The Canadian Press: Clinton's losing battle leaves women sad and angry about sexism

The Canadian Press: Clinton's losing battle leaves women sad and angry about sexism

Sexism or Racism - If you vote for the female you are racist. If you vote for the black guy, you are sexist. Quit playing the cards and just get to work. Same party - same crap.

Clinton's losing battle leaves women sad and angry about sexism

32 minutes ago

WASHINGTON — There are many reasons why Hillary Clinton is losing the Democratic nomination fight.

And for some supporters who are devastated a woman likely won't be breaking the glass ceiling to the Oval Office this year, sexism is top of mind.

The fading dream generated by Clinton's historic bid is leaving behind a wash of disappointment and anger, some of it directed at party officials and the media.

An Ohio-based group of Clinton supporters even says it will try to thwart Barack Obama in key swing states in the presidential race this fall.

"Our party has been witness to the most outrageous display of misogyny and sexism in modern campaign history," organizer Cynthia Ruccia told a news conference in Columbus late last week.
"It's been open season on women and we feel we need to stand up and make a statement about that because it's wrong."

There's no doubt Clinton has been subject to all kinds of sex-based slurs in her tenacious fight to become the first woman president, including endless commentary about her looks, wardrobe and the way she laughs.

Media pundits have called her a bitch, a whore and "a scolding mother, talking down to a child." She was recently compared to the maniacal, spurned woman played by actor Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction.

One blogger on ABC's website described why he was "getting to hate this woman," including her "towering frigidity, blazing hubris and bellowing mendacity."

"She is a stranger to consistency, sincerety and (at a guess) oral sex," he wrote.

In a Washington Post column last week headlined Misogny I Won't Miss, Marie Cocco decried T-shirts bearing the slogans Bros before Hos sold on the Internet and the Hillary Nutcrackers available at airport concessions.

One of the best-sellers on the Hillary Vilification Shop website is a T-shirt emblazoned with Stop Mad Cow and a picture of Clinton with horns.

Yet, wrote Cocco, leading Democrats with the exception of Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, haven't "publicly uttered a word of outrage" at the hate hurled at Clinton.

For some, like Ruccia, a former congressional candidate, recent calls for Clinton to quit the race are "a supreme insult."

"We're being told to sit down, shut up and get with the program."

The group is pushing to have delegates counted from Michigan and Florida, penalized by the Democratic party because they held their primaries early.

Obama's name wasn't on the Michigan ballot and Clinton won more support in both states.

Yet that wouldn't help Clinton overcome Obama's lead in delegates needed to secure the nomination.
Many Clinton supporters agree there's a host of reasons why her campaign has faltered, incuding a fundamentally flawed primary strategy ill-prepared for the appeal of Obama's message of hope and change.

And her husband Bill's dismissive comments of Obama in South Carolina alienated many black voters who had once supported her.

Clinton has also benefitted from her sex, including the fact that she picked up so much support from fellow women intent on seeing her succeed.

Obama is obviously facing his own set of challenges as an African American, including voters who openly say they won't vote for a black man and widespread fears among supporters that there will be a race-based attempt on his life.

Despite the letdown many women feel, Clinton is being credited by many as redrawing the map by proving the public will vote for a woman.

But some say her epic battle won't necessarily make things any easier for the next female contender, who will still have to walk a fine line between being tough and spend time proving their competency when their male counterparts don't.

There are fears the trials Clinton has faced may put many women off taking a shot at the highest office for a long time to come.

"I think it's going to be generations," Karen O'Connor, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, told the New York Times.

"Who would dare run? The media is set up against you and if you have the money problems to begin with, why would anyone put their families through this?"

"Why would anyone put themselves through this?"