I have been a Democrat all my life. I have never voted for any candidate other than a Democrat. I want to explain why I will not be able to vote for Senator Obama if he is the nominee, my pain and anger about it. I know many, many women, and men, are feeling the same way. I hope reasonable Obama supporters will try to understand and work to quell the increasingly hostile language of a certain throng of Obama supporters who threaten violence or subversive actions if Senator Clinton wins the nomination.


I have a lot of pain over what has happened in this nomination contest, personal pain as a woman, because of the sexism that has come out like so much poison, and infected it from the beginning, while racism is confronted and not tolerated.

The sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton are attacks on all women. So much of it has been waged by supposedly liberal, Democrats. It has been so vile that it has affected this contest most unfairly, skewed it. For these reasons, which affect my own personal self respect as well, I can now not vote for the Democratic candidate if it is not Hillary Clinton. This makes my very angry and upset.

If Barack Obama is the nominee, I will be forced to abstain, or write in Hillary's name, when I would've wanted to vote for him, the first black nominee. Because of the unfairness of this contest, the unabated sexism, that opportunity has been taken away from me.


In the beginning, I gave money to both Obama and Hillary campaigns. I was ecstatic to see our party have both a woman and black person running for president. Then, the sexist attacks started, as well as the campaign to paint Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton as racists. As a liberal and loyal Democrat I was shocked and appalled. The machinations of the mostly male leadership of this party to favor Senator Obama and attempt to skew the contest in his favor made me ill. It is not true liberal or Democratic politics. I have been forced to see that is not what Senator Obama or his campaign represents.

The Obma campaign has been retrograde. It has hurt women and the Democratic party support of equality for ALL. It has led the way for an all out battle against women, in OUR Democrat party. I cannot accept or support it. I cannot have my head shoved to the table and forced to sign away my own dignity as a woman just to elect a Democrat.


This reality is that the Obama campaign has not been about equality for all, but about equality between men. The message and style of his campaign is retrograde, with a contemporary polish. His beliefs and experiences are not grounded in the causes of the 60's and 70's, or "invested in them", as he himself has admitted (Reno Gazette interview). His message is positive but vague, positively vague, repeating the words and ideals of 60's leaders while being oddly dismissive of them. He speaks in modern religious tones, his personal politics built largely upon his experiences with Rev. Wright and Trinity Church, rather than with longtime black civil rights leaders who actually knew and worked with Martin Luther King.

Most AA churches aren't like Wright's, and most blacks aren't paranoid like Wright. Those longtime leaders who knew MLK are not like Rev. Wright. They see the real systemic oppression of black people without believing the government invented AIDS. Most largely black churches are more like LA AME, Christian, gospel, and yes political, but not paranoid. The black men supporting Obama like Sharpton, Jackson, those who were close TO MLK, etc..., aren't Trinity goers whose politics are based in African Nationalism or Afro Centrism. They aren't really Farrakhan fans, just like they weren't early Malcom X fans. They aren't anti-American.

They don't really believe Bill Clinton is racist, he is a friend and ally of theirs. Jesse Jackson told the media that Bill's remark about him winning SC wasn't racist, but the Obama campaign ignored that, and so too the media....and Jackson wasn't going to be all that loud about it.

These elder black men who were with MLK and really ARE, have been, the leaders of the black American political movement, support Obama because he's a young black man they see as their first real hope of attaining the White House and parity with white MEN. I don't think it matters to them as much who Obama is or that he is not really of their generation or understands their struggle in the civil rights movement, the 60's & 70's, MLK.

I think what they have in common is that they are black MEN first, and have a need for parity with white MEN. Those aspects that the Million Man March is built on is what they relate to, not a Muslim identification, but an identification with the idea of black men asserting their masculinity and role as head of the family as a pathway to equality.

A LOT of black men have immense anger at feeling EMASCULATED by racism, that they are put on the same level as WOMEN by being oppressed by white men. That is why they have no problem with the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton and women in the Dem party, and have even joined in, as with Jeese Jackson accusing Hillary of fake crying. They pressure black women to identify as black people, family, first and put their womanhood second, if at all. That is what the Million Man March and Obama attitude is about.

