My support for Hillary was never based on her being a woman, it was based on my belief she was the most qualified for the job, good on most issues and had the clout in Washington to push her agenda through even a hostile Congress. Plus, I believed that even though not great on crime issues, she was as good as the others and the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

Joe Biden has been good for women's rights. What they say in my interview is true. He's been  bad on crime issues which is why I opposed his nomination so strongly. But bad as he has been, McCain and Republicans, particularly those in Congress, are far, far worse.  

No Democratic candidate this year, except Kucinich who had no chance of winning, is good on crime issues. They aren't even particularly well informed. I'm not talking about protecting the rights of the innocent accused, everybody is for that. I'm talking about protecting the constitutional rights of everyone accused of crime. Biden has been good at funding prevention but terrible in his draconian crime bills that he pushes year after year. He's all about furthering the interests of law enforcement. Obama and Hillary were better than him, but I didn't like that for a while, Obama was painted as a liberal on crime issues when he's no different or better than the others.

With the primaries over, it's about who will cause the most damage, and that's McCain and the Republicans. So I'm happy to join forces with women's rights groups on this one.

And with the general election at hand, I no longer believe the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. I'm ready to buy that pig in a poke and take a chance on the candidate with the better position on most issues than the candidate with the worst position on issues. That's McCain.

I'm angry but not outraged anymore.  I've supported plenty of candidates that haven't won before.

I am outraged over the unequal treatment of women, not only in politics but in the workplace in general.  It makes me even sicker to see other women supporting inequality between men and women in the workplace -- like, for some reason, women deserve to be treated differently (either worse or better).  "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," like my mother always used to say.  ;-)

I'm not a woman, so nobody has been lecturing me about how I should vote.

Why aren't Hillary's male voters being actively pressured to vote for Obama?

Probably, 7-9 MILLION MEN voted for Hillary. Have the MSM pundit class, and the blogosphere, assumed that ALL of them will just automatically vote for Obama?

That's a stunning assumption, given that WILL BOWER (a dude) has been out there giving numerous TV interviews as a prime spokesMAN for PUMA and Just Say No Deal.

Perhaps if I'd been present for the in-person excitement and energy of convention I'd be on the Obama bandwagon now

But don't underestimate the role of mainstream progressive blogs as Progressive counterweight to  Drudge & talk radio.

And in that sense, it makes an awful lot of sense to use the blogs strategically. To frame our debate. And they aren't usually great let alone perfect, but they at least offer SOMETHING to occupy mind-share alongside Drudge & Rush.

I think dissent on progressive blogs is good. And I think they should also be a tool to hold our Dem leaders' feet to the fire. But I like to see that in journals or off to the side. Still heavily trafficked by posters but leaving the bulk of the main page for pro-liberal messaging the same way Drudge does.

I think that's what a lot of people here miss when they criticize the usual cast of Dem blogs.

Don't get me wrong, if I had a dime for paragraph of drivel written on progressive blogs, I'd probably be a republican.

If she proves to be tough, smart, and sympathetic, I think she'll get votes from both women and men.  If she wilts in the spotlight or reveals herself as an incompetent idiot, then she quickly becomes McCain's Folly.

I just want them to show me that they are going to live up to their promises.

...the Democrats (and by that, I mean Obama) have made more promises than they can keep. Well, they will keep them, but they just won't act on them.

Why? Some of them are just so vague that they will backtrack on them, while others are too costly or difficult to achieve that Congress will be locked in disagreements that end up with compromises.

I just hate that they make compromises so easily. They made compromises on two core issues I care about: health care (SCHIP) and privacy rights (FISA). I expect that with a Dem. majority, a hypothetical Pres. Obama will increasingly be compromising legislation to stay in the center, or worse, right-of-center as he launches his re-election bid. A Dem-led Congress and a McCain administration will be a repeat of the last two years.

It's been a DIFFERENT story for women. Since the primaries began, we have had women being bulled by a lot of blogger boyz (and some gals) to vote for a candidate other than the woman.

There is NO internal logic, or rough justice to this latter scenario. One demographic group (especially a dominant one) has NO RIGHT to tell another demographic group (especially an historically subordinate group) what the hell to do with their vote.

It is NOT OK with me at all.

btw. These are the kind of women who will receive the approval of the author who recently wrote the open letter to Hillary supporters here. Women who refuse to look back at all the sexism and bias they witnessed against Hillary and all women during this long primary season. Women who remain in denial instead of leading the good fight.

