The Democratic party’s presidential nomination process thankfully ended in early June. Most voters and party members would now like to focus on getting the disparate Dems united in order to take on John McCain and the Republicans in the fall. The majority of Democrats realize that the clearest path to keeping Congress in Democratic hands and taking back the White House depends to a large extent in uniting behind Barack Obama, the party’s nominee. Even most among the disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton agree. Some Hillary supporters however, many of them older women who are crestfallen at not realizing their dream of seeing a woman become president, have not taken the defeat of their candidate very well. They are not just disappointed but have become hostile towards Senator Obama for "stealing" the election and not waiting his turn in line. Some have declared vengefully that they won’t vote for Obama in the general election and others have gone a step further in letting us know that they will in fact vote for John McCain.
So what is the case that the disgruntled and bitter Hillary supporters make for their contrarian vote for McCain? There are huffy but vague accusations of "disrespect and insult" towards their heroine Hillary from the Obama campaign and even Obama himself. In fact Geraldine Ferraro, one of the furious femmes, has accused Obama of being sexist (!!!) We are hearing reports of the such sulkiness in the media although I have personally not met anyone with this attitude. Froma Harrop a columnist for the Providence RI Journal, whose columns are syndicated by the Houston Chronicle, has been one of the angriest voices against Obama. She writes:
The woman who shouted "McCain in ’08" at the Democratic rules committee was speaking for a multitude. After mounting for months, female anger over the choreographed dumping on Hillary Clinton and her supporters has exploded — and party loyalty be damned. That the women are beginning to have a good time is an especially bad sign for Barack Obama’s campaign.
"Obama will NOT get my vote, and one step more," Ellen Thorp, a 59-year-old flight attendant from Houston told me. "I have been a Democrat for 38 years. As of today, I am registering as an independent. Yee Haw!"
A new Pew Research Center poll points to a surging tide of fury, especially among white women. As recently as April, this group preferred Obama over the presumptive Republican John McCain by three percentage points. By May, McCain enjoyed an eight-point lead among white women….
Remember Peggy Agar? The women do. They can’t stop talking about the Detroit TV reporter who asked Obama a serious question at a Chrysler factory — "How are you going to help American autoworkers?" — to which he answered, "Hold on a second, sweetie."
The women are angry at the ludicrous charges of racism leveled against Clinton by the Obama camp — amplified in the supposedly respectable media — and projected onto themselves…
"How Obama’s campaign has treated Hillary will not be forgotten," Janet Rogers, 55, who runs a Bed and Breakfast in Medina, Ohio, wrote me. "I will vote for McCain if Hillary is not the nominee. My husband and friends all feel the same way."..
Indeed. McCain in ’08 has suddenly become a more likely prospect.
Ludicrous charges of racism? I don’t think so.. let’s not even go there. What is ludicrous is that smarting from the results of the primaries and to justify their misplaced anger against Obama, Harrop and others like her are contorting logic to explain why McCain is not such a bad choice for Democratic women in 2008. Using the most transparently disingenuous comparisons, Harrop argued in a recent column that even on a feminist issue such as abortion rights, McCain is almost as "pro-choice" as Obama!
Hillary Clinton’s blessing notwithstanding, many of the New York senator’s supporters will resist the handover to Barack Obama. The sexism that permeated the recent campaign still rankles, and John McCain is far from the standard-issue Republican they instinctively vote against.
A big sticking point for wavering Democrats will be McCain’s position on reproductive rights. Clinton’s backers are overwhelmingly pro-choice, and they’ll want to know this: Would McCain stock the Supreme Court with foes of Roe v. Wade? The 1973 decision guarantees a right to abortion.
The answer is unclear but probably "no." While McCain has positioned himself as "pro-life" during this campaign, his statements over the years show considerable latitude on the issue.
In a 1999 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, McCain said, "I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America" to undergo "illegal and dangerous operations." (read the whole convoluted article and laugh… or cry)
It is interesting that Harrop makes a sympathetic case for angry white women against Sen. Obama crying "McCain in ’08!" Well, in their theatrical rage they might indeed get their destructive "cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face" wish. But what exactly are they angry about? Where is the credible evidence that Sen Obama has ever insulted Hillary Clinton? On the other hand, the Clinton camp (including HRC and Bill Clinton) have alluded numerous times to Obama’s race and therefore his unelectability. Did Obama win by cheating or trying to change rules that he agreed to play by, midway through the campaign? Has he tried to scare voters, black, white, men or women, by impugning Hillary’s patriotism, her religion or her gender? If so, I’d like to know.