I dislike the words and personality, image of Michelle Obama because again, it is RETROGRADE. She represents a step backwards as a role model for black women and all women. She shows up on magazine covers with a 1950's Jackie Kennedy styling, hair like Anita Bryant, pearls and pumps. She's only missing the pillbox hat. Her first slam at Hillary that "if you can't take care of your own house, you can't be in the White House" were blatant clue words to women, especially black women, that a woman's first duty is to her man, her family, her place in the home and raising the kids, and that THIS is the foundation of good American society. She is like a modern day Phyllis Shlafely in that regard. Her attack on Hillary was cruel, self important, woman to woman sexist hostility. There's nothing I hate worse than women blaming and shaming other women for having a husband who's fooled around. When women feel important from some notion of moral superiority as 'good women", who keep their man and family together by being 'proper' women, or insinuating that their husband would never have an affair because they know their place as a wife, it doesn't help the womens movement.

A large group of supporters of Obamas campaign appear to like this aspect of the 'American Dream", keeping the male dominated model, but feeling they are liberal because they fight racism. They want to keep the house and home model with women in their roles, but still FEEL they are progressive.

This is not liberalism, it is only liberal to a point, that point being the stop you get off right before the one that says "Equality for Women". People who subscribe to or accept this are not the progressives of the left, they are the CONSERVATIVE wing of the left.

They love the idea of Michelle Obama being a LADY, the First Lady...they don't want to lose the First LADY. They want a man as president, not "that b*tch, that "unlikable" woman.

There are plenty of black people who see this stuff and don't like it....and they are being attacked as disloyal black Americans, everyone from Tavis Smiley to Maya Angelou to Maxine Waters...HEROES of the black community before this mess.

The tragic part of this campaign is how it has caused great division in not only the liberal community, but also the black community, and among some liberal women.


Yet, it has been inevitable. The sexism that has lay hidden in the underbelly of 'progressive' politics and the Democratic party was bound to come out when this contest came about.

I am most angry at Obama and his supporters who've encouraged the blatant sexism, the embracing of the desire for MALE equality, while throwing women ,the Democratic party block, into the trash. That's why Obama has courted other male votes outside the party. That's why FOX and the RW have taken it up as if THEY are the ones who see the sexism and are 'against' it (all of a sudden!). It's all political manipulation. It the RW can help along Dem or IN women and supportive men to see what is happening by oddly covering the sexism in our party and 'liberal' media bias, well, they can always revert to their own BS after Obama loses.

This election was an opportunity for Obama, for Democrats, to TRULY support the elimination of both racism and sexism, but he and the party leadership who's supported him chose only men. Hillary talks about everyone's rights, makes a point of it because it's what she believes in...but Obama almost never speaks about women. Women's rights aren't even on his website as an 'issue'. The Democratic party leadership hasn't said one stinking word about it, or confronted the media about it. No, they've VIOLATED our party platform of working for equal rights for women and hosted the whole affair! Come on in boys, the water is FINE.

I am so gladdened to see all the men who support Hillary and women' equality, the men who have been changing things. I appreciate it so much. I don't think I've had quite so many emotional moments than seeing the fathers with their daughters at Hillary rallies, husbands supporting their wives, mothers, brothers supporting their sisters.......each other. It gives me hope that it will be reality, eventually, good will prevail.

The most enlightened liberal men and women will prevail.

I gave Obama money at the start, and was stabbed in the back, just like the mostly male leadership of the Democratic party have stabbed women in the back. They have betrayed women and men who support women's equality, and encouraged a new generation of young men to ignore what we've achieved and be as hostile and sexist as ever before.

Shame on them, and shame on those token opportunistic women behind them.

They want to be the 'new' Democratic party, by stepping all over our "old" achievements, stepping all over women, and doing things like trying to denigrate and toss out one of our own beloved past presidents and most peaceful, prosperous times in history. What fools.

If this is to be the new Democratic party, they are going to find their numbers greatly decreased.


Early on, these words from Senator Obama greatly disappointed me, and showed to me that he is out of touch, and not of our future.


Barack Obama: "I didn't come of age in the battles of the 60's. I'm not as invested in them." Reno Gazette, January 20th, 2008