Tag: campaign event

Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright offend women who support Bernie

AUTHOR’S NOTE: From this point forward in the 2016 race for the Democratic presidential nomination, “Hillary” refers to Hillary Clinton, and “Bernie” refers to Bernie Sanders.

This is really one of those times where, admittedly, I wish I had a female co-blogger to help push back against the offensive remarks by some of Hillary’s supporters towards women who support Bernie.

If you’re wondering what I was referring to in the above paragraph, I’m referring to recent remarks by women’s rights activist Gloria Steinem and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, both Hillary supporters. In both cases, offensive remarks were made about women who support Bernie.

Steinem went on the HBO show of Bernie backer Bill Maher (YouTube video here, Steinem’s remarks about Bernie supporters begin at the 3:50 mark) and claimed that women who support Bernie are only doing so to meet men:

The feminist icon made an alarmingly sexist remark on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night, suggesting that young, female supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders only support him because dudes do, too.

Steinem was discussing Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sanders. When Maher noted the Vermont senator’s popularity with young women, Steinem responded with her theory that women get more “radical” as they get older.

“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie,” she said.

I’m not going to comment on Steinem’s theory about men becoming more conservative, and women becoming more liberal, as they get older, since I’ve not seen any scientific study on that matter. However, what I will say is that women who support Bernie are not doing so because they want to meet men. After all, if they did, I’d probably have a girlfriend by now (in reality, I don’t have or want a girlfriend). Women who support Bernie support him because they share and support many of his values and ideas, such as restoring good government, making college truly affordable, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour, and significantly reducing health care costs.

Not to be outdone by Steinem, Albright claimed that women who support Bernie are going to hell:

Former Sec. of State Madeleine Albright attempted to shame young women voters at a Hillary Clinton campaign event on Saturday, repeating her now-famous line: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

[…]

The 78-year-old diplomat, who served in the Bill Clinton White House, complained that some young women “don’t understand the importance of why young women have to support Hillary Clinton.”

In my opinion, Albright’s remarks were even worse than Steinem’s remarks for one reason. To claim that women who don’t support a particular candidate are going to hell and saying that they have to support a particular candidate is basically a way of saying that you don’t believe in democracy, without actually saying that. Democracy is about choosing between political candidates, not forcing someone to support a particular political candidate.

While women make up approximately 56-58% of the Democratic primary and caucus electorate nationwide due to the institutional gender gap in American politics, you cannot completely run on shaming women into supporting a female candidate and win nationally, even in a Democratic primary or caucus. The Democratic Party cannot be seen as being condescending towards women who don’t see eye-to-eye with the party elites, or we’ll end up with a President Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or some other Republican.

Advertisement

Donald Trump condones mob violence against a black person

Jeremy Diamond, a reporter for CNN, posted this Twitter video of a black man being physically assaulted by attendees of a Donald Trump presidential campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama earlier today:

According to CNN and Raw Story, the protester was heard saying “black lives matter”, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement, which prompted several Trump supporters to physically assault the protestor. Trump himself can be heard saying “get him the hell out of here” or something along those lines, which, in effect, amounted to condoning the violence against the protester. According to the Birmingham (AL) Police, three people were removed from the rally by law enforcement as a result of the scuffle.

With Donald Trump calling for an unconstitutional surveillance scheme of mosques in the United States and preventing Syrian refugees to enter the U.S. instead of facing the threat of death at the hands of ISIS and/or the Assad regime in Syria, it’s no surprise that a mob of Trump’s far-right supporters would physically assault a peaceful protestor. While Trump has every right to remove people he doesn’t like from a campaign event (all other presidential candidates have the same right to remove people they don’t like from their campaign events), his supporters don’t have the right to form a mob and beat up a peaceful protestor.

Bernie Sanders campaign website re-designed for likely presidential run

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is considering running for the Democratic presidential nomination in next year’s presidential election, has launched a redesigned campaign website at berniesanders.com. The redesigned Sanders website only references Sanders’s home state of Vermont on the biography portion of his campaign website and on the campaign mailing address at the bottom of the website, which is a clear indication to me that Sanders is likely going to run for president. Given that Sanders has public stated that he’s not interested in being a spoiler in a general election, Sanders is likely going to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Please note that Sanders has not formally announced his intention to run for president at this time.

I find Sanders’s new campaign website to be very cool-looking and informative. Sanders’s new website has a detailed biography, which includes information about his progressive track record as Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the smallest city that is the largest city of a state in the entire country, as well as his progressive track record as a member of both houses of Congress. Sanders’s new website also has a detailed campaign platform, which includes support for fixing crumbling infrastructure, taking “bold action” on climate change, expanding social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid, support for single-payer healthcare, breaking up large banks, making higher education more affordable, ending NAFTA and other “disastrous trade policies”, equal pay for equal work, raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, allowing for the card check method to make it easier for workers to organize a labor union, and providing assistance to worker co-ops. About the only things in the platform I’d change if I were running Sanders’s campaign would be to replace the “pay equity for women workers” heading with a “pay equity for working women” heading and add more policy specifics to many of the parts of the platform. Finally, Sanders has a list of scheduled events on his campaign website. I rate the new Sanders campaign website a 9 on a 1-to-10 scale.

While Bernie Sanders has yet to formally announce a presidential bid, he’s taken yet another step towards running for president by launching a redesigned campaign website.

First Lady of the United States: The most overhyped person in America

You may have heard about Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS), campaigning for Democrats like Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke over the past couple of weeks.

However, this blog post isn’t about Pat Quinn or Mary Burke, in fact, it isn’t really about Michelle Obama. It’s about the Office of First Lady of the United States, whose holder has traditionally been the most overhyped person in this country thanks to the corporate mainstream media in this country.

The Office of the First Lady, automatically bestowed to the wife of the president should the president have a female spouse, has virtually no political power, with the duties of the office including being in charge of official social and ceremonial events at the White House and having the power to appoint her own staff members, all but a couple of which serve non-political functions (even the ones who do have political functions have no real influence on public policy). Despite that, the corporate media in this country fawns over the First Lady, providing extensive coverage of practically every event the First Lady does at least in the local area of where the event is being held, if not nationally. Even worse, the corporate media in this country will frequently obsess over what the First Lady wears, which I think is absolutely absurd. As long as she’s not doing anything stupid or illegal, I don’t care about what the First Lady does.

Should, someday in the future, a man be spouse of the president, through either the election of a woman in an opposite-sex marriage or a man in a same-sex marriage, the title of the office would probably be changed to First Gentleman of the United States, although the corporate media would fawn over whoever were to hold that office as well in a similar manner that they currently fawn over the First Lady.

One of my biggest pet peeves is how the corporate media in this country treats the family members of the most powerful people in this country, especially the First Lady of the United States, like royalty.