feminist blogs

Angry sentiments like Caryl Rivers' may be understandable, in a sense....

Does anyone wonder why women who support Hillary Clinton for president get (excuse the vernacular) PO'd at some of our fellow Democrats?

It's because very time we turn around, someone is dissing our candidate in ways that infuriate us. He (or she) is using sexist, insulting language about the first woman to mount a viable run for the presidency, in ways that, to say the least, we do not appreciate.

While many of us see Barack Obama as an exciting, able and worthy candidate, and will gladly vote for him if he is the nominee, we do not see the same respect given to Hillary Clinton.

But Hillary Clinton's problem is Hillary Clinton -- or, I should say, the absence of a sense of who Hillary Clinton really is.

When I didn't know much about her, back in 1996, I was something of a Hillary fan. I was looking for a button or bumper sticker that said, "12 more years! Bill in '96, Hillary in '00".

When Hillary ran for Senate, I was a supporter. I would have voted for her, had I still been living in New York.

But then something changed. I saw her numerous times on CSPAN, speaking here and there, and at least 90% of the time I was left cold, feeling like I wasn't getting a real sense of what she really believed. She started to project that focus-group-tested persona that hid all but the carefully constructed image.

And then there was the war, and how she claimed to "take responsibility for her vote" for the war -- without really taking responsibility at all, beyond just claiming she took responsibility. No apology. No remorse. Just self-righteousness.

And then all the strange votes and political positions she took, such as banning flag "desecration" and giving $10k to forced-pregnancy advocate Casey's campaign and on and on.

Even so, when she finally announced her run, I was hopeful. Her online announcement was, well, okay. At least she seemed like she was trying to be authentic. But she obviously did not "get" the netroots. Her top-down campaign of a few big donors and cultivating of lobbyist money was disconcerting.

Then she failed to clinch it all by Super Tuesday. Then we started to see many different Hillary Clintons. There was the A-student-who-has-all-the-answers Hillary Clinton. Then there was the teary-cares-so-much Hillary Clinton. Then there was the scolding Barack-has-to-answer-for-his-behavior Hillary Clinton. Then there was the I'm-honored-to-be-here-with-you-Barack Hillary Clinton. Then there was the Barack-cannot-be-trusted-to-be-ready Hillary Clinton. And then there's the Karl Rove-like rhetoric.

And now we get the "Stay the Course" Hillary Clinton.

And all this points up how Hillary Clinton is the DLC representative, and the way she's campaigning seems to be more about her control over the Party rather than gaining the nomination.

Is Hillary the victim of mean media coverage? Certainly in some ways. But even more, Hillary is the victim of Hillary. She has been her own undoing.

"Theft"? When it will require a Superdelegate coup to win -- mathematically it's her only chance -- that amounts to a theft, in my book.

I wouldn't be so antagonistic towards Hillary, but she has been the chameleon this entire campaign. In fact, at least since 2004. The only thing clear about Hillary is her ambition.

The Democratic destruction continues. Congratulations to the DLC.

What seems apparent to me -- and correct me if I'm wrong -- is that the Hillary Clinton campaign is waging a battle to retain (or restore) the DLC control of the Democratic Party. Why else this suicide run ostensibly aimed at the White House. She has no mathematical chance of winning, save for a Superdelegate trump play. And her scorched-Earth campaign tactics seem designed to prevent Barack Obama from ever succeeding.

It's like the #1 priority is to prevent Obama's campaign from waging a successful insurgency against the old-politics power center of the Democratic Party. The DLC.

What is the election tomorrow about? Why is the mainstream media even playing along? What's going on here?

Sometimes the partisan blinders end up being blindfolds.

Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft gets it all backwards:

Obama's Unity Schtick is precisely what the DLC and Joe Lieberman have been preaching for decades and that the progressive blogs were supposed to be fighting AGAINST.

Not.

Barack Obama is a progressive who pitches his rhetoric in rational, moderate, common sense tones to appeal to centrists and independents and even disaffected Republicans, drawing them to his point of view.

This is just the opposite of Joe Lieberman, who has been voting with the right on important issues (and let's start with the war on Iraq and go from there), while pitching his rhetoric against the left.

Equating the two seems to be simply -- as Barack himself might put it -- intellectually lazy.