The Democratic convention is playing beautifully well in the overseas media: Michelle Obama played a blinder, as is her wont (shame she’s not standing for something) and Hillary Clinton made opening speech of Campaign 2012 last night, to a sea of Obama/Unity placards.
Every Hillary supporting woman delegate interviewed by the BBC afterwards – most of them black, if I remember rightly, though I stand to be corrected without the video to hand; there may have been one white one – harped on, interminably on-message, on the theme of party unity. All was love and light and happy happy happy, with barely a dissenting voice to be heard.
Convention organisers and message managers in Denver can pat themselves on the back that they’ve managed to keep conflict so discreetly under wraps (so far; there are a couple of days to go still).
But what will really count is what happens in November (always supposing the election’s not completely Diebolded). Former pro-Hillary, now pro-Obama delegates can spout unity to the cameras in Denver as much as they like, but when it comes to X’s on ballots they’ll go with their gut instinct and their gut instinct as racist as hell. For ‘inexperienced’, read ‘black’:
Minneapolis Star Tribune:
Lisa Sisinni: Why I, a Clinton supporter, will vote for John McCain
Obama is inexperienced, fluffy and arrogant. I can’t back that.
Even though they managed by dint of much screeching and waving of rattles to have the Democrats put a wise old greyhair, a Hillary proxy, in charge of the hotheaded young black man, Hillary’s fans in the entitlement generation still aren’t satisfied and are threatening to throw their toys out of the playpen entirely, all the apparent convention unity notwithstanding – they’re not just abstaining, or passively supporting an independent, but actively campaigning against Obama and their own former party and in favour of McCain.
CNN:
66 percent of Clinton supporters — registered Democrats who want Clinton as the nominee — are now backing Obama. That’s down from 75 percent in the end of June. Twenty-seven percent of them now say they’ll support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.
And nowhere was that statistic more prevalent than at the RNC-sponsored happy hour for Hillary.
Clinton supporters-turned-McCain converts at the event were not just angry at Obama’s campaign; they’re furious with the Democratic Party’s nomination process this year.
“The DNC really pushed [Barack Obama] on us. Now they’ve left us with two choices: somebody who has no substance or a Republican,” said Jessi Cleaver, 35, of New York. “And these are terrible choices, and they worked hard to select this candidate. … We’re watching the DNC pick this candidate for us.”
Aww, diddums. Did they really think Hillary, wife of a president, mother of a future president, was the spontaneous choice of the toiling masses?
But why are these supposed feminists being so destructive? Do they think they have to burn down the political village to save the feminism, or something?
It’s as plain as a pikestaff to the average outside observer why they are doing this – it’s the colour thing, stupid. They’re racists, for all their feminist posturing, and their gut instinct says ‘don’t vote for the black guy’. Yes, they want change – but they want change for them and women just like them, change only on their terms – all others need not apply. Understandably many progressives find this political dog-in-the-mangerism utterly infuriating
I’m not American myself, so I’ll pass over to an American, Tim Wise of Lip Magazine, who puts it much more pithily than I ever could:
Your Whiteness is Showing:
An Open Letter to Certain White Women
Who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November[…]
Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don’t kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn’t need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result–a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she’s progressive, and she’s a feminist. But that isn’t your threat is it? No. You’re not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton’s birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be…?
[…]
See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they’ve had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman–hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so–but you won’t support the black man. And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?
Your whiteness is showing.
Well, quite. Get over it already.
The irony is the question of race really is a surface issue for domestic consumption only: Obama’s politics are in essence the same as Hillary’s, at least in foreign policy – the Democratic platform calls for more neoliberalism, more expansionism, just as much overseas meddling as ever. This is is no way good for women worldwide.
The important choice here isn’t between race or gender at all. The world’s in one of the most politically precarious, nuclear-fuelled international situations in recent history. Identity politics be damned – it’s now a choice between having a president with a modicum of common sense or a psychologically unstable, hair-trigger-tempered nutjob with his finger on the big red button. Choose the wrong one, we could all be blown to kingdom come.
You’d think even entitled white American women would get that.
(Hattip to Donna)