Hillary Clinton

In which I compliment Bernie Sanders for what some of his own supporters seem to think is bad for some reason

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders had turned in two solid election performances in the first two states of the Democratic Primary. He nearly won Iowa and went on the next week to win New Hampshire decisively. Rather than simply be happy about it, some Sanders supporters (egged on heavily by pundits who really want to keep a “horse race” going for ratings) have taken to taunting those of us who support Clinton with graphics of Sanders’ support with young people (especially women) in Iowa and New Hampshire.

One possible reason that young people (in states that have voted so far) might be flocking to Bernie that is not exciting, and isn’t about how young Dem primary voters mostly believe Hillary is an evil hellbitch sent from Goldman Sachs to turn them into catfood for vagina voting old hags, is that the Sanders platform includes a proposal for tuition-free public college for all. Which, leaving aside considerations of its feasibility in being passed and implemented, is a great idea! I think progressives/liberals across the board agree on that. But when I and others have raised that as a factor in Sanders’ youth support, some people have become strangely upset over it.

Consider the following scenario:

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On not taking the bait from the Bill Mahers

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com, and I wasn’t going to but because this stupid Steinem outrage has died down yet:

“Hey, Gratehouse, do you think this Victoria’s Secret catalog is sexist?“, he asked me.

It was twenty some odd years ago and this was in the break room at the torpedo maintenance facility where my interlocutor, Torpedoman’s Mate Third Class Lee, and I (I was Torpedoman’s Mate Second Class Gratehouse) worked in Yokusuka, Japan. This was in the dark days before online ordering was the norm and most of the women at the torp shop subscribed to the eponymous catalog. Not because we were lingerie junkies, but because by that time Victoria’s Secret had become a purveyor of a wide range of stylish and affordable women’s clothing, from the famous undergarments to jeans and boots and coats. Basically if you wanted more options than what was on offer the Navy Exchange or at the expensive stores out in town, you ordered from VS.

Needless to say, the frequently arriving catalogs were quite popular with some of the guys in the shop, as they featured (then, as now) the top supermodels of the day in underwear and bathing suits. The guys would pass them around (often without asking permission) and remark loudly on the attributes of the women within. There was more than mere male appreciation of the (very conventionally) attractive female form going on. It was shit like “boy, my wife sure doesn’t look like this!” It was a lot of very loud and very pointed commentary directed at whatever women were within earshot, with the intention clearly to remind us that we mere mortal women had failed to be as boner-inducing as were the Victoria’s Secret goddesses. Not that any of those guys were hot shit themselves but they knew society didn’t demand the kind of physical perfection from them as it demanded from women and they were not going to let us forget it.

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Hillary Clinton takes a forceful stance on abortion rights like women matter or something!

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Hillary Clinton

So the contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is getting real, as was apparent in Sunday’s night’s Democratic Presidential debate on NBC (which got a respectable 10 million viewers, by the way), in which the two front-runners argued vociferously over their different approaches to health care, banks, gun control, and foreign policy. The disparity between Clinton and Sanders is generally characterized as one of her pragmatism vs his idealism and there are about a thousand think pieces you can find that analyze it. Here it is, as succinctly stated by Jeet Heer:

Sanders is promoting an “ethics of moral conviction” by calling for a “political revolution” seeking to overthrow the deeply corrupting influence of big money on politics by bringing into the system a counterforce of those previously alienated, including the poor and the young. Clinton embodies the “ethics of responsibility” by arguing that her presidency won’t be about remaking the world but trying to preserve and build on the achievements of previous Democrats, including Obama.

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