Franklin Roosevelt: 20 years national political executive experience

Jimmy Carter: 20 years political and executive experience

Bill Clinton: 20 years executive and national political experience

George W. Bush: 6 years executive political experience

Barack Obama: 12 years political experience, none executive

uh, wow bob, let me know what school u went to so my kids don’t go there. Perhaps you have a point with regards to our current president, but all your other examples are just plain wrong. Please cease and desist with this incredible distortion of history. And for god’s sake, go read a book.

Thanks for your historical perspective.

I am completely uncomfortable with equations such as this, especially when the point is assign a relative value to whose plight is worse as if the worse plight is a more noble cause. Seems to me that injustice is still injustice.

More women are enslaved today than men…does that equate for you?

More asians are enslaved today than blacks…does that equate for you?

The simple fact is that there are injustices and inequities of all types all over the world, many of them gender, many of them race, but all of them because they can get away with it.

My point is that all of these prejudices exist and no one is really any better or worse than the other and we should fight for equality for everyone.

You’re not wrong but Hillary didn’t become a racist overnight. Hillary became a racist because Obama’s campaign narrative made it so.

It’s probably not different than the outcome of the OJ trail…that justice had been so unfair to blacks for so long, who could forgive them for winning one when the defense was vigorous enough to give them cover.

I understand why the black community would rally behind Obama and don’t blame them except that the reason for it was faulty, contrived, calculated.

That said, I think to some extend, it ultimately works to Obama’s disadvantage because as he becomes identified as a lock to dominate the black community votes, he seems to lose white votes. This I’m sure is why he doesn’t go to Memphis for the 40th anniversary of MLK’s assassination, why he skipped Travis Smiley’s symposium, why he ducks any appearance where Jesse Jackson and/or Al Sharpton might be.

Curiously, Jesse Jackson was a regular guest of Bill Clinton, which is not to say that Jesse Jackson is some kind of barometer but does indicate that neither Clinton will disassociate even with controversial blacks.

[You never know when your wife will wander down and what you're typing. Might as well get extra credit.]

I read all of these comments (many from obviously intelligent writers) and no one has actually mentioned that there is a relatively good way to get to the answer and cut through inherited biases:

If the question is whether racism or sexism is the more powerful force, shouldn’t we ask the people that are both black and female?

Shouldn’t the voices of our (and I mean all of our) black American women have some level of superior standing over all of us?

What the average black woman sees of this race should (in any logical debate) take some level of greater importance and be one of the first places we look.

Now here is the part that obviously supports my point (But stay with me. I am trying to be fair). Black women in America (and this is a huge generalization to be fair) see their race as a larger hurdle than their sex. They are (based on the votes and polls so far) more angry at the way Obama is being treated than they are about how Hillary is being addressed. That can mean two things:

1. Black women (for whatever reason) are incapable of making a logical judgment about what -ism is worse and more damaging and aren’t grasping reality.

or

2. They are fairly logical and their point of view is one that has to be (at least) addressed.

All I know is that Mrs. Angry Black Guy is smarter and more knowing than I am.

And, to paraphrase her words, she thinks it sucks way worse to be a black person than it does a woman.

That’s not the answer to the question, but it’s a d*mn fine Exhibit C to the summary conclusion in my book.

Where am I wrong?

Would it matter to you to know as of today Barak Obama has more experience than Lincoln, FDR, Carter, Clinton, or Bush, Jr. did when they all took the oath of office? All Lincoln did was win the Civil War and save the Union; all FDR did was get the country through the Great Depression and win WW II. Imagine what they could have accomplished had they been something other than empty suits with great speaking skills.

Funny thing about this statement…it fails to list a single accomplishment of Barack Obama and compares him to people who history has elevated as if Obama has done a single thing to merit the comparison.

Sorry…doesn’t work that way but nice try.

as for defending the notion of the campaign of personality instead of substance…it’s a deliberate choice…See the NY Times profile of David Axelrod which I would say has some depth and is very fair considering that it is a meta extension of the campaign of personality.

As for misogyny…guys rarely notice but women always notice it.

Well, let’s put aside the bullshit that obama’s campaign has “misogyny as its linchpin”…

One would expect that one would vote for whomever the democratic nominee happens to be because having McCain as President would be a total fucking disaster.

But, if you feel better by not voting for obama because you will be striking a blow for all oppressed rich white former first lady senators that got called a “whore” by Randi Rhodes, then by all means, do what you have to do.

