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I never wanted to hate Hillary Clinton | I never wanted to hate Hillary Clinton |
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When she and Bill burst on the national scene in 1992, I was willing to entertain the possibility of a new updated Eleanor and Franklin story, only this time "Eleanor" would have more than just "Franklin's" ear. She would have some real policymaking power. But her insistance on doing healthcare reform by organizing the corporations instead of the people turned out to be a disastrous miscalculation. It wasn't all her fault, social movements in the USA were at a disappointing ebb back then. But was she really arrogant enough to believe she could reform our entire healthcare system without serious grassroots organizing? And why was she so hellbent on a "welfare reform" rampage that drove even more women into desperate poverty? Where were the efforts to improve our labor laws, improve our educational system and end the racial and gender discrimination that created the feminization of poverty? For many people in America Hillary Clinton was the public face of feminism. I'm sorry to say that she just fed into the stereotype that feminists only care about upper middle class white women. I had hope that when the drama of the Clinton White House was over, that Hillary would find something commensurate with her talent and that perhaps she would grow politically as a result of that baptism by fire. What was especially disgusting was that she doing this at a time when she was coming under a relentless rain of nasty sexist attacks. Feminists aren't supposed to fight back against sexism by unleashing racism, something that many white corporate-style feminists forgot in their rush to support her. But my hatred of her moved into cold fury with her Bobby Kennedy comment in the state of South Dakota. How many people have given their lives while trying to bring about the multiracial coalition that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King came to symbolize? |
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