Comments on: Poor Geraldine Ferraro

By: Lala

Lala — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:56:26 +0000

Ferrarro is a tired and deluded old bigot. A scary racist. Feminism has its twisted underbelly too

By: anon

anon — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:41:46 +0000

Ferrarro is nothing but a stone cold racist. Its hilarious to see her make this self-realization and then try to deny it with the idiot “reverse racism” crap.

You can literally see the wheels turning in her head. For the first time in her life, she’s been confronted with her blatant racism and her entire world is coming undone. Its very similar to a closet alcoholic who is brought in for an intervention with his family. It is shocking her to her core, and she cant believe it.

By: Playing Cards. « PostBourgie

Playing Cards. « PostBourgie — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:31:22 +0000

[...] blogged about this horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe by Geraldine Ferraro (see, for example, Jill at Feministe, Ta-Nehisi at Matthew Yglesias, and Megan Carpentier at Jezebel). Most have zeroed in on the most [...]

By: Britta

Britta — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:08:15 +0000

@ 34
Right, because the American economy is doing *soo* much better than those European ones ; ) Actually, I read somewhere that Sweden has the best performing economy in Western Europe (correct me if I’m wrong). Most of the world’s economic problems are due to their investments in America’s subprime loan industry. (I currently live in Australia, and the pain here was caused almost completely by the collapse of the US stockmarket).

But back to Clinton, I honestly don’t think he gave a rat’s a** about the American people. One by one, he let down the groups that supported him: gays, poor people, black people, women, etc. Pretty much the only people who benefited in the 90s were the upper middle class, and that was mainly due to the rising stock market. The first two years of his presidency, Democrats had control of congress, but I don’t remember much happening (except for the failed health care initiative, which Hillary couldn’t even get through a democratic congress). Then after the Republican sweep of 94, Bill Clinton maintained his popularity solely as the “lesser of two evils.” During his entire presidency he let the Republicans redefine things on their terms and instead worked to play catch up. His “new left” mean “republican lite,” aka, we do things like republicans, so they’ll vote for us too and we’ll win. I partially blame the Clintons, McAuliffe, and other Democrats of that era for driving the nation to the right. Once you move the left to the center, it’s much easier to move the right goalpost right

I think a lot of democrats hoped Hillary was like Eleanor Roosevelt, the more progressive voice of a Washington power couple. For me, it was a major disappointment when she was elected and proved, just like her husband, to be a Republican lite. As a younger member of the party, I want the Democrats to be proactive, to redefine the debate in our own terms and instead put the republicans on the defensive. I want a new “great society” brought out by the Democrats, and I think the nation does too. But I feel like much of the party, like Clinton and Ferraro, is stuck in the 80s and 90s, where the only way to win was to be as much like a Republican as possible and hope you get elected. They’ve failed to notice the country has shifted in the past 8 years, and they’re failing to take advantage of what could be a new progressive era.

By: Bitter Scribe

Bitter Scribe — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:26:01 +0000

This utterly disgusts me. I was going to send at least part of my rebate check to the Democrats, but now, forget it. It’s all going to homeless vets or my local symphony or something.

By: Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:37:36 +0000

How can you decide to only seat some of the delegation or to take away their votes?

You mean other than the fact that the DNC said, “If you hold your primary early, you will lose your delegates,” and the Florida and Michigan Democratic parties decided to go ahead, so the DNC took away their delegates?

It seems like a pretty simple cause-and-effect of consequences promised and consequences delivered, but maybe they though the DNC had their fingers crossed and didn’t really mean it when they said they’d take those delegates away?

I also notice that no one crying about Florida and Michigan seems at all worried that about a million people in each state did not vote in the primary because it was publicized that their votes would not count. That looks like a pretty good voter suppression tactic, doesn’t it? Tell people their votes won’t be counted anyway, and then turn around and count the votes of the few people who did show up.

By: jamespi

jamespi — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:20:20 +0000

jill, i follow what youre saying on the welfare topic but I think Clinton did the best he could at the time. As far as framing the debate, people who support the reforms you would like to see, mandatory maternity leave (unpaid paternity leave too maybe??) need to frame the debate in a way that makes sense to most americans. I still dont understand how we pay for those things in a competitive world environment, just as many of the european countries it would be great to emulate are encountering severe fiscal problems. In the long run I see it as a great thing but no one sells the long run anymore and thats the problem I have, mandatory maternity leave, health care, all the others will take a big bite out of the paychecks of the middle class for quite a while, the payoff will be more than worth it but that is never really explained beyond it being the -right- thing to do. Finally on that, so we’re one of the only first world nations to lack the things you mentioned, we also lack good mass transit for very clear and simple reasons, is it possible, just possible that we also lack maternity leave/better welfare due to some unique factors present in our nation of 300 million vice sweden, the UK, or australia?

By: whattamisaid

whattamisaid — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:03:17 +0000

Bitter Scribe, the problem was inadequate welfare reform. No one can argue that there weren’t flaws in the welfare system, but Clinton’s solution simply took away people’s means of support without bothering to provide training and education that would allow them to support themselves.

By: Jill

Jill — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:53:02 +0000

I’m familiar with the use of “welfare queens” to terrify conservative bigots. But IMO, the way you put a stop to that isn’t by buying into that lie and cutting off welfare support.

We remain one of the only countries in the world without federally mandated maternal leave. We remain one of the only developed, wealthy nations without a nationalized health care system. We don’t have those things in part because they’re “entitlement” programs that the right has framed as bad, and for lazy or wasteful people. That’s how they framed welfare, too — and while it is meant to be temporary assistance, “reform” just ended up screwing poor people. It requires a large number of work hours, but no child care assistance and limited educational opportunities. It treats low-income people like lazy social leeches instead of individuals who legitimately need some help and whom, I think, society has an obligation to.

Clinton (and a lot of other Dems) bought into the right-wing framing of welfare. That’s part of the reason why we still have such trouble advocating for any other social assistance programs. And while Clinton removed the argument by cutting welfare, I’m not sure the best way to undermine your opponents’ arguments is to just agree with them at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in society.

By: Bitter Scribe

Bitter Scribe — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:47:20 +0000

Jill—Not to hijack the thread, but I fail to understand what was so horrible about welfare reform. It enjoyed overwhelming popular support, and there’s a reason for that. Welfare was meant to be temporary assistance, not a permanent means of support. You might be too young to remember this, but I recall when “welfare” was hung squarely around the necks of the Democratic Party as a dog whistle to appeal to bigots. Bill Clinton put a stop to that, and good for him.