Frankly, I'm sick and f-ing tired of being called sexist because I chose Obama over Clinton.
I'm a white male who voted for Obama. I've voted for countless female candidates (some won, others lost), and will be campaigning and voting for a Native female in our Congressional primary.
MY vote, at least, is NOT sexist.
Are folks from West Virginia sexist? Ohio? Pennsylvania? New York? Or is it only the states she lost, like Illinois? Louisiana? Minnesota? Wisconsin?
Give me a break.
I acknowledge sexism exists; I reject that any candidate deserves a vote merely because of their genitilia (or skin color). Is it true that some voters chose one over the other based on these criteria? Sure it is. I have no problem with blacks voting for Obama in overwhelming numbers, any more than I have a problem with Hillary pulling significant chunks of the female vote, in a race where the two candidates are in agreement on 95% of the issues. On the flip side, certain voters will cast their lot against Obama because of race and against Hillary because of gender--but I don't think either of those factors swung the outcome of the Democratic nomination. If anything, you could very clearly make that case that Hillary, because of her big margins with white, female voters, made the race much closer than it otherwise would have been. I don't hear anybody calling all those white women racist! Nor should they be! But it would be foolish to look at the numbers and try to project some kind of sexism as the reason Hillary Clinton failed to secure the nomination. Logic--and the numbers--fail to bear that out.
As a practical matter, I think Hillary lost an election she should have won. She had the name recognition, the money, and the support of the establishment. Perhaps she should have chosen a strategist who understood that the states weren't winner take all, and maybe she should have contemplated a scenario where she failed to secure the nomination on Super Tuesday. One or two simple tactical errors have cost her the office of the Presidency (because I think she or Obama will wipe the floor with McCain in the fall).
I think it's important to give Obama credit for threading the needle and running a nearly flawless campaign. To win, he had to.
This campaign was Hillary's to lose, and she did.
Her vagina had very little to do with it.
(PS I'd vote for Hillary in a heartbeat. I'm a Democrat.)
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