Women Angry at Calls for Clinton to Drop Out
Posted on March 31, 2008
Women supporters of Hillary Clinton are quite angry at the ludicrous, partisan calls from some Obama supporters for Hillary to drop out of the race.
Amid mounting calls from top Democrats for Clinton to step aside and clear the path for rival Barack Obama, strategists are warning of damage to the party's chances in November if women - who make up the majority of Democratic voters nationwide, but especially the older, white working-class women who've long formed the former first lady's base - sense a mostly male party establishment is unfairly muscling Clinton out of the race. "Women will indeed be upset if it appears people are trying to push Hillary Clinton out of the way," said Carol Fowler, the South Carolina Democratic Party chair who is backing Obama. "If you are going to ask her to withdraw, you'd better be making a strong case for it - both to the candidate and the public."To ask Hillary Clinton to step down when she is about to win a major primary in Pennsylvania is absolutely ludicrous. It's all blustering to try to psych her and her supporters out. Well, it's not working. All it's doing is infuriating women voters who have had it up to here with the sycophantic, Obama-bedazzled press and Obama's obnoxious supporters.Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy last week became the first leading Democrat to openly call on Clinton to abandon her bid and back Obama, a sentiment shared by many activists worried that a drawn-out nominating contest only bolsters Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.
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Campaigning across the state Saturday, Clinton was greeted by large, heavily female crowds that shouted "You go, sister!" and "We've got your back!" in support of her pioneering candidacy. Indiana votes May 6. Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project that trains women to run for office, noted that women typically have rallied around Clinton when she's appeared most vulnerable - from the revelations of her husband's dalliance with White House intern Monica Lewinsky to January's New Hampshire primary after the bruising loss to Obama in Iowa.
"Women have always been asked to step aside if it was somehow for the greater good. In this case, Clinton, and a lot of her female supporters, clearly feel that she would make the better president and that it would not be for the greater good for her to step aside," Wilson said.
I find myself in the strange position of knowing exactly how Vice president Dick Cheney felt when he so famously blasted. Senator Leahy on the Senate floor after Leahy said something particularly irritating. At the time Cheney's aide called it a "frank exchange of views." In retrospect it was just Leahy shooting off his big mouth, as usual. If Leahy keeps this nonsense up, he'll be on the receiving end of some "frank exchanges of views" -- from his female constituents.