So all these "liberal, educated, upper class" independent feminists won’t vote for Obama because he called a reporter "sweetie" but will gladly vote for McCain, a man who supposedly said this to his own wife, made an amazingly crude joke about Chelsea Clinton when she was just a young girl and stood by grinning without a protest when a supporter said of Hillary, "How do we beat the bitch?" Wow! Talk of selective anger and self serving tantrums.
The fact is that the pro-Hillary feminists are enraged at Obama for just running against her and winning – nothing more, nothing less. They see him as the usurper and every claim of insult is imaginary. They can’t stand the chutzpah of an "uppity" black man even when they won’t admit it. While there is no doubt that Sen Clinton has been the unfair target of sexism from some in the media, sometimes even women, I have seen no evidence of anything like that coming from Obama himself. He has never been insulting or disrespectful toward Mrs. Clinton. What the frenzied feminists are forgetting is that no one, in Hillary Clinton’s entire life has ever insulted and humiliated her more than her own husband has – in front of the whole world.
Note: I had begun this post twice and deleted it both times in the spirit of "moving on." But unfortunately, when I read Harrop’s columns, it became clear that not everyone is moving on. Notwithstanding her final concession speech, Hillary made sure that she would leave at least some of her followers with aggrieved and inflamed emotions. Unable, or unwilling to admit their hatred for Obama, those followers are now constructing a make believe case for opposing him and supporting McCain. And I am not the only one who has seen through the hypocrisy.
Accidental Blogger 
8 responses to “Have had it with Harrop! (And other hypocrites)”
When push comes to shove, will these bitter Hillaryites vote for McCain who will be sure to appoint judges who will tilt the balance on the US Supreme Court? All it takes is one more judge to have a court that will overturn Roe vs. Wade, or sound the death knell for habeas corpus. If they persist in letting racism dictate their choice of president, they will be cutting off their nose to spite the face.
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Great post, Ruchira!
Inevitably, everyone will get to know John McCain a lot better over the summer. While that may not make the Hillary dead-enders less anguished or rabid, it might accomplish something important by way of shaming them if they vote for a man whose personal behavior towards women is on a par with his political thinking about them.
Maybe Harrop & Co. are a bit intoxicated on the impact their protest vote could have — an impact that is if nothing else highly destructive and that therefore feels like a potent weapon in their hands. In the long run, I would be very surprised if an election-turning number of elderly white women — feminists, many of them — could vote to take reproductive freedom away from their daughters, and to pour more American blood into the sand in Iraq. These voters have time to sober up, and I think they will.
What could happen to speed that process is for Obama to select a VP soonish. Many of the voters threatening to elect McCain are in fact applying coded pressure to the Obama campaign to make Hillary VP. Once that fails — no president should have a VP who openly speculates about assassination as being one of the factors that make things change — then elderly white women who are Democrats will be facing real choices about how to cast their votes, not playing their role in securing the “heart-beat away” spot for their favorite.
Most of us, no matter how angry, eventually come around to a compromise position when our candidate has been outdone; we accept that winning an election is not the same as stealing it — especially since we’ve seen both — and that losing narrowly is not the same as being stolen from. The idea of Hillary playing a dominant role in an unconstitutional coalition government is still very much alive, however. I believe it will die hard, but die on time — mainly because, though spite is endless, very few women are actually crazy.
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I’m encouraged in a perverse way by all of this childishness. I early on acknowledged sexism at work against even Hillary. It is simply impossible to argue against its obvious work in this campaign. It cannot NOT have operated, given our massively patriarchal, man-adoring, woman-despising national culture. Period. (No pun intended.) Same goes, with wildly different ramifications, for racism with respect to Obama. Thus, Ruchira, I understand your desire to “move on.” I would just want to emphasize that we ought to be moving on from an indisputable given of entrenched, encrusted racism and sexism. There isn’t much that newspaper columnists are going to accomplish in this circumstance, therefore they ought to shut up.
