Posted on 06/08/2008 12:41:18 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Sacha Millstone is nobody's sweetie.
The Democratic insider will stand up at August's national convention and cast her vote for the candidate who suspended her bid on Saturday. And then Millstone will quit the party with which she is falling bitterly out of line.
"This isn't sour grapes. This is about the best candidate losing the nomination because she's a woman. It's the most blatant example of sexism in our society. This is about the party breaking my trust, women's trust. And that can't be fixed," she says.
Millstone hails the day in 2007 when Hillary Clinton announced she was smart enough, qualified enough and tough enough to be president.
"I had never heard those words come out of a woman's mouth and neither had anyone else," says the 49-year-old Boulder investment adviser who has spent 16 months volunteering on Clinton's national finance committee.
She pounded the pavement for 20 days in Iowa. And she has raised more than $300,000 for the campaign.
The shattering of Millstone's party loyalty came with what she deemed an all-out assault on Clinton "because she's a woman."
She winced when one biographer referred to Clinton's "thick ankles." She grumbled when NPR's political analyst likened the senator to the scorned stalker in "Fatal Attraction." And she grew incensed when talking-head Tucker Carlson said the mere sight of Clinton makes him "involuntarily cross my legs."
Millstone blames Barack Obama and party leaders for not rallying to Clinton's defense. And she slams them for trying to nudge the former first lady out of the race:
"That never would have happened if she were a man."
The final blow came last weekend, when Millstone stood in the rain protesting outside the hotel where party brass passed rules that she says threw Clinton overboard.
"First let me say that I have never been this angry in my life," she wrote in a dispatch from D.C.
There is no arguing with Millstone about whether Clinton was the most viable Democrat. She is unwavering that sexism cost her the race. Gender is the prism through which she views all things political. Any woman who doesn't, she says, is "deaf and blind."
History no doubt will have much to say about the attacks both sexist and racist that besmirched the 2008 primary race. And the party will spend years soul-searching about the jumbled rules by which it picks its nominees. Time will tell how many Clintonites ultimately flee the party.
Which brings me to Millstone's peculiar brand of identity politics and a group of feminists in the John Irving novel "The World According to Garp." In solidarity with Ellen James, a young girl whose tongue was cut off in a brutal rape, the so-called "Ellen Jamesians" cut out their tongues in symbolic protest.
Call me deaf and blind, as Millstone did more than once during our interview. But there is nothing at all feminist about quitting the party, refusing to vote Obama and threatening to back John McCain or any other candidate who opposes the values that drew devotees to Clinton in the first place.
Rather, it is the kind of hollow, self-defeating political overreaction that invokes the very stereotypes that cause women like Millstone to rise up in outrage.
Couldn’t agree with you more.... unfortunately, the Repubs haven’t done much better in the 25 years since 1983. The Israelis tried to tell us how best to deal with the islamofascists - swiftly and firmly. We didn’t listen. Now even the Israelis have forgotten, apparently. I didn’t want to believe it, but now it’s looking more and more like all our pandering and wussified responses have been about oil. How sad, and sadder still that we conservatives allowed ourselves to get sucked into this particular vacuum.
As a woman, I am SO tired of hearing this. It had nothing to do with her being a woman, it has to do with her being evil.
Find a Margaret Thatcher here and she could be voted in. These woman are nuts and sexist.
What is worse racist or sexist?
I love this, 4-8 years ago it was all the evil Rep’s fault. They can’t blame it on us.
I think it is also Clinton fatigue and fear. Once the press saw she was not a shoe in, they were free to really speak their mind in 16 years.
People were afraid to oppose them, seeing what happens to people who oppose them. That fear is now gone. AMEN
They ARE moon bats, by your very definition.
LOL! That is funny right there, I don't care who you are!
So I guess she’ll vote McCain? This is who McCain wants as a voter, I wonder who she’ll vote for downticket?
Straight D likely.
I envision a “spurnedwomen4mccain” website appearing in the near future...
Someone left a flake out in the rain...
Hillary's supporters to Obama: ''Continued scorn will not get my vote''
A vote for Mccain is a vote for Hillary, ladies!! John supports women’s rights and married a strong smart woman.
For the life of me, I don't know why so many Freepers were pulling for this commie witch.
"Stop picking on Hillary!"
She's an investment advisor and she's spending all this time on the campaigh? I wonder if her clients know she is ignoring their investments to devote so much time to Clinton?
20 DAYS IN IOWA?
16 MONTHS ON NATIONAL COMMITTEE?
And now for a note to those women who think Hillary was ripped off due to gender. When you hit the Vote button for Obama in Novemeber, you are admitting that an unqualified man is always better than a qualified woman.
many of the women that i know who voted for obama were tired of
the clintons.
She’s just the mirror image of the conservatives who won’t vote for McCain.
B.O. = selected not elected.
Don’t forget, these are Democrats we are talking about here. They want Government Socialism so bad they would do anything to do it, and that ain’t putting another Republican back in office.
Especially when they will have the first Super Majority in the Legislature in decades.
There is no possible way to compare Hillary to McAmnesty.
I find the same with the liberals I work with too. They are threatening to stay home or vote for an (R) for the first time. I told some the other day, that a vote for McCain is a vote for the most conservative dim in Nov. The laughed, but I think they are really not voting for Hussein. They don't like the possibility that he may be a muSLIME.
The sentence below from the article reminds me of the saying, "There is no fury worse than that of a scorned woman".
"First let me say that I have never been this angry in my life," she wrote in a dispatch from D.C.
Guilty!
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