With Hillary Clinton on the team, the Democrats can't lose in November

From bitter experience, I know what it is like to put up with sexual harrasment at work, misogynists who constantly belittle and undermine my professional capacity, and the complicity of women and men in making excuses for the abusers rather than rallying to support the abused. Even though Hilary Clinton's stands on a number of issues are not ones I could embrace (nor are some of Obama's for that matter--my politics are far to the left of both) I was more than ready to vote for her if she had emerged as the Democratic nominee. So I join with Katha Pollitt at The Nation, and others in thanking her for having the courage and the fortitude to fight on, in spite of all the ugly, misogynist and hateful crap that was flung her way:

"There's another reason to be grateful to her. Clinton's run has put to rest the myth that we are living in a postfeminist wonderland in which all that stands in women's path is women themselves. Like a magnet--was it the pantsuit?--Clinton drew out the nation's misogyny in all its jeering glory and put it where we could all get a good look at it. "Iron my shirt" hecklers. Wearers of Bros Over Hos T-shirts and buyers of Hillary nutcrackers. Fans of the Citizens United Not Timid website (check the acronym). Vats of sexist nastiness splattered across the Comments section of hundreds of blogs and websites. It's as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.

As for the real pundits, thank you, Hillary, for showing us the snickering belittling of women that passes for media commentary: Rush Limbaugh, no Adonis, wondering out loud if "the country" was ready to watch a woman age in the White House; Chris Matthews, Don Imus and Tucker Carlson with their litany of insults--she-devil, Satan, witch, Antichrist, Lady Macbeth. NPR's Ken Rudin compared her to Glenn Close's indestructible bunny-boiler character in Fatal Attraction. And surely a special prize goes to Keith Olbermann for his indignant, hysterical bombast after Clinton's ham-handed reference to RFK's assassination. Rarely has men's terror of women with more brains than a Bratz doll been on such public display. And, of course, men were what we mostly saw up there on the small screen, yakking and blathering away.

It wasn't just men, though. Thank you, Hillary, for letting us get a good look at female sexism: the catty fashionistas and Style page dingbats obsessing over her clothes, her hair, her weight, her cleavage, her laugh. Air America's Randi Rhodes calling her a "big fucking whore," Maureen Dowd offering up her twice-weekly dose of vinegar and dozens of women writers musing prettily about why they and their friends all hate Hillary. Could it be they're jealous? Not, as novelist Mary Gordon has suggested, of Hillary's bagging of sexy Bill (yuck) but of her unsinkable ambition and drive. Hillary's run upset the carefully balanced apple cart of trade-off and resignation and semi-suppressed frustration that is how women of the professional class accommodate to patriarchy lite."

We are going to have to put up with a lot more yammering about what everyone "should" do in the next week, but I'm looking forward to bringing it to John McCain and the failed, discredited, divided Republican party. We cannot afford to let McCain win. I'm sure that Hillary Clinton will bring her formidable skills to that task, and that she will play an important role in shaping the political agenda of the next four years.

And while we're at it, let's throw out that slimeball Norm Coleman and elect Jack Nelson-Pallmayer, a candidate whose stands on the issues I really can endorse, and who will be a worthy successor of Paul Wellstone in the Senate.