Special treatment

dr. elsewhere will no longer write for this blog. Neither will she be allowed to comment. She crossed a line when, in a now-deleted comment, she accused Hillary Clinton of somehow being the true author of Ferraro's unfortunate statement. As though any candidate would want a public-relations nightmare!

I never liked Ferraro or her shady husband. Even so, let's take a look at her actual words:

I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against. For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Well, the first paragraph sure makes a lot of sense. As for the second -- it is absurd to argue that being black makes running for office any easier. (Also, Ferraro should have used the subjunctive.)

That said, the data indicate that women do have a greater disadvantage:

By contrast, 13 percent of voters said they would be less likely to support a woman and 6 percent said they would be less likely to support a black candidate

The Washington Post/ABC News pollsters could measure only the bigotries that respondents would admit. What about unspoken biases? Do they do more political violence to women than to black men?

History provides an obvious answer. How many black males have held congressional seats? How many females? How many cities have had black mayors? How many have had female mayors?

To repeat a point made previously, here and elsewhere: You can buy a doll of Hillary dressed as a Dominatrix, yet no-one would dare to sell a figurine of Barack dressed as a minstrel.

("But you can't compare..." Yes I can.)

How much of the primal, brutish hatred directed at Clinton on Kos and other liberal sites stems from gender-based antipathy? The progs routinely blast her for her allegedly "conservative" voting record, even though that record is actually very liberal. Kos knows damned well that he flat-out lied about that "darkened video" nonsense, yet he refuses to admit wrongdoing; apparently, women are unworthy of even the most deserved apology.

Each and every day, progs tell the unforgivable falsehood that Clinton wants to continue the war in Iraq, even though she has clearly stated -- and voted -- otherwise.

Progs damn Clinton for her vote on the resolution in 2002. Yet they excuse Obama for his pro-war statements at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, on which occasion he made the obscene suggestion that Bush should have sent in more troops, instead of zero troops.

If a female candidate had aligned herself with a free-trade fundamentalist like Goolsbee, the Kossacks and the DUmmies would have screamed like Banshees at a soccer match. Then there's Obama adviser Jeff Liebman, who spreads Cato Institute/Bush fabrications about Social Security:

He has supported partial privatization of the government-run retirement system, an idea that's anathema to many Democrats and bears a similarity to a proposal for personal investment accounts that Bush promoted, then dropped in 2005.

Imagine the prog uproar if Hillary Clinton had put a guy like that on her team.

Clinton was unfairly accused of "endorsing" John McCain after she made what I consider a valid point: The general electorate will probably conclude that McCain has more experience on national security issues than does Obama -- who remains terribly green, in the bad old sense of the term "green."

Progs stupidly accused Clinton of endorsing the right-wing "Obama-the-Muslim" smear, even though she called it a smear.

And that's what we've heard from the left. Few would argue that the right's antipathy toward Clinton derives in large part from her sex.

In short and in sum: I think Ferraro gave voice to the frustrations felt by many within the Clinton campaign. Once she found herself in political quicksand, her struggles to free herself only mired her further.

I agree that Obama has received special treatment, and that Hillary Clinton has been on the reserving end of a smear campaign. Ferraro went wrong when she stated that Obama's favorable treatment stems from his African-American heritage. In my opinion, Obama receives favorable treatment because he owns a penis. He is the only male standing between Hillary Clinton and the nomination.

Ferraro was certainly right in her most recent statement:

They [the Obama team] have played the race card time after time after time.

Indeed they have, as I have demonstrated in previous posts. Obama's flacks accused Bill Clinton of making a "racist" reference to Jesse Jackson Sr. after the South Carolina primary, even though Jackson himself saw no racism in those words. Moreover, Obama aide Jesse Jackson Jr. (whom I like much less than I like his father) first injected race into the campaign with that disingenuous dust-up involving an innocent and accurate statement about King, LBJ and civil rights legislation.

Even Josh Marshall has now bought into the lie that Clinton's team has "injected race" into the race. Bullshit. What could Clinton hope to gain by doing so? Not so long ago (as most now forget), a near-majority of black voters favored her over Obama. Why on earth would she want to alienate that voting block?

To what degree is Obama cognizant of -- or directing -- the anti-Clinton smear campaign? That's the haunting question. If he is the mastermind, if he has stayed aloof while surrogates worked their dirty numbers, then he has out-Roved Rove and has proven himself the most Machiavellian Democrat to run for national office since Johnson. If he is not the mastermind, then his refusal to castigate the Kossacks and all the other filthy, lying prog hate-mongers is tantamount to endorsement of their scurrilous tactics.

All of which forces me to ask a very personal, and very troubling question.

I voted for Obama, despite misgivings. Did race affect that decision?

Social Security remains the "third rail" issue in this household, since my brother and I grew up on survivor's benefits after the death of our father. I would scream bloody murder at any other candidate who allied himself with Jeff Liebman's position, as Obama has explicitly done.

Would I ever allow a white candidate to touch that third rail? Why has an endorsement of Clinton never seemed like an option?

Hm. Got some thinking to do.