Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011)
Geraldine Ferraro, the U.S. representative from New York's 9th District from 1979-85 and the first woman to to run on a major party presidential ticket, losing with Walter Mondale to Reagan and Bush in 1984, has died at the age of 75:
Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former Queens congresswoman who strode onto a podium in 1984 to accept the Democratic nomination for vice president and to take her place in American history as the first woman nominated for national office by a major party, died Saturday in Boston.
She was 75 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, her family said in a statement. She died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since Monday.
"If we can do this, we can do anything," Ms. Ferraro declared on a July evening to a cheering Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. And for a moment, for the Democratic Party and for an untold number of American women, anything seemed possible: a woman occupying the second-highest office in the land, a derailing of the Republican juggernaut led by President Ronald Reagan, a President Walter F. Mondale.
I don't wish to speak ill of her, but I never much cared for her. She was never all that liberal and in fact called herself a conservative (and, at least early on, "a tough Democrat," that is a right-leaning Democrat who leaned Republican at least in terms of temperament). And she was simply appalling in her support for Hillary (and in her various attacks on Obama) during the '08 Democratic primaries, proving to be something of a racist, and ending up just embarrassing herself and being dumped from the campaign.
Still, she was a remarkable woman in many ways, and what she did was undeniably remarkable, too. It wasn't easy to be a prominent woman politician at that time, just as it still isn't, but she broke new ground by running on the national stage and, even before that, was a powerful voice on issues such as gender equity, the plight of seniors, and the environment. She was certainly conservative on a number of other issues, and her record was pretty much the record of an ideologically-fluctuating moderate from a fairly socially conservative district, but, whatever her flaws, she was one of the most significant political figures of her time.
Labels: Democrats, Geraldine Ferraro, obituaries
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
4:39 PM
8 Comments:
I'm not going to pretend I ever thought much of Ferraro, either, but what was so racist about what she said?
The simple fact of the matter is that a lot of middle-class white boys who didn't really know any black people simply assumed Obama would be a liberal leader, even though his entire history in electoral politics was composed of unseating real liberals and pushing for right-wing policies that make Ferraro look like a member of the SCLC by comparison.
Obama-supporters kept trying to pretend Obama was some kind of young Julian Bond untainted by association with well-known civil rights groups - as if that was actually a good thing!
The fact that he talked like a Reaganite didn't sway them. The fact that he voted against a 30% cap on usury (30%!) didn't sway them. The fact that he actually ran back to Washington in the middle of the campaign to save the ludicrous TARP and also went against his promises on FISA didn't stop people from insisting that only a racist could be critical of him.
So it turns out that Obama was even more right-wing than Clinton, and less experienced, even more smug and contemptuous of liberals, and a disaster for the country and the party.
Whether Clinton would have been any better is a question we'll never answer, but that's just the point - there was no known reason to prefer Obama, so why the vociferous support? Could it have been...because...his supporters were just assuming he'd be more liberal...because he was black?
Well, I think that was a lot of it. And ageism and sexism filled in the rest.
By
Avedon, at 7:13 PM
You make some good points, but I think saying that Obama was lucky to be black, and was therefore something of an affirmative action case, was rather racist.
By
Michael J.W. Stickings, at 1:35 AM
As for Obama vs. Hillary...
Obviously, we don't know that Obama is more right-wing than Hillary. But there is good reason to suspect that she would have pursued many of the same policies. Consider that Obama hired her husband's economic team as his own and that he has pursued both compromise with the Republicans and a hawkish foreign policy that are extremely Clintonian. No, Hillary isn't Bill, but she may have turned out to be just as non-progressive.
What's more, while Obama has indeed been dismissive of liberals (or, rather, progressives), he has hardly been the "disaster" you suggest he has. I've been extremely critical, as have many others, but he did get health-care reform passed. No, that wasn't as progressive as many of us had hoped, but he wasn't going to get a more progressive bill through Congress. And rescuing the country from the brink of economic apocalypse is hardly being a "disaster" for the country. There are many reasons to criticize him and his policies, but let's not overdo it.