"Sad" just can't express this situation America's women still find themselves. And With leadership like this they won't go anywere soon. Certainly not in the White House. No matter how competent, no matter how smart ... woman had to play second fiddle to the man who was picked by the party to be Dem candidate for Pres. The first woman in the oval office will most likely be a Republican President. I always thought that anyway.

btw. I am also very sad to read when even professional women say that women's rights are not on the top of their list. Well, don't expect to EVER get a presidential foot into the White House with that kind of attitude.

The wishful thinking re Obama/Biden and women's rights really is depressing. How much more in denial can people be?

Dr Molly, if you plan to vote for McCain, and if he wins, it would be nice if he won by a single vote cast in your state and your state's electoral votes gave him the majority in the Electoral College. Wouldn't you be proud then?

And why shouldn't I expect Barack to "sell me"?  I want him to ask for my vote.  I don't think there is anything wrong with that.  Other candidates have asked for my vote, including Hillary.  

It's about us, our sisters, our daughters, and our granddaughters.  It's about all the women in our country, and even more so, in the many nations in this world where people are even more unenlightened about the equality of the sexes.

It's about equal pay for equal work.  It's about respect for our hard work, our brains, our many accomplishments.  It's about the jobs and the promotions that have gone to some guy less qualified than ourselves.  It's about women who have been fired from the jobs so some Ole Boys' Network up-and-comer male could be given her position.  It's about the common courtesy that would allow us to be judged on our merits, not on our bust size, the higher pitch (read:shrillness) of our voices, or the regularity of our facial features.  

And it's about some of the even more subtle and insidious messages that are ingrained in our culture: e.g., the research that has show that when a man and a woman make the exact same arguments in front of a group, using the exact same body language and intonation, the man's points will be received more positively than the woman's, both by the males AND the females in the audience.

It's about some of us standing up and say, "Enough.  I've had it.  The world may take a whole lot longer to change, but this is it for me.  This is where I draw the line and make my stand.  And if you don't like it -- tough."

All Obama had to do was ask his supporters a similiar question, what was more important to them, defeating Clinton or making the lives of Americans better?

Because he is unable to do that, he sends a message to me that the people motivated by Clinton hatred mean more to him than I do.

This has nothing to do with the primary.  The primary is over.

Him selling himself to me would have been easy.  What I think is important is perfectly reasonable.  He didn't have to make her VP, he didn't have to tell Olbermann off.  He didn't have to lose face.  All he had to do was challenge his supporters to be better dems as Clinton challenged hers.

He totally failed in that regard.

Women are taking it too personally?  We shouldn't want to be sold?  Funny, then we must be the only group in the universe that's not allowed to push for our issues.

Frankly, over the last two cycles our presidential candidates have gone out of their way to "sell" themselves to men.  There is a reason John Kerry was promoted so heavily and 2004 turned into a referendum on military experience with both candidates trying to "out-man" the other so to speak.  That was because most of the targeted demos were men.

Well, now the targets are women.  But yet we shouldn't expect the same treatment?  I mean Kerry was walking around looking like Elmer Fudd in 2004 in an attempt to sell himself to voters.  (And let's not even think about GWB and his codpiece.)

Whether you realize it or not, that attitude is just demeaning to a lot of people of both genders - because men also voted for Clinton; she didn't get 18 million votes just from women.

No one who has not felt the sting of sexism, who has not been overlooked, passed over, made to work harder for less pay, been ogled and snickered at, treated like a maid or a servant, had her opinions and ideas laughed at or trivialized has no right to tell anyone not to take sexism personally.  It's not taking it personally that allows it to continue.

It is not victimizing someone to be able to see and acknowledge that she was subject to sexist treatment - from all quarters.  Racism was off the table, verboten, but sexism?  It was hardy-har-har time on the networks, on the blogs and even from the candidates.  People treated Hillary like she was a joke.

Well, not funny.  Barack Obama has no idea how many millions of votes he could have earned had he only, just once, taken someone in the media to task for their blatant sexism, and how much more trust and credibility he would now have on issues that matter to women.

It's about trust.  Trust has to be earned.

I will do it out of respect for her and continue to let the DNC and the media know how I feel about the way she was treated.