I left the Democratic Party for a long list of reasons, but the main one was the fact that I felt dismissed as a woman. And nothing has changed. Even in the 21st Century, all the Democratic Party had to offer for a presidential ticket was two white males. To add insult to injury, John Kerry–not at all surprisingly–turned out to be the worst candidate in modern times.
Most Americans are not white males, a fact the Democratic Party seems to have missed. And the gains made by the feminist movement (far from the gains that needed to be made) are being chipped away day by day, another glaring fact ignored by the party. So misguided are the Democrats about women’s issues that at their last convention, they had a number of Democratic female senators make a kind of chorus girl run onto the stage so convention attendees could applaud them and feel good about themselves. The worst part was that the female senators agreed to put on this display of light-headed cuteness.
Even Howard Dean, who bragged that he talked about the problems of African Americans when he addressed all-white audiences, probably didn’t talk about the problems of women when he addressed all-male audiences. I am guessing this because he talked little about them when he addressed mixed-gender audiences.
Like her or not, Senator Clinton gets the same kind of bashing from Democrats that she gets from Republicans, and it isn’t about her politics. When the subject of her possible presidential candidacy came up on the MSNBC program “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews, a Democrat, immediately said: “Well, that would motivate all the men in the country to vote against her.” All the men? Those are some mighty strong feelings of insecurity.
Clinton is most often criticized as a candidate because she is “ambitious” and “polarizing,” two words that can be applied to any number of men whom members of the Democratic Party go ga-ga over. And all across the allegedly liberal message boards, we read that America just “isn’t ready” for a female president.
The Democratic Party has shown its hand many times. It stood by while Republicans ripped Geraldine Ferraro apart because of her husband, then blamed her–rather than their own weak campaign–for the 1984 loss. And more recently, the Democratic Party stood in silence while the Republican smear machine soul-murdered Anita Hill. In fact, Democrats enthusiastically rewarded the Vice President in charge of Lying About Professor Hill–Senator and Father (he is an Episcopal priest) John Danforth –with both the Waco investigation leadership and an ambassadorship to the United Nations. Not one person rose to oppose his ethics in either confirmation.
The issue of whether American women should have control over their own bodies, one of dozens of vital issues that affect women, is at the forefront again because of the current carving away of Roe v. Wade, and the mad ravings of pharmacists gone wild, who are busy making unscientific, unethical, and just plain misogynistic decisions about who takes which drugs. But not to worry. Because we can always frame this hysteria over whether right-wing religious men in bad suits and pharmacy coats take over the bodies of women by calling the frightened women a “single issue group” and assuring the Democratic Party that our casue is not a “core principle.”
I am no longer a Democrat–but as I see it–if there really are any more YDD’s, their criteria have changed a bit over the years: Now they check first to make sure the yellow dog isn’t a bitch.
