iran."

And, just before the elections last Tuesday, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh urged Republicans to vote for Hillary rather than John McCain in Texas and Ohio -- because:

"Obama needs to be bloodied up. Look, half the country already hates Hillary. But nobody hates Obama yet. Hillary is going to be the one to have to bloody him up politically."

Watch:

Good News: Bill Clinton favors Hope over Fear

In 2004, Bill Clinton campaigned for John Kerry who was running against the Republican fear-mongering machine. Here is what Bill had to say about fear:



Here is a new ad put out by the Hillary Clinton campaign:



Here is Obama's response:



From a New York Times article by Bob Herbert:

"The Republicans, who had nothing going for them in this election, who had a weak field of candidates and were on the wrong side of virtually every major issue, are beginning to feel a bit like Lazarus. Democratic voters were courageous enough to put two candidates at the head of their line of potential nominees who have built-in political disadvantages. Party unity and a strong message are essential to overcoming those disadvantages. The longer the Clinton-Obama fight goes on, and the more bitter it gets, the better it is for the G.O.P.

A further complication for the Democrats is the possibility that the results in Texas — which has a ridiculously complex primary-caucus setup — will be unclear. If Senator Clinton wins Ohio and there’s a battle royal in Texas (both sides are prepared for a legal fight), the McCain forces will pop the corks on another round of Champagne.

Democratic voters are tremendously excited about this presidential election. In addition to the obvious concerns about war and the economy, voters in both the Clinton and Obama camps believe that some of the fundamental values of the United States are at risk. They are worried, for example, about the undermining of governmental checks and balances, the erosion of civil liberties and the makeup of the Supreme Court.

Tuesday’s elections may decide the nominee. But if they don’t, the wisest heads in the party will be faced with the awesome task of preventing a train wreck that would ruin what was supposed to have been a banner year."

Obama, Clinton and the War

This article by Robert Scheer articulates perfectly why we -- progressive, lesbian feminists -- support Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton for President:

"It should mean a great deal to progressives that in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination Sen. Ted Kennedy favors Sen. Barack Obama over two other colleagues he has worked with in the Senate. No one in the history of that institution has been a more consistent and effective fighter than Kennedy for an enlightened agenda, be it civil rights and liberty, gender equality, labor and immigrant justice, environmental protection, educational opportunity or opposing military adventures.

Kennedy was a rare sane voice among the Democrats in strongly opposing the Iraq war, and it is no small tribute when he states: "We know the record of Barack Obama. There is the courage he showed when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth."

But that is precisely the truth that Sen. Hillary Clinton has shamelessly sought to obscure. Her supporters have accepted Clinton's refusal to repudiate her vote to authorize the war, an ignominious moment she shares with other Democrats, including presidential candidate John Edwards, who at least has made a point of regretting it.

It was a vote that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, 3,940 U.S. service members -- five more on Monday -- and a debt in the trillions of dollars that will prevent the funding of needed domestic programs that Clinton claims to support. And it doesn't end with Iraq. Clinton has been equally hawkish toward Iran and, in a Margaret Thatcher-like moment, even attacked Obama for ruling out the use of nuclear weapons against Osama bin Laden.

Clinton's apologists include Gloria Steinem and too many other feminists, who should know better than to betray the women's movement's commitment to peace in favor of simplistic gender politics. It is disturbing, not because they conclude that Clinton is the best candidate, but because they refuse to challenge their candidate to be better.

Does it not matter that Clinton's key foreign policy advisers are drawn heavily from the ranks of the neoliberals, who cheered as loudly for President Bush's war as did the neoconservatives? Are they not concerned that Richard Holbrooke, who exploited his experience and access to secret information during the Clinton presidency to back Bush's Iraq invasion, is a likely contender for secretary of state should she win?

Sandy Berger, a key Clinton adviser, played a major role in convincing Kennedy's congressman son, Patrick, to vote for the war authorization against what the younger Kennedy said was the advice of his father and his own better instincts. According to a Knight Ridder report at the time, "Patrick Kennedy said the most persuasive arguments for attacking Iraq came from members of the Clinton White House," including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who is often described as the foreign policy expert closest to Hillary. Patrick J. Kennedy refuses to be burned twice and now supports Obama.

