OBAMA E AS MULHERES

Women vs. Women
We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?

By Charlotte Allen (...)http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902992.html

Take Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign. By all measures, she has run one of the worst -- and, yes, stupidest -- presidential races in recent history, marred by every stereotypical flaw of the female sex. As far as I'm concerned, she has proved that she can't debate -- viz. her televised one-on-one against Obama last Tuesday, which consisted largely of complaining that she had to answer questions first and putting the audience to sleep with minutiae about her health-coverage mandate. She has whined (via her aides) like the teacher's pet in grade school that the boys are ganging up on her when she's bested by male rivals. She has all but wept on the campaign trail, even though everyone knows that tears are the last refuge of losers. And she is tellingly dependent on her husband.
Then there's Clinton's largely female staff, often chosen for loyalty rather than, say, brains or political savvy. Clinton finally fired her daytime-soap-watching, self-styled "Latina queena" campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, known for burning through campaign money and for her open contempt for the "white boys" in the Clinton camp. But stupidly, she did it just in time to alienate the Hispanic voters she now desperately needs to win in Texas and Ohio to have any shot at the Democratic nomination.

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For Hillary's Campaign, It's Been a Class Struggle
By Linda HirshmanSunday http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902991.html

Maria Shriver sure has great hair. Stepping up to the microphone at a girl-power rally in Los Angeles on Feb. 3, California's first lady tossed her tawny tresses with authority and instructed Golden State women to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primary on Super Tuesday. So urgent was the matter, she said, that she had come to the rally "straight from my daughter's riding lesson."
Two days later, working-class California women, many of whom can't even afford to give their daughters health care, much less riding lessons, ignored Shriver's mane-shaking advice and voted for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton by a margin of 2 to 1, even as many of their better-off sisters fell into lockstep with the Kennedy heiress.
And there we have one of the most puzzling conundrums of the 2008 Democratic contests. Black voters of all socioeconomic classes are voting for the black candidate. Men are voting for the male candidate regardless of race or class. But even though this is also a year with the first major female presidential candidate, women are split every way they can be. They're the only voting bloc not voting their bloc.
For the Clinton campaign, this is devastating. A year ago, chief strategist Mark Penn proclaimed that the double-X factor was going to catapult his candidate all the way to the White House. Instead, the women's vote has fragmented. The only conclusion: American women still aren't strategic enough to form a meaningful political movement directed at taking power. Will they ever be?

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more : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902991.html