DFL Feminist Caucus founder has "jumped the shark"

[dflprincess]

I'm posting this with mixed emotions. Koryne Horbal is a woman I admired for a long time and, while I'm no fan of Clinton's, I can understand her disappointment that it certainly looks like Clinton will not be the nominee. I'm also no fan of Obama's, but the time has come to bite the bullet and work together to defeat McCain. I cannot believe that a woman with the political savvy Ms Horbal has really thinks we can survive 4 more years of a Republican president - just so Hillary Clinton can run in 2012.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/president/19416774.html?location_refer=$sectionName

Feminist leader says no to Obama
By MIKE KASZUBA, Star Tribune

May 30, 2008

Though she acknowledges it is a difficult sell, Horbal said she and other feminists are promising not to vote for Barack Obama and write in Hillary Rodham Clinton's name in November if the disputed Florida and Michigan delegations are not fully seated at the Democratic National Convention and Obama becomes the presidential nominee.

"I don't care," Horbal said of the possibility that the move might cost Obama votes. She said she also would not be bothered if the write-in campaign indirectly helped elect John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. "Let McCain clean it up for four years, and then we can have Hillary run again," she said.

"This is a democracy. You cannot let two states not vote," said Horbal, who lives in Columbia Heights and first gained DFL prominence as the party's state co-chair in the late 1960s. She also served for nine years on the Democratic National Committee in the 1970s. "It's more about democracy than anything else." (No, it's really not about democracy, primaries and caucuses are party business and subject to party rules. She knows this as well as I do - probably better than I do.)

Horbal conceded that many party officials, including other feminists, were not rushing to her side. "There's just not many feminists who a backbone," said Horbal, who jokingly described herself as a "professional troublemaker."(No, it's not about backbone, it's about trying to get the country back on track.

Rosemary Rocco, a longtime DFL activist from Maple Grove, said she had joined Horbal. "We've always been asked to go along," she said of feminists. "It's one time too many. "We do 70 percent of the work, probably, and it is time -- it is time -- that you hear what we say," said Rocco. "We've had 43 men and, regardless of his color, that's who Barack Obama is.

"I'll feel sad," Rocco said of the possibility that the move could cost Democrats the White House. "But I will feel like I finally said, "No, I'm not doing it one more time.'"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Wow. That's just nuts.

I think it's commonly referred to as "cutting off your nose to spite your face." What Horbal and some of the other hard-core Hillarhoids don't seem to want to think about is that a McCain presidency will affect everybody for far longer than his four-year term, and that's because of THE F*CKING SUPREME COURT! OK, Hillary-supporting "feminists," how are you going to explain your little snit to all the women whose reproductive rights get flushed down the toilet when McCain appoints a couple more judges like Alito and Roberts?

Horbal has proved not only that she's a narrow-minded ideologue; she's also an idiot. There is no constitutional right to vote in a primary. There isn't even a constitutional requirement to have a primary. Most states didn't even have them until fairly recently; the party leaders chose the candidates and the nominee was elected at the convention. She should know better than anyone else that state parties can enact their own rules governing primaries or caucuses and the national party (DNC) can decide how the delegates are to be seated. It just drives me batshit crazy when people let their emotional attachment to some cause or candidate overrule their common sense.

[loveable liberal]

2. Divided we fall.........

Feminist, white, black, female, male, lutheran, muslim, christian.... Labels. Screw people willing to sacrifice aid to others for a GD label. I'm glad she's so willing to sacrifice others for her perspective especially when the difference between Hillary and any other politian is nothing.

[Minnesota Raindog]

3. "Professional troublemaker"? How about "Professional Asshole"?

"Let McCain clean it up for four years, and then we can have Hillary run again?" What the fuck is this woman on anyway? McCain won't be cleaning anything up. He'll be continuing the nightmare we've been living through for the past eight years--with the help of these morons. And women will be four more years behind than they were in 2008 by the time he's done. Good luck with that, ladies.

[Mnpaul]

4. Run again in four years?

Does anyone in their right mind think that voters will accept Hillary after this fiasco?

[northernsoul]

5. This is just sad.

I hope she changes her mind soon, but I don't think she's going to take many other people with her.

[Minnesota Raindog]

6. Here's another gem from this piece of crap

LTE in the Pioneer Press

http://www.twincities.com/opinion/ci_9468873

Another spoiled
male candidate

Sen. Barack Obama, with about 15 minutes of service and a lifetime of perks, now wants to be president over and above a superior candidate, and a woman, at that. Well, he won't get my vote.

I am so tired of spoiled male candidates who believe their very maleness gives them precedence. It appears that most everything Obama has done in his life is self-serving and a step upward for self. He reminds me of a small child who really needs a time-out and should be sent to his room.

I have one word for him — tiresome.

:puke: Jeri Rasmussen, Shoreview

The writer is a co-founder of the DFL Feminist Caucus.

[dflprincess]

8. Jeri Rasmussen as well?

I am truly shocked. Once upon a time I don't think Clinton would have been liberal enough for either one of these two - but I could be wrong, I didn't know them personally.

