2008 Elections: Who ARE These People, Anyway?

As the Democratic nomination contest drags on endlessly, we find several troubling events on the horizon. For example, a group named Women's Voices Women Vote has been engaging in dubious shenanigans that apparently seem designed to disenfranchise Black American voters in the southern states. The group claims that the misleading robocalls they made were part of an effort to register women voters. Read for yourself and see what you think.

Meanwhile, another "women's" group, the WomenCount PAC recently ran a large, expensive ad in USA Toady titled Not So Fast. See for yourself:

Click to embiggen

Pretty cheeky, eh? We understand about the revolting levels of sexism that have surfaced thanks to Senator Clinton's campaign. Every sexist pig that ever lived, breathed, or crawled felt obliged to comment on the Senator's clothes, hair, laugh, tits, totally irrelevant shit.

But, guess what? Hillary Clinton does NOT speak for all of us. She probably doesn't even speak for half of us. All the women we know support Barack Obama. Now, you may say, "Well, PCat, that's obviously a self-selecting group, after all, as an Obama supporter, clearly you choose to hang out with other Obama supporters." To which we say, "Balderdash." We continued to support Clinton long after our friends, male and female, independent, Democratic, and Republican, had come out for Obama.

It caused a few strained relationships, initially. But as more and more of our friends &mdash even the staunch Republican "never voted for a Democrat in my life, and never will" types switched to the Obama camp, we were finally forced to read the guy's books and Web site and reconsider our support for Clinton.

We inched into that camp toenail by toenail, until La Clinton gave us a huge kick in the tush with her comments about educated "elitists," "working, hardworking white Americans," and the like.

Now we find all kinds of people popping up telling us that Clinton is the only voice that speaks for all women. We thought the whole idea behind the feminist movement was, women have their own fucking voices. They don't need anyone to speak for them. And they don't need to favour someone based only on their gender.

La Casa de Los Gatos declares unequivocally that La Clinton does not speak for us. Barack Obama speaks for us. Nothing could be further from our political positions and our personal preferences than La Clinton, with the exception, of course, of John McInsane.

Thanks to diarist RemarkablyChanel at DailyKos, we find that the WomenCount PAC is funded by Hillary Clinton's best bud, Suzie Tompkins Buell of San Francisco, former CEO of Esprit. Wikipedia includes this little tidbit about Tompkins Buell:

Esprit de Corp. was found by the National Labor Relations Board to have illegally interrogated and intimidated $2-an-hour Chinese workers, and then to have shut down a factory to keep them from unionizing.[9] The Department of Labor found that an Esprit contractor doctored payroll records and refused to pay overtime.[10]

Why would Hillary want to be best friends with such an exploiter of poor working women? How feminist is that?

We took great exception to the ad, and to Ms. Buell's new pet project for her friend Hillary. Should you care to tell these people just what you think of them, you can reach them at womencountpac@gmail.com.

The ad signs off with "We want Hillary to stay in this race until every vote is cast, every vote is counted, and we know that our voices are heard." Well, given how incompetently Hillary has run her campaign, y'all better be prepared to fork out more money to her if you want her to stay in. She's already over $20 million in debt. But more importantly, what is this "every vote is counted" business? It seems to imply that every vote in Michigan and Florida, the two states that have been punished for pushing their primaries up before the dates established by the Democratic Party, must be allocated to Hillary. Well, that just won't do, ladies.

When Hillary was winning, she said those states didn't count. She signed a pledge that the delegates from those states would not be seated. Apparently, her signature was only valid until she discovered she was losing.



We do not want a proven liar and promise breaker representing us. We've had one of those for nearly eight years, and look at the mess he created. Once you lie to us, once you break one promise you made, you've lost our trust. If you can tell one lie, you can tell 935. The last 935 lies told by Gee Dumbya and his cronies mired us in a civil war, killed 4,000 of our country's citizens (and more, and counting), and plunged our wealthy nation into a severe recession.

Do we really need more of that?

Any promises that Senator Clinton makes on the campaign trail cannot be trusted. If she breaks one promise, she can break another. She promised that Michigan and Florida would be punished by being stripped of 100% of their delegates if they moved their primary dates before a date set by the Democratic Party. They moved those dates, and the Party moved to punish them. At the time she said nothing.

Today because she's losing the contest, she wants those votes to count? What kind of rubbish is that?

If any of you are wondering why the Superdelegates don't move at once to end this ludicrous, long-drawn out campaign, it's because Mrs. Clinton indulges in these types of behaviours. She promises the moon to the supers, and many of these people have personal friendships with her and want to believe her, or are afraid to act against her because of her known predilection for retaliation.

Then she breaks her word, breaks her promise, brings in some of her personal friends like Suzie Tompkins Buell and Haim Saban, who are big money donors to the Democratic Party, and uses them against the party. She gets Ms. Buell to take out ads like this which will inflame the already troubled Clinton supporters who (rightly) believe that their candidate has been subjected to unacceptable levels of sexism. Instead of accepting that the battle is over and moving to force the Old Boys' Network to change its sexist ways, thus benefitting all women in the party, Clinton is working to ensure that she delegitimizes the current front-runner. She convinces her big-money pals to put the squeeze on Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

We hold no brief for Pelosi, with whom we have our own slew of problems. But attempting to pressure party leaders by threatening them with money to force them to line up behind you is so unethical as to border on the illegal.

Sending out your wealthy friends to buy superdelegate votes for you is unethical. Senator Clinton, the voice of the people is the deciding factor in the nomination. Not the money your rich friends can throw around.

You really have no respect for the "little people," do you, Senator?

Today, Barack Obama's number of pledged delegates will reach over the 50 per cent point. That makes it mathematically impossible for you to win this contest. We know you won't listen to the voices asking you to step down now, so we won't waste our breath. But at this point, you're nearly 200 delegates (pledged and Super) behind, and there are fewer than 200 Superdelegates left to be allocated.

You won't win this. You won't even catch up. You're like a child who has eaten too much chocolate before bedtime, screaming and fighting and throwing tantrums. These are all excellent qualities in a litigator, Mrs. Clinton. They are not Presidential qualities. Here's hoping that 2012 is an even bigger bust for you than 2008 has been.

Instead of working on the fears of the women who support you, how about ensuring that women's voices really are heard? How about starting a foundation for women to ensure that more of them are elected to positions of power in the party? How about mentoring some of the wonderful young women who are working in the ranks of the Democratic Party, helping to shape their political careers?

Stumble It!