Opinion
Hillary's victories are credited to an effective attack campaign strategy and string of last-minute media ads directed at Obama, questioning his authenticity, his ability to lead and his strength when it comes to issues of national security.
Sports analogies dominate the media response; mostly boxing analogies as in, "Does Obama have a glass jaw?" "Can he take a punch?" Hillary is portrayed as a fighter and is admired for it while Obama is portrayed as being afraid to fight and characterized as a sissy. Obama is even referred to as a "bunny."
Meanwhile the "super delegates" are frozen waiting to see what happens in Pennsylvania, an industrial state like Ohio where Hillary has done better among white workers and where people have lost their jobs as a result of NAFTA-permissible corporate globalization initiatives that enabled them to make decisions to move jobs overseas. Interesting in that Hillary is the candidate who supported NAFTA from the get go while Obama questioned the implications and structure of NAFTA as to how it would affect the U.S. workforce from the start.
Most pundits agree that Hillary's campaign has been successful as of late in putting Obama, who was in the frontrunner position, in the defensive mode and they suggest his weakness has been in having to exhaust so much energy responding to a steady, ongoing barrage of attacks from Hillary.
It's thought that Hillary's been successful in taking him off his message. She seems to be getting through in making a case that she is the candidate of solutions while Obama is just all talk. Many think that Obama will be forced to fight Hillary on her terms in a way he is not accustomed to; dirty politics and misleading advertising campaigns that prey on people's fears and that spew out misrepresentations of the truth and accusations, putting their opponent on the defensive.
In the last few weeks, Obama's been shown wearing native attire while visiting Africa, been accused of having secret conversations with Canadian officials regarding NAFTA, been portrayed as a far left-wing liberal and even having Communist sentiments, been accused of lying in his literature about Hillary's platform positions, been characterized as a hysteria-raising, false-hope promising orator who's only strength is making good speeches and getting people excited. He's criticized for making people believe and for those who never believed or who long since stopped believing, it's discrediting their belief as delusional. Hillary's on her game.
The Clinton legacy has always been to come out of the corner throwing every punch you can get away with, whether below the belt or not and knowing that the referee may not always be watching and that in the end, people seem to be more impressed with who can beat up their opponent which people see as the kind of strength we need in the White House. They don't care whether it's a dirty fight or not. It's all about who wins.
It's all been reduced to a kind of TV realty show. It's sunk to the level of street fighting and viewers tune in hoping for a good brawl. It's the Roman Coliseum. It's who's left standing after the blood has spilled.
Obama has won more of the popular vote, more states by far and more of the elected delegates and inspired an amazing grassroots movement across the country, the likes of which we have not seen for more than a generation; some say since Robert Kennedy's campaign of 1968.
What's left and what is now the big issue after who wins Pennsylvania next month is that haunting question of how the super delegates will vote and what happens to Florida and Michigan where Obama was not even on the ballot. There's even talk of running a new primary for these states and Hillary's campaign has favored that versus going to the convention where the original decision to not award delegates from these states would more than likely be upheld.
With wins in Texas and Ohio, now the momentum talk is in Hillary's corner even after all of her losses in previous states where Obama emerged as the clear choice in overwhelming numbers.
It's worth mentioning that Rush Limbaugh in his national broadcast message to listeners, just prior to the Texas and Ohio primary, directed Republicans to cross over and vote for Hillary in order to help stop the Obama movement or at least slow down its momentum because the Republican Party has acknowledged that they would rather face Hillary in the November general election than Obama, given the national polls that show Obama with a clear advantage over McCain as the Republican Party's nominee.
National polls also show that if Hillary were the Democratic Party's nominee, that Obama voters would more than likely feel disenfranchised by the process and the millions of first-time voters who turned out for Obama across the nation would feel that it's all over and will have lost faith in the system. Many of them would drop out and simply not vote in an election where either Hillary or McCain were the choices given to them.
Eighty-five million dollars was raised in the last month of the Democratic campaign. The Republican party raised $14 million during the same period. Clearly McCain has not mobilized an inspired or motivated electorate.
Taken from Hillary's speech: "Americans don't need more promises. They don't need more speeches. America needs a President who's ready to work, ready to lead and ready to stand up for what's right. We're ready for health care, not just for some people, or most people but for everyone. America needs a president who's ready to take the call at 3 a.m. to stand up for our country. There's no time for speeches or on the job training."
