What is going on with Hillary Clinton’s surrogates? Between Andrew Young, Gloria Steinem and Bob Johnson, they’ve been doing a lor more harm than good.
None of those artless endorsements comes close to the shrillness of the New York State chapter of the National Organization of Women’s tirade, which calls liberal stalwart Ted Kennedy a traitor to feminist causes for his decision on Sunday to endorse Barack Obama.
He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). “They” are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.
This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation – to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who “know what’s best for us.”
In a separate statement, Marcia Pappas, the president of the New York chapter, went on to call the criticism of Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail ‘psychological gang-banging‘. (We don’t know about you, but nothing mobilizes us to vote more than the trivialization of rape.)
NOW’s national office backed away from the New York statement. “Though the National Organization for Women Political Action Committee has proudly endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton for president, we respect Sen. Kennedy’s endorsement,” NOW President Kim Gandy said in the statement. “We continue to encourage women everywhere to express their opinions and exercise their right to vote.”