Letters to the Editor
David L.
Published Letters: 224 Editor's Choice: 9
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I'm with Lind on this one...
[Read the article: Relax, liberals. You've already won]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And while I will say at first this article seems self-serving and pointless...when you do look at just the facts as they stand, they do all seem to make more sense now.
For example, I had completely forgotten about the lame-ass attempts early in the 2nd. Bush Term to ditch Social Security as we know it, with a Republican-dominated Congress willing to rubber-stamp it...until a massive groundswell of grass-roots opposition basically killed it...this along with an unpopular war and misplaced priorities by Congress helped crush the Republican majority in 2006.
I will disagree with Lind on the counts...I dunno about McCain appointments and the Supreme Court NOT overturning Roe v. Wade in the next 4 years, assuming McCain wins...that's a stretch, but I think such a landmark decision to reverse nearly 40 years of precedents would create an uprising by moderates and liberals that we haven't seen in decades, politically speaking. So if it does happen, watch the mayhem ensue.
I think the one thing that Lind left out that would bolster his arguement further is that the deepening recession is making everyone at all levels and political persuasions re-evaluate just what our govt. is suppose to do. Cultural things that used to matter greatly to the avg. Joe-Shmoe voter (gay marriage, the unfettered right to own assault rifles, etc.) seem less important when you don't have a freakin' job due to it being outsourced to some sweat-shop factory in Taiwan. The avg. Joe doesn't care when a Republican hack says that this is just the way a capitalist economy works...he or she is just going to know that they can't pay the bills and can't eat...and when the govt. gives the avg. person the "high hat" in that manner, that person is going to decide in an election year to vote a different way.
Look at your history...FDR in 1932 is a perfect example of this. Hoover before him basically said that the govt. couldn't do anything to fix the Great Depression, since it was an economic crisis largely of it's own creation...and he may have been partly right, since the economy never fully recovered until WW2 started. But lofty proclamations about laisse faire economics doesn't mean shit to the avg. person on the street without a job. And they threw him out and put FDR in the White House for 4 freakin' terms! And if you want to talk about lofty "cultural war" issues that ultimate don't matter in the long run, Prohibition is the perfect example of what happens when things are going well (economically speaking) and people have nothing else better to worry about...look how it just fell by the wayside when the economy was in the tank!
Yes...the best thing to ever come about and CRUSH the right-wing was this economic downturn. Mark my words, if it gets worse (and Democrats don't fuck things up), Republicans will rue the day that they let things get out of hand so badly early on in this century.
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See, this is when Salon is at it's best...
[Read the article: The mother-daughter wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A thoughtful essay about generational differences between 2nd. and 3rd. wave feminists (sorry, I had be calling 2nd. wave 1st. wave, my bad)...
Chesler really articulated, via this mother-daughter dispute, what I've noticed going on for some time now in regards to how different life experiences affect a woman's perspective on what it means to be a feminist in the 21st. Century. My wife wouldn't call herself a feminist, but her life story is the natural extension of what 2nd.-wave feminism has acheived for women in this country. She just doesn't over-intellectualize why she is the way she is, it's just a given fact of life.
My mother, on the other hand, considers herself very much a traditional feminist of the kind we typically think of from the bra-burning 60s and 70s. But I think what's different for her is that she decided not to fully embrace that philosophy when she got married and decided to raise kids...but she did raise us (myself and my sister) to think in gender-equal terms, and we are better people because of it. So is my wife, raised kinda the same way by her upbringing.
I guess there's not really a point to this post, other than to say I'm glad that topics like this are being vetted out more on Salon now, because they ultimately mean more than whether or not Hillary or Obama gets the nomination...
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Sword-swallowing?
[Read the article: Obama's best veep choice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ewwwww...
I could have done without the carnie description of the Hillary Circus...regardless of how true it seemed over the last 6 months.
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"Some Of These Women Might Vote for McCain. Big Deal."
[Read the article: The "angry white women" problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's the name of John Dickinson's article on Slate about this precise issue. Unlike other articles mentioned in this story, John's whole point (if you assume this story of disaffected women voters is true) that based on shear mathematics alone, this unwinable audience won't play much of a role in the general election anyway.
For example, even if Hillary's 18 million "voices" we a solid block, and if 20% say they will vote for McCain, that's only about 3.6 million voters. Sounds like a lot, but once you narrow it down to those voters with this sentiment in battleground states like VA, MO, NM, etc., then this number becomes almost statistically insignificant.
And again, that's assume a lot of those folks were Democrats...which many of them weren't, and while some may have voted for Hillary now, it's impossible to tell if they STILL would have voted for her in Nov.
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Fine article...written by a DLC hack
[Read the article: Why Obama should pick Hillary Clinton as veep]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't this the same tired-ass DLC that steered the Democratic Party into Republican territory, further blurring the distinctions between the two?
Sorry, taking this article seriously is the same as drinking water from a poisoned well...