Although her obit will still read, "made history as first woman VP nominee" it also will read, "tainted with scandal over her husband's business dealings and later raised ire by suggesting Obama was unqualified." Folks, look to Mondale and Gore as your role models.

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And now that this is almost over, I can finally say something else I was always forgetting to say because I was ranting about something else:

I think it remains to be seen whether the Republican Party as a whole is ready to be lead by a woman. Yes, she's on the ticket, but I haven't seen any defense of her that doesn't include some reference to her looks or her "feistyness," even if the person does start out saying "Oh I think she could shake things up in Washington, blah blah" (shut up, read about her record in Alaska. :) I think because she isn't the brightest crayon in the box, they were willing to have her be the figurehead of the party because they assumed that there would be someone behind her pulling the strings, (see Bush/Cheney). The sexist way they've handled her throughout this campaign leaves me unconvinced that they're okay with her leading because she isn't a liberal because if you trust someone to lead, you trust them to do an interview without a chaperone, you let them take questions from the press, etc. Now there's the pinning of the campaign's failures on here "going rogue." I think if she's shown herself to be a true leader, even as a conservative, they'd have still been threatened by her, and I think that's why a more experienced woman wasn't chosen. What they didn't count on is the fact that even though she isn't that smart, she still isn't content to just be a puppet.

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[mediamatters.org]

I think Michelle was more referring to how she had to change up her modus operandi so her husband could run for POTUS. Yes it's easy to read into it a dig about HRC but I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt as I have to so many other politicians and their wives, mothers, etc.

MICHELLE OBAMA: That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can't run your own house, you certainly can't run the White House. So, so we've adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he's traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I'm home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don't care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that's why we're doing this. We're in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.

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That said, unfortunate statements came out of the Clinton campaign as well. Statements that I was not happy with.

It's politics.

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I still harbor a bit of anger about the primaries, because the sexism was palpable. And yes, the campaign was not run perfectly. Nor was Obama's.

PS, love your avatar!!

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For an additional detailed autopsy on the campaign, you can read the following: The Front-Runner's Fall

[www.theatlantic.com]

Obama's campaign was managed well enough to get the nomination.

Yes the sexism was palpabe but so were the inefficiencies of Hillary's team.

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Unless someone knows otherwise....

smile.

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I would think one could both feel her campaign was run poorly AND see the sexism that was prevalent, no?

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I was making a joke about Mark Penn. Of course he's not a woman.

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I think what some people like to conveniently forget is that Summer 2007, HRC was the undisputable front runner for the nomination.

Madame President article [www.washingtonpost.com]

Her gender didn't change between the summer and Iowa.

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However, I feel that jokes like that really belittle those who believe sexism was pervasive during the campaign.

I think it's fairly evident that you and I have our biases, and that's fine. I am not going to get into an argument around which was more prevalent during the primaries (sexism/racism). Because that's moot. Sexism AND racism impacted the campaign.

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I didn't even bother formulating an opinion about who I wanted to win the nomination until January because I thought it was a given that Hillary would get it.

@Archetype: I think it's fairly evident that you and I have our biases, and that's fine. I am not going to get into an argument around which was more prevalent during the primaries (sexism/racism). Because that's moot. Sexism AND racism impacted the campaign.

I agree 100% with this, but I think the issue isn't sexism vs. racism; i think it's sexism/racism vs. strategy. And I think Hillary had a big head start and a better campaign strategist would've known how to maintain the momentum she had going in and would've developed a strategy for combating the sexism in the media as soon as it became apparent just how open and nasty people were with it. I'm not sure anyone was prepared for the amount of sexism we saw because we all expected to see racism. That's not a statement about which is worse; they're both equally terrible. But I think it could've been different if the campaign was not only managed better in terms of not taking the nomination for granted, but also found a way to counteract the sexism. And I think we still aren't sure what exactly could've been done differently; we all agreed a sexism speech wouldn've have been received as well as Obama's race speech for various reasons.

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That said, it was an interesting piece.

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