Hillary is bare-knuckle fighting and the Clinton campaign machine is in motion. Though no one can project how Hillary could come out ahead in the popular vote or elected delegate count, her supporters are making the case that there's legitimacy in the super delegate system and that we should go back and revisit Florida and Michigan. It's pretty much what we could have figured.
The decision as to who will represent us in this country could very well have been taken out of the hands of the people. It's not the first time this has happened and it sends a message to the world that while we preach we do not practice.
Howard Glasser lives in Kelseyville.
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It wasn’t until 1920 – almost 150 years after the founding of our country – that women won the right to vote. As is often the case, California was ahead of the curve, offering women’s suffrage in 1911. But the vast majority of American women had to wait for the U.S. Congress and Senate to approve the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1919 (and approved by three-quarters of the states) in time for women to vote in the presidential election of 1920.
Two years earlier, in 1918, four women had been elected to serve in the California Assembly, though all four were voted out of office (defeated by men) in 1924. Only 10 other women served in the Assembly over the next 50 years, and it was not until 1976 that we had our first female elected State Senator – Rose Ann Vuich.
For young people today, those hard facts must seem like they come from an ancient culture on a distant planet, in a galaxy far, far away. History – particularly unpleasant history – has a way of falling by the wayside and being forgotten by those of us living in a much different time.
No one can deny how different things are today. In California, women now play a central role in public life, bringing a new perspective to the legislative arena. As a result, California leads the nation in many family-friendly policies. We were, for example, the first state in the nation to establish paid family leave for workers who need time off to care for a new child or a seriously ill family member.
Women are also making a big impact in many “non-traditional” policy areas. For example, in the California State Senate, women head several of the most influential committees that deal with some of our state’s most intractable problems. These include such powerhouse committees as Energy, Utilities and Communications; Labor and Industrial Relations; Public Safety; Judiciary; Revenue and Taxation; and Budget and Fiscal Review.
In addition, the newly-elected Speaker of the Assembly – Karen Bass – is the first African American woman elected to lead a Legislative house in the nation. In all, 10 women served in positions of leadership in either the Senate or Assembly from the outset of the 2007-2008 legislative session.
And our native daughter, Nancy Pelosi, is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, putting her third in the Presidential line of succession.
California is also home to the first female astronaut, as well as the first Chinese-American women ever elected to statewide office in the United States.
Still, there are things we can learn from the past. The best-selling author Michael Crichton has written, “…if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.”
That’s why both Houses of Congress passed a resolution declaring March to be “National Women’s History Month.” It urges Americans everywhere to honor and celebrate the role of women in our society and asks schools, workplaces and communities to develop information programs highlighting the history of women.
Understanding women’s history can benefit everyone. It helps give men and boys a better understanding of the female experience by recognizing that women have been fighting for equal rights and recognition since the founding of our country. For women and girls, it provides a more expansive vision of their identity and an opportunity to think about their lives on a larger and bolder scale.
There are also more practical reasons to honor women’s history. By recognizing how far we’ve come, we can get a better understanding of how far we still have to go. Equality has yet to be fully attained.
As recently as 2005, women in the United States were paid only 77 cents for every dollar that men were paid in comparable jobs. The gap is even larger for African American, Asian and Hispanic women.
Such gross inequities cannot be tolerated. More than 70 percent of California women are now in the work force; that’s almost double the number of working women in 1965. Many are in low-paying service jobs with few benefits, making pay discrimination even more reprehensible.
With so many women now holding jobs, we must ensure that they are not forced to choose between care-giving demands and employment responsibilities. That’s why we both supported a bill last year to extend paid leave to workers needing to care for grandparents, grandchildren, siblings and in-laws. The bill received strong support in the Legislature but was vetoed by the Governor. More must be done.
National Women’s History Month should be a time for all of us to join together to ensure that no one in American society is left behind. It would be a good time to remember the wise words of the great anthropologist Margaret Mead. In order to achieve a richer culture, she wrote, we must “weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”
Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) and Assemblywoman Patty Berg (D-Eureka) represent Lake County in the State Legislature.
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