By
Michael J.W. Stickings, at 1:49 AM
And I don't think his supporters, myself included, thought he's be more liberal just because he's black. Many of us realized he was more of an establishmentarian centrist than his reputation during the campaign suggested, but we was seen to be transformative because he appeared to be leading a movement of genuine change. He was a political leader in a way Hillary just wasn't. And that has nothing to do with race or sex. It's just the way it was.
By
Michael J.W. Stickings, at 1:51 AM
"only a racist could be critical of him."
I think the selling of that meme was a Republican scare tactic rather than any true sentiment of most Obama supporters. I don't think Michael or I are racists for being critical of his continuation of Bush policies, for example. I know a racist when I see one after two thirds of a century's practice.
Listening to the 'birthers' and the "he's a muslim" idiots and the "mau-Mau" morons and "not a real American" Huckabees, I see lots of them -- all the time.
As to the vociferous support, Bush had more of it and if I've been at times vociferous it's because GWB was a bad translation of a Greek tragedy with a hell of a huge chorus.
So if some young Liberals were looking for a real Liberal in him, it isn't any more delusional than the wall-to wall propaganda proclaiming him the most liberal liberal since liberal was invented and a handmaiden to Pol Pot and Mao Zedong -- only more liberal. Surely you remember that?
So if Republicans want to criticize anyone for portraying him as ultra-liberal, perhaps the criticism, like good manners, begins at home.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 11:46 AM
"I think the selling of that meme was a Republican scare tactic rather than any true sentiment of most Obama supporters."
No, I think the "you have to be a racist to be critical of Obama" idea was spelled out clearly in any number of ways coming from Obama's supporters and even his campaign.
Did no one really notice how effective - and how destructive - that Racist Clintons memo that was "leaked" from an Obama team member's email was?
Certainly, the Republicans have gone way overboard in portraying Obama as a liberal (or socialist!)when he is clearly right-wing, but that only works to Obama's advantage, and Obama himself worked hard to portray himself as a liberal progressive during the campaign, even sending out letters over his own signature assuring black organizations that he really really didn't support the right-wing policies he was supporting.
Nevertheless, some people saw through him. I'm not sure why some of those people preferred Hillary, but I do know that many of them recognized that he was much more like the "liberal elitist" that working-class Americans have had more than enough of. I assume that's what Hillary meant when she said that "those people" wouldn't vote for him.
By
Avedon, at 11:00 AM
"...but I think saying that Obama was lucky to be black, and was therefore something of an affirmative action case, was rather racist."
How so? A white guy who came across the way he did, and had his record, would never have been able to pull it off. He was raised by Republicans and talked like a Reaganite. Where would his support have come from?
By
Avedon, at 11:03 AM
"he has hardly been the "disaster" you suggest he has. I've been extremely critical, as have many others, but he did get health-care reform passed."
No, he didn't, he got an insurance company welfare bill passed. The tiny little changes in the bill he passed did not require a mandate, or even a huge bill, they just required the will to restrict the amount of fraud the insurance companies were allowed to perpetrate. Unfortunately, the bill doesn't really do that.
"No, that wasn't as progressive as many of us had hoped, but he wasn't going to get a more progressive bill through Congress."
I doubt that's true. If he had actually made any attempt whatsoever to pass a more liberal bill he might very well have done so. All he had to do was tell the public the truth about healthcare in America and in the rest of the world and talk about why Americans deserve something as good as the Brits or Canadians or the rest of the OECD has - and if they can do it, by god, so can we. He didn't. He acted like it was crazy to expect America to do anything really good. And he made it clear early on that he had no intention of passing anything better than exactly the bill he got.
"And rescuing the country from the brink of economic apocalypse is hardly being a "disaster" for the country"
He most emphatically did not rescue the country from the brink of economic apocalypse; he all but engineered it. TARP should have died in the water and it would have if he hadn't rescued it. He made no attempt to get a bigger stimulus and most of what he did get was solely intended to save the banks from having to reorganize, accept bankruptcies, and clean up their act. Congress forced him to accept money to help cramdown and create jobs and so far he has resisted using it.
No doubt things would be worse if there had been no stimulus at all, but he rescued the banks, not the American economy, and the way he did it has hurt the economy for the long term a great deal more than you seem to realize. The last thing that should have happened was saving the banks.
By
Avedon, at 11:15 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home