The -isms bringing down the Obama campaign

By Rachel Ring

Throughout recent election coverage, I’ve been hearing a few re-occurring themes since the McCain- Palin surge. I find these views to be not only contradictory, but a priceless example of how elitist and condescending the Obama campaign actually is, and demonstrates their panic that America is slowly waking up from the “Obama spell” as I like to call it, and coming to their senses. Logging onto Yahoo the other day, one of their top news headlines was that Obama is losing ground because of Americans “deep seeded” racism. Wait a minute!

How presumptuous that the AP would just assume that Obama is losing because of his race. I’ve said this from the beginning, if it was Colin Powell running for office, or Condoleeza Rice, they’d have my vote. This isn’t about race, it’s about the fact that Obama is proven by his voting record to be the most liberal senator on record, and many Americans aren’t comfortable with some of his votes and choices.

Is the press implying that Americans should just get used to Obama’s views and vote for him because if not, we’ll look racist? No, on the contrary, we’d look stupid, for voting for a man because of his race, and not because we agree with him and want him as our president. Furthermore, Obama has not done himself any favors.

That grandiose spectacle at the Democratic convention of giving a speech on stage as if already in the Oval Office was simply unsettling. If we don’t vote for Obama, it’s implied us simpleton Americans must be racist, we must “cling to our religion and our guns” we must just be so ignorant as to not see the greatness that is Obama.

To the Obama campaign, voters could not have