[Mister Ed]

10. "everything Obama has done in his life is self-serving and a step upward for self"?

Translation: "he's just plain uppity".

A white man who succeeds will be admired as a dynamic and ambitious individual. Change his skin to black, or his gender to female, and the admiration turns to scorn and resentment. That's what both Obama and Clinton have been up against all along. If Jeri Rasmussen doesn't see that, then she has no right to the title of "feminist".

[question everything]

7. There are five more months to November

and I hope that by then we will all put our hurts aside. Clearly Obama (but not his supporters on GDP) is making every effort to reach over to us.

On the other hand, Bush is going to leave such a mess, that the thought of a Republican dealing with this does have some appeal. But then, again, it is the Supreme Court.

[dflprincess]

9. Rumor has it that the Bonhoff supporters in the 3rd District

are also being very bad losers. Though I haven't heard that they've pulled the sexism card out (yet).

[indigo32]

11. I'm really disappointed

to see this. It's bad enough that my partner will now not vote in Nov but to see leaders voicing this as well. Damn.

[Minnesota Raindog]

12. Maybe our local Obama-hating feminists need a little reminder before they vote for McCain

Thius came from NARAL today...

No woman should have to go without basic health care.

In 1970, this fundamental belief spurred a bipartisan coalition in Congress to set up a new program for low-income Americans, called the Title X ("ten") family-planning program.

Title X provides vital services, including pap smears, mammograms, and birth control to five million women and men every year. Family-planning services prevent unintended pregnancies and thus reduce the need for abortion. By investing in preventive health care, Title X saves taxpayers money in the long run.

Now, as our country faces a health-care crisis, anti-choice ideologues in Congress are trying to deny women access to this successful and proven program.

Click here to tell your member of Congress to fight back and fully fund Title X.

Right now, pro-family-plannning lawmakers outnumber our opponents in Congress, but by the very slimmest of margins. Last year, with new pro-choice leadership in Congress, we secured the first significant increase in Title X funding since President Bush took office, but anti-choice politicians aren't giving up.

Just last year, presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and other anti-choice senators tried to deny federal funding to health centers, including Title X clinics, that use their own privately raised dollars for abortion care (they lost). And McCain has voted to terminate the program altogether!

Help us launch the counterattack. Title X needs your help in the face of an onslaught by McCain and his far-right allies.

Programs like Title X should remind us all why it's so important to elect pro-choice leaders this November to beat back these attacks on family planning and invest in programs like Title X that so many women rely on.

Title X has been the cornerstone of our nation's family-planning services for nearly 40 years. By providing vital care, such as cancer screenings and STD treatment, it has undoubtedly saved lives. Let's return the favor by saving Title X. Click here to send a letter to your member of Congress today.

Thank you so much for all you do.

My best,

Nancy Keenan
President, NARAL Pro-Choice America

[northernsoul]

15. Not to mention McCain's treatment of the women in his life

Dumped wife #1 for getting too fat.

Called wife #2 the c-word in public.

A McCain presidency will be a disaster for all of humanity, but for women in particular.

[Minnesota Raindog]

16. You mean this one?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-%20McCain-callously-left-behind.html

McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.

But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons

had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

[dflprincess]

13. I read that Gloria Steinem has endorsed Obama

and took a swipe at feminists who would write in Clinton. No indication that she was referring to these two.

[geardaddy]

14. Gloria Steinem roomed with Horbal

So, I'm guessing they're friends and Steinem might be taking a swipe directly at her.

[Echotrail]

17. HRC isn't a woman I'd go to the mat for.

She's too pro-war, too cozy with the power brokers, and she's already been in the White House. We need new leadership, not just Bushboys and Clintonistas. (Terry McCauliffe back in the WH - no f-ing way! He's nuts.)

This is a selfish, backward-thinking sentiment and I hope they can get over their immediate dissappointment and take a realistic view of what it would mean to get McBush, for their daughters if not for themselves.

Gee, what if all the blacks in the country responded this way every time they got the choice between old white asshole A and old white bastard B?

[lojasmo]

18. She can vote for the guy who called his wife a

cnut, and will wipe Roe v. Wade out of existence.

Fucking stupid.

[PleaseSayItAintSo]

19. I agree.

I've tried to stay out of this discussion. I've really, really tried.

While I'm monitoring this thread, I'm listening to the Reading Clerk of the United States House of Representatives detailing Rep Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment on the floor.

I defy any Democrat to tell me they will be better off under President John S McCain. Any Democrat who makes that argument is, in my book, not a Democrat.

[one mean sheath]

20. this makes me want to rip out my hair.

or would if i had hair.

i cannot understand "feminists" who would rather MCCAIN be elected if they can't have hillary. the man who started his campaign promising an audience of fundies that he'd work to outlaw all forms of abortion if he were elected. yeah, that'll clean up real good. high five.

and you won't vote for obama primarily because he's a man. that's cute, and doesn't perpetuate sexism at all. it goes both ways, kids.