West Wing or Green Wing?

[the0lady]

 
Richard Schiff - better known as Toby from The West Wing - seems to fancy himself a political commentator all of a sudden. The Indie in their infinite wisdom agree, and have given him a platform to spout his nonsense fromIt's no surprise that Schiff considers both Clinton and Palin as not "capable of stepping into the Oval Office". If a tub of

Comments

[flaggerx]

Seeing as how Ms. Palin supports virtually nothing that Hillary Clinton does, I see supporting her in protest as cutting off your nose to spite your face. I think Obama the better candidate than Mrs. Clinton for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with her gender (I remember getting shot at in Sarajevo just for starters). As Veep she brings a big negative named Bill, particularly for a man who wants to establish himself as President.

As far a Sarah Palin goes, I stop caring when you point out things like "thinks creationism should be taught', "anti-choice" and all that far right social conservative stuff. Whatever her virtues are (and she was for the bridge to nowhwere before she was against it) I don't need the same sort of policies as W.

This isn't about gender so much as the best person. And this time it wasn't a woman. It will be in the future I'm sure, but not in 2008.

[the0lady]

I don't think you've read either Schiff's article *or* mine. Let's recap what I said:

Rather than _patronise_ me with bullshit like "it's not a gender thing, it's just that this woman and that woman _and_ thas woman are 'not the right candidate'", why don't you try to _engage_ with the fact that I, and many of your compatriots and fellow voters, genuinely believe that it *is* agender thing?

DoTry telling Obama supporters that none of his detractors are motivated by race. Or McCain supporters that ageism isn't an issue in this campaign. Just the volume of noise telling women that HRC's candidacy was *not* undermined by sexism is enough to make me smell a rat.

[martinoh]

It would be ridiculous to suggest that sexism played no part in the opposition to HRC's candidacy, but there are very real problems with determining exactly how significant that part really was. Certainly the "volume of noise" analysis concerns me, if only because it is unthinkable that her supporters would have remained silent in the face of assertions that she had received the Democratic nomination not on her own merits but on the back of racist opposition to her rival, had the contest gone the other way.

As with Margaret Thatcher, the reasons people may not support Ms Clinton (or indeed Ms Palin) are complex and numerous and it would be at the very least unsafe to assume that a man with the same views, background and presentation as HRC would have automatically secured the nomination.