Sexism has nothing to do with Obama insulting Clinton. Seeking credible evidence of an insult is beside the point. Sexism is an insidious bias, a default view of the world beyond individual intentions. Even Harrop, who evidently intends otherwise, participates in the sexism! What is “female anger”? So yes, she is a hypocrite, in more ways than one. And of course so is Hillary, who surely understands the power dynamics at work in a sexist regime, but who also eagerly wields her vast supplies of power arbitrarily and viciously.
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Dean:
I have never denied that Hillary was the target of some pretty degrading expressions of sexism nor do I believe that Obama’s difficulty with “working class whites” is merely due to his policy position or his inability to bowl.
What surprises and frustrates me is Harrop and her ilk’s assertion that the sexism came from Obama himself (Gerry Ferraro actually came out and said it). That is what I am objecting to.
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“Sexism is an insidious bias, a default view of the world beyond individual intentions. Even Harrop, who evidently intends otherwise, participates in the sexism! What is “female anger”? So yes, she is a hypocrite, in more ways than one. And of course so is Hillary, who surely understands the power dynamics at work in a sexist regime, but who also eagerly wields her vast supplies of power arbitrarily and viciously.”
This is a wonderfully astute comment. That hypocrisy drove my similar, negative reaction as a law student to groups such as the “Yale Law Women.” My problem was not that I disbelieved that the legal world is sexist. I had plenty of reason to believe it was then, e.g., the male professor who wrote a job recommendation for me praising my “great laugh.” I was reminded of that incident recently when, apropos of nothing during a mediation, a mediator asked me admiringly just how long my hair, up in a chignon, was. Do people not hear how creepy these things sound?
The professor and mediator examples, though, are perhaps red herrings, since I agree with Dean that little sexism or racism is conscious. My concern about sexism in the professional world I’ve chosen, and which produced Hillary, more often takes the form of worry over the increasing “feminization” of the public interest legal field: the vicious cycle by which the field is seen as fulfilling a feminine “helping” role rather than a masculine role of rights enforcement through litigation; loses status the more it becomes disproportionately populated with women rather than with the macho male litigators of the 70s; men opt for the high-paid private associate positions seen as appropriately masculine, and are increasingly ostracized if they take an increasingly drastic pay cut to move into some other line of legal work; women are seen as monsters of ambition if they “abandon” their families to work the untenable hours of private practice. Of course, much of that comes back deeper roles and power structures regarding the sharing of responsibilities at home and in child-rearing, and stereotypes regarding women’s ability to handle high stress or confrontation, and regarding men’s value as intrinsically connected to money-making rather than nurturing or just plain goodness.
The Hillary approach, and I felt the philosophy of the YLW, would be to decry the sexism of this to get support from women, while milking the recommender for whatever connections would make him most useful to me. The attitude of such groups, to my thinking, is subject to the criticism that they don’t want to change the system, they just want to win. They have no problem with The Boy’s Club, so long as it grants exceptions for the purpose of including them. It’s hard to have much sympathy for wolves in sheep’s clothing, regardless of how tough times are in the pasture.
I can’t say that this sexism never makes me feel hostility toward men qua men. When I’m in a court room or at an ADR agency or otherwise surrounded by a bunch of private practice partners (by default mostly men), I do sometimes feel a surge of superficial, status-based loathing. More often, though, I think of it as a loathing for us all; I’m coming to the table, after all, not coming to picket the joint. And in choosing allegiances, I’d rather the man who looks nothing like me but shares my values to the woman who does not share my values but claims to share my interests because she claims our identities make those interests the same. You and I have had also this conversation, Ruchira, with respect to candidates from ethnic minority groups.
All that said, I share Elatia’s hope that many of these women will “sober up” before the election. A good “reality check” that Frank Rich presents in the opinion column to which you linked, Ruchira, is that by and large, women already are getting over it and supporting Obama. They support him by larger margins than they supported Kerry or Gore. It’s largely the glee of a certain segment of the MSM keeping alive the hopes of dissension-sowers like Froma Harrop (a fabulous name, incidentally, onomatopoetically suggesting “Harrumph!”).
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John Dickerson of Slate on the “Harrumph!” voters.
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On the other hand…
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Ha :-)
Actually, Granny Graney has it right – only up to a point. Failure (or firing) is a greater normalizer than success (or hiring)- that is when it becomes “unremarkable.” But of course, we have to first “elect” a woman president in order to justifiably trash her for her failings.
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