That’ll show ‘em!

But until then, please, spare us the bullshit hyperbole vis-a-vis the obama campaign and its “linchpin” of misogyny.

(except maybe an FCC fine)

i guess you missed the part where i said deciding which is worse is foolish (maybe it was my fault. i did leave out the “don’t” in comment #7, see comment #8)

the two are different, not easily compared with one another on a single one dimentional scale of “better” vs. “worse”. which is why i don’t think there’s any point in getting into the “bigotry A is worse than bigotry B”. they’re both bad. why can’t we just oppose both whenever we see them without worrying about which is the badest? (i.e. what comment #10 says)

besides, my point is not just that comparing the badness of the two is senseless, but also that sexism and racism express themselves in different ways. and, as i said above, it seems rather obvious that sexist language is not treated nearly as serious as racist language when it comes up in the media. look at the the don imus controversy last year, for example. imus was fired for making a racist remark (i.e. “nappy headed”) not a sexist remark (i.e. “hos”) even though his remarks were both. call someone a “nigger” on tv and you’ll be fired. call someone a “bitch” and probably nothing that serious will happen to you.

once again, i am not saying that sexism is worse than racism. i’m saying when it comes to speech in the public sphere, sexist language is tolerated more than racist language.

Has she never read the letters at Salon before? It’s an MRA-infested cesspool, *especially* at Broadsheet. And that’s *after* they did away with anonymous commenting to get a handle on some of this stuff.

Oh, and libhomo? Perhaps you haven’t heard that Obama attended the same prayer meetings that you’re claiming make Clinton unacceptably fundamentalist. Not that I expect this little meme will die anytime soon.

i think the which “ism” is worse discussion is worth getting into. i don’t know if you ever can rank them like that. they’re both bad, but they’re both different problems. in some ways racism is “worse” and in some ways sexism is “worse”. who knows which one “wins” when you add all the negatives up. and, when you get down to it, who cares? bad is bad. let’s just focus on the badness of each when they emerge, like how sexist language is tolerated a lot more than other kinds of bigoted language.

i don’t think you have to be a clinton supporter to think this is a problem.

it depends on if all of the people who have decided that its Hillary or the highway can be mature and suck it up and vote for the nominee when it is Obama.

and have to wonder why, after running this campaign that uses misogyny as its linchpin, would he actually expect a substantial number of Hillary’s supporters to actually be motivated to vote for Obama. Randi Rhodes gave her own personal style to the narrative that Obama’s campaign has bee trying to say with a little more subtlety.

As for libhomo…

Also, the level of white supremacist hate from the Clinton campaign and some of its most hardcore supporters far surpasses even the level of sexism targeting Clinton. Also, there is a key difference. The sexism is not coming from the Obama campaign, while much of the racist hatred is part of a deliberate, albeit foolish, campaign strategy by the Clintons.

Clearly here is a vision of unity…

I think this is probably right, and it’s probably going to be worse in the general election. This is part of why the Clinton argument that we can’t nominate Obama because he’s black makes my grit my teeth so much. For these reasons Walsh identifies, Obama would probably have much more success, and catch much less flak, for arguing that Clinton is unelectable because she’s a woman, though I’m very glad he has not done that.

One big reason for this is that it’s not only men who are biased against Hillary for her gender — as Walsh pointed out, it was a woman who pleaded for McCain to “beat the bitch,” and he chuckled good-naturedly. A Newsweek poll found that men were more likely than women to say that the country is ready for a female president — assuredly part of this is because women have a clearer picture of what the glass ceiling looks like from below, but it’s probably also because there are close to as many women who don’t want a female president as there are men.

It’s often pointed out that the country gave black men the vote earlier than it gave it to women. Maybe it’s meaningless, but maybe it suggests that sexism was a stronger force than racism even before the civil rights era.

I strongly object to the way Rhodes worded her comments on Ms. Clinton being a bought politician. Rhodes simply should have referred to Clinton as a bought politician. But, I also think that it is insane for anyone to the left of John McCain to support or even condone Hillary Clinton. The Clintons and Bushes support the same agenda, but slap on different branding.

Also, the level of white supremacist hate from the Clinton campaign and some of its most hardcore supporters far surpasses even the level of sexism targeting Clinton. Also, there is a key difference. The sexism is not coming from the Obama campaign, while much of the racist hatred is part of a deliberate, albeit foolish, campaign strategy by the Clintons.