If you read any of my posts you'll see that I've never claimed that Hillary has made racist comments. The issues are much more complicated than a he-said/she-said argument.

Again, it is disingenuous to ignore that Hillary supporters here, many who call themselves feminists, have tried to make the argument that blacks are voting for Obama simply because he is black and that as a result, their votes should not be taken seriously. That is racism. Just like it is sexism if someone takes white women's votes for granted.

Hilary's strategy before the South Carolina primary was to try to appeal to black voters in general and black women specifically, hoping to capitalize on Bill's popularity in the black community. After she lost South Carolina, badly, the strategy shifted and now she is emphasizing her appeal to Latino and Latina and white, and working class voters. At the same time, her Mark Penn, her chief campaign strategist is aggressively targeting the superdelegates from these predominantly black states. He has sent press releases, has given interviews and petitioned the DNC and the super-delegates hoping to convince them that a) the black voters were not voting the way they did because they knew what was best for America, but instead that they were voting because of race and b) (the completely illogical and unfounded argument,) that the candidate who takes the win in a small number of designated states is more politically viable than the candidate who wins all of the other ones, even if he has the delegate and popular majority . Yes. It is politically savvy. But that doesn't make it any less of (among other things) a racist strategy.

My original point still stands: that if you are supporting Hillary because of your feminist principles, then the ease with which she wants to dismiss the voices and votes of female voters in states that overwhelmingly went for Obama, should be alarming to you.

In the present context, it is condescending and sexist and makes me think that you are that rampant sexist, dataguyx, who always calls women "Hon." Your link is so absurd that I will reply no more to you. I don't want to waste my time.

I'm a different anonymous, but I have to say here that it makes me angry that no man is ever called on using his wife's energy, talent, looks, name, money, family connections, etc. etc. to achieve political office. John McCain would unlikely be where he is today if he hadn't divorced one wife to marry his current one. Ditto any man in Congress. Does anyone think that the governor of Arkansas, if he had married Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones instead, would have also been the President of the United States? I remember when some of us watched Hillary on the Sixty Minutes interview where she said she wasn't some little Tammie Wynette and we all fell in love with her. Half of our admiration of him (or more) was for marrying a woman as smart or smarter than he was.

It makes me mad that some women think that of all people Hillary Clinton's only power is derived from her husband. Until people start making the same argument about men....I mean how far would Obama be in this race if not for Michelle the "closer" speaking in a human way to audiences and building sympathy for her husband? No one seems to blink twice at the fact that from now on she will receive less respect for her career because she is "only" a wife. We need new paradigms for women in power. Behind every great woman, there is a self-effacing man....

Of course Bill hasn't done himself many favors in this election by hogging the limelight and possibly losing Hillary voters over his Jesse Jackson comments. Hillary, you deserve better. All of us do.

My apologies if I misunderstood you. Could you then provide a quote from Mark Penn that shows that he is using a "racist" strategy? A strategy that recognizes the reality of demographics is not by its nature racist. Of course black women, just as white women, have every right to choose the candidate of their choice. In point of fact, people even have the right to vote for a woman because she is a woman or an African American because he is an African American. I would never cast my own vote on that basis, but I have to concede that other people may cast their votes for a multitude of reasons.

Amen to everything you say. However, if you post again, do suppose you could designate yourself Anonymous X or something. It is getting awfully anonymous in this thread and my poor old ADD self is getting confused.

Thank you.

So you fell in love with Hillary when she appeared on TV and criticized and belittled women like Tammy Wynette? And then you supported her when she defended Bill against his "tramps" (her word choice)?

Guess sisterhood really is powerful. Good luck with that!

Here are two quotes that continued to prove it to me. I don't expect that they will prove it to you, as I assume we are making our determinations and judgments based on two different sets of life and intellectual experiences. Let me also reiterate that there it is not inherently contradictory that Mark Penn could be making a geographic argument and a racist argument at the same time; the geographic argument is made all the more troubling because is is so illogical and unfounded . Finally, my point for the fourth, and final, time is not that Mark Penn is a racist, nor is it that people should not be able to vote however their conscience guides them. It is that feminists should be criticizing Hillary's campaign for on the one hand claiming to advance feminism and on the other hand being willing to override the votes of women who happen to live in politically inconvenient states.

Mark Penn from a press release on February 11th:

"Sen. Obama will have to fall back on core Democratic voters to stay competitive with McCain. But this is where Hillary has already built a powerful base, with overwhelming support among women, Latino voters, and other stalwarts of the Democratic Party."

-- the implication here, for me, is that African Americans are not to be considered "stalwarts" of the Democratic Party

"The GOP will not be able to increase her negatives in a way they can with an untested candidate. And Hillary's core voters -- working class, women, Latinos, Catholics -- are exactly the voters that comprise the key swing voters the party has needed in the past to win."

-- again, black voters are not key to the party winning and therefore should be discounted.

You didn't ask for it, but there is a lot of discontent among black super-delegates over the way that race is being used Hillary's campaign. Here's a link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4295602&page=1

Again, I don't think this will prove my point to you, but at least you are aware of some of the issues and discontent that many African Americans have with Hillary's campaign.

I'm sorry. I'd continue, but it is 12:30AM on the east coast and I have to work tomorrow.