Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley may or may not be elected to the U.S. Senate tomorrow. I ask you: What difference will it make--one way or the other?
Badly, the Democratic guns-for-hire, Coakley's would-be colleagues, and the president want Martha Coakley elected because they, badly, want their 60th vote for a health care bill that presently renders American women unequal, second-class citizens to the men around them.
Coakley can't wait to vote for it: In thrall to Ted Kennedy's legacy and desirous of keeping the "Kennedy seat," talk about entitlement, she campaigns with Vicki Kennedy to make her case.
So, let's say Martha Coakley pulls it out of the bag. Then what?
Well, at the same time Friday that the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee was pleading with me to send money to help get Martha Coakley elected, I received a call from U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar's (D-MN) fundraiser.
Now, Amy is a longtime and dear personal friend: A law school classmate of my husband's, we have sent money to Amy since her first run for office back in the 90's. So, when Amy decided to run for the U.S. Senate, I took it upon myself to introduce her to then Senator Obama's donor-world: the world of big-money, progressive Chicago Democrats. The dividends (for her) have paid off ever since.
But what about the dividends for me, for the rest of the women of Chicago, for the women of Minnesota, for the women of the rest of America?
Talk about the bag. Looks to me like we've all been left, holding the bag.
The reason for the formation of Emily's List, say, or of other women's organizations that raise money and work to elect pro-choice, Democratic women candidates, was crystal clear: It was to increase the number of Democratic women in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, so that these women electeds would do what the Democratic men had failed to do: make the American world an equal one.
We were highly motivated; we worked really hard; we had a great interest in helping the interested women among us achieve this opportunity to serve--in order to serve our interests.
Instead, we find them serving their own.
As I've previously written in these pages, in lock step with their male colleagues, the 13 Democratic women U.S. Senators voted for a health care reform bill that, tragically, takes millions of American women back to pre-Roe v. Wade days, i.e., to daily life in which they will, odds are, be unable to obtain an abortion, in their very own state.
As to the Democratic women Members of the House of Representatives, well, yes, a group is fighting very hard to beat back the Stupak Amendment (talk about pre-Roe!), but their leader, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, birthed Stupak in the first place. Talk about failing to serve the interests of women.
You're not my heroes anymore.
Your elections excited me. Your elections motivated me to (keep) helping you, because I believed that your election meant I would have representatives of me, fighting for me.
Well, as B.B. King would say: "The thrill is gone."
Don't come to me saying you represent me; don't come to me saying that I owe you my financial support; don't come to me saying that you are the defender of my rights; don't come to me saying you matter to women, or worse yet, for women.
For, right now, you don't.
So, until further notice, my phone is on voice mail; my checkbook is closed; my e-mail contact list doesn't include you; my living room chairs are empty of women donors; and my speeches for you won't get written.
B. B. continues: "The thrill is gone away for good."
Is it?
That's up to you.
On this day of all days, on the day when we honor the work of a man assassinated for standing up and acting on his belief in equal rights, the least you can do is:
On this day, of all days:
I close as B.B. closed: "I'm free, free now; I'm free from your spell, and now that it's over, all I can do is wish you well."
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I guess what was most interesting about your article is what was missing from it. You say you are a Chicago-bred organizer and woman activist who has been a champion for women candidates. Even leading women candidates in other states to the drinking well of Obama's campaign money because you believed they shared your progressive agenda. You've washed your hands of Martha and those women senators who are all falling in line with the men. Yet, right in your own backyard of Illinois, there is a woman running for U.S. Senate at this very moment who also shares your progressive stance on issues especially important to women, but there was nary a mention of her in your article. Cheryle Jackson, has loudly spoken out about Stupek-Pitts and has loudly protested the ills that are in the Health care bill, and more importantly she has quietly been a champion of women and everyday people when she was just simply working behind the scenes and not running for public office. Cheryle Jackson, could desperately use your level of support that you purport to have or used to have for women candidates who would truly be a voice on Capitol Hill for us.
I live in CA and have supported and voted for Barbara Boxer for years. Her contribution to the language in the so called abortion compromise in the senate version of the HC Bill was my breaking point. Coupled with her insulting justification for it - "well - if both the right and the left are unhappy with it - it must be okay" - was the final straw,
Dems are pro-choice in rhetoric only. With pro-choice women capitulating like this - exactly how afraid of Bart Stupak am I suppose to be?
We need more people like Dean, Grayson, Franken, Warren, Skelton, Whitehouse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyuxfHvdrGw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyuxfHvdrGw
Maybe if you had not idolized people. Maybe if you analyzed what has been going on through a wider spectrum.
This is the disillusion that the GOP wants. We have become a nation of whiners that want instant gratification. The GOP understands how to play that. TeaPartier know all about whining. Watch CSPAN? Isn't whining just about all that some members of our government are good for?
While you are "remembering" MLKJr and his service to civil rights remember that he worked on it a lot longer than the Congress has been working on a health care bill. He wasn't part of the government; he was a minister, a community organizer. He didn't sit on his tail and whine at the president. He actually *did* things to promote his cause. In LBJ he had a sympathetic ear. LBJ had a super-majority in Congress and yet, truthfully, he only was able to pass what he passed because of MLK's death. That broke the tide.
Suffrage took over 80 years. Slavery longer than that. Healthcare has been given only 50 years?
Really?
Before you and the other whiners try to climb on a high horse, ask yourself the truth. Are you willing to be the MLK of healthcare or "women's issues?" Does gay marriage mean that much to you? Are you, like Rep John Lewis, willing to be beaten for your beliefs?
Would you become a martyr to your cause?
Have you spoken out about the loss of our other freedoms? They are related. You won't keep your right to choose in a country that has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners.
You won't keep your right to choose when you support placing your neighbor in a cage for consuming a different color plant than you do.
It's the same issue ladies. Figure it out.
To all disgruntled progressives: keep your shirt on. Push like crazy for progressive candidates in the primaries. Then, and this is key, whether the progressives make the Democratic ticket or not, work like crazy to elect Democrats. Democrats may be disappointing, but Republicans will be horrific. And if you don't work to elect a Democrat, you get a Republican.
When pharma doesn't get what they want, the money dries up.
When liberals and progressives don't get what they were promised by corporate Democrats, they work harder, give more money and drag friends to the polls.
And who gets the legistion they want? Take a look at the failed Drug Reimportation amendment.
Undying loyalty does not get respect. If your support is unconditional, you will be taken for granted.
But when the decidedly bad at goverment GOP have the reigns? That's another story. I've grown cynical. It's all about the money Lebowski.
Assertions that we have to stick with Democrats because Republicans are worse is false. These lesser of two evil arguments will not hold the base together.
In some ways I wish the Republicans were still in power because then it would still be their fault for all the economic injustice being inflicted upon the country. Conservatives were smart enough to grab as much money as they can before they lost power and then pull out of the market so the Democrats were left cleaning up the mess. They knew Democrats couldn't hold it together and would once again lose their gains two and four years later to the short memories of the public and the hypocrisy that is movement conservatism.
Where is the outrage at Scott Brown's laughter as one of his thug supporters jokes about shoving a curling iron up Coakley's butt?
There is no tidal wave of outrage, but just a ripple. This kind of behavior is 'normal'. Its accepted. Even glossed over, minimized.
No longer. I have had enough of women's issues being thrown under the bus, and I sense I am far from alone. Women are waking up to this persistent but insidius inequality that still lags eons behind race equality.
This is why Coakley does not deserve the Senate seat.