Yes, if Hillary Clinton is the candidate, she probably will be better than the Republican alternative and, as Ted Kennedy made clear, deserving of our support. But isn't it troubling that she can't hold a candle to Sen. John McCain when it comes to fighting Pentagon waste or pushing for campaign-finance reform to curtail the power of lobbyists?

Isn't it disturbing that Sen. Clinton has received more money than any other candidate of either party from the big defense contractors, according to a report on the Huffington Post? Why have the war profiteers given her twice the campaign contributions that they sent to McCain, if not for the expectation that she is on their side of the taxpayer rip-off that has seen the military budget rise to an all-time high? It's for the same reason that the bankers, Wall Street traders and other swindlers who produced our economic meltdown fund Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has made "experience" key to her claim to the presidency and tells us she will do the right thing from "day one." The reality is that her extra four years in the U.S. Senate hardly provides better experience than Obama's eight years in the Illinois state Senate battling for progress with the nation's most hard-boiled politicians. And if she lays claim to her husband's presidency, then she must also take responsibility for caving in to big media with the Telecommunications Act, selling out to the banks with the Financial Services Modernization Act, and killing the federal welfare program -- a political gambit that deeply wounded millions of women and children. Her political career began with the Senate and she hit the ground running, but, as her craven support for Bush after 9/11 shows, it was in the wrong direction."

Back to the Future: President Giuliani

I had a sudden realization last night: Rudy Giuliani will be the next President.

Why? Because he, like Bush, is a thug.

Rudy is someone the Repugnican pit-bulls can really sink their teeth into:

• He is great at doublespeak, ignoring his own shortcomings and turning negatives into positives.

• He understands the power of simple, fear provoking sound-bites.

• He will win over the "values voters" by scaring them to death.

• He is a ruthless bully who is not afraid to lie to get what he wants -- power and money.

It seems the fix is in and so I predict Rudy will be the Republican and Hillary the Democratic candidate.

A look into my crystal ball reveals this likely scenario:

• The cabal in charge will "discover and foil a terrorist plot " to attack a US city (or an attack will actually occur), Rove's minions (already set in place during the Bush regime) will set their sites on Hillary and they will attack her with abandon. They will throw out bloody red-meat innuendos and lies to the neo-con sharks to frenzily feed upon.

• Hillary will spend much of her time trying to defend against these un-provable rumors, unable to get her own message out.

• In the meantime, the gang in charge of election-rigging will do their part by purging voter rolls; sending out letters with erroneous information to voters; programming machines to favor the Republican candidates, etc.

• And, the MSM echo machine will obey their orders to repeat rumors and wing-nut talking points until the average person is so confused and the truth is as hard to find as a needle in a thousand haystacks;

In the end, Rudy wins. Perhaps by only a small margin, but enough to make it seem "legitimate."

Later, after all the dust settles, witnesses to all of the above will write tell-all books, make the talk-show rounds, and get rich and famous.

By then, it will be too late to save our Republic.

How do I know all of this?

Easy, it is simply a repeat of what has already happened in the last two Presidential elections...

No magic, no Tarot cards.

Sanity: Gone With the Wind-Bag

Driving home from a visit with my grandchildren yesterday, I unfortunately heard a minute or two of the Sean Hannity show. Actually, I'll refer to him here as Sean InSanity since that name is more descriptive of his personality.

So, as I was looking for a good oldies station, I heard InSanity blathering on about Hillary Clinton’s health care plan -- and it was clear that he did not approve.

He asked his listeners if any of them could show him where -- in the U.S. Constitution -- does it say American’s have a right to free health care?

In reality, the Constitution is not a document where you can find a list of citizen rights. But I’ll bet InSanity knows this – which is why he knows his question is a safe bet.

The Constitution is a document whose purpose is to guide the federal government as to the proper way in which to govern American citizens:

The body of the Constitution tells the federal government what it is allowed to do, and in some places it explains how to do it (election procedures and such). The Bill of Rights tells the federal government what it is not allowed to do . . .

1. Make no law abridging freedom of speech, press, religion, or assembly,
2. Do not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.
3. Don't quarter soldiers in peacetime.
4. Don't conduct unreasonable searches and seizures.
5. Don't commit double jeopardy or force people to testify against themselves.
6. Don't deny an accused a speedy trial.
7. Don't deny an accused a trial by jury.
8. Do not impose excessive bail.
9. Just because certain rights of the people aren't mentioned in this Constitution doesn't mean you're allowed to usurp them.
10. Don't exercise any power not authorized in this Constitution.

So Sean, the Constitution does not say that I have a right to free health care. It does however say that Congress – with only a few exceptions – should not restrict rights – even if those rights are not specifically listed in the body of the document.

Where in the Constitution do you find the right to marry? Although the word “marriage” is not mentioned at any point, the Constitution does direct the government to treat all citizens equally. Thus any law that provides benefits to one citizen must be available to all.

And since the government has attached certain rights and benefits to marriage – i.e. linking tax benefits and eligibility to certain government programs to marital status, that status cannot legitimately be denied to any citizen – even if they are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgendered, transsexual or just plain queer.

If tomorrow the government decided it would rather get out of the business of linking marital status to government benefits and programs (just so it won’t have to recognize my marriage), I’ll bet Sean InSanity would be the first to throw a great big hissy-fit when he realized his marriage no longer held a special status.

And while we are in the subject of what the Constitution does and does not say, one thing we can actually read – in black and white – is the guarantee to citizens and non-citizens – of the right to habeas corpus.

Yet, Sean continually defends the Bush administration’s denial of this right to “enemy combatants” -- some of whom are citizens.

Where in the Constitution do you find the basis for an Income Tax? I dare Sean InSanity – who would scoff at the notion that we are all taxed illegally – to show me -- in the Constitution or anywhere in the law – where it is written that the government has the right to tax my income?

In his tirade about Clinton’s health care plan, InSanity extolled the virtues of small government, the Reagan and Bush tax cuts and capitalism in general. He falsely (and not for the first time) claimed the Regan tax cuts doubled revenue – which is a bold-faced lie.

InSanity confuses capitalism – an economic system – with democracy – a governing system. In the brief time that I listened, he defended the Pharmaceutical Industry, Exxon Mobile and the over-all oil industry.

What I came to realize as I listened to his extreme right-wing rhetoric is that America is doomed if the Sean InSanity’s, Michael Savage’s, Rush Limbaugh’s and their ilk still hold sway over a large segment of the population who get most of their information from these over-blown, devious and dangerous wind-bags.

Detecting Lies

According to an article in RainbowZine, a group of gay veterans former are touring America to share their military experiences under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy.

As you probably know, the DADT policy was enacted during Bill Clinton’s presidency – with his blessing – and AFTER his campaign promises to the LGBTQ community that he would end discrimination of gays in the military.

Adding insult to THAT injury – and spitting in the face of the thousands of LGBTQ people and our supporters who believed his promises – Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which effectively bans federal and state recognition of our LEGAL Canadian and Massachusetts marriages, our New Jersey and Vermont civil unions and our California domestic partnership registrations by every other state.

Of course, Clinton made those campaign promises to GET ELECTED in the first place -- before reneging on those promises – doing a 180 – in order to get RE-ELECTED in the second place.

Which brings us to the point of this blog:

On August 9th, Logo TV will broadcast a Democratic Presidential Debate where candidates will discuss issues like DADT, DOMA and marriage equality. We will be watching eagerly for promises to end governmentally sanctioned inequality for our families.

Thrilled as we are about that, we will NOT be holding our breath waiting for campaign promises to come true after a candidate is elected.

Candidates make promises they do not intend to keep – in other words, they LIE in order to get elected.

Our question to the candidates is – why should we believe you? What’s the difference between you and every other candidate who made empty promises to us?

That question is especially poignant for Hillary who may be hard pressed to question – let alone overturn – legislation and policy enacted and supported by her husband.

LOGO should hook all of the candidates up to lie detectors so that we can see whether the little needle goes crazy when they say they would appeal DADT or they support equal rights but not equal marriage!

But we digress…

The article about the gay vets reveals that since 1993 – when DADT was adopted:

“11,082 members of the Marines, Navy, Army, Coast Guard and Air Force have been discharged. Among them were highly-trained linguists. “

With the so-called Global War on Terror raging, one would hope that the US policy would see the need to end this obscene injustice. (Frankly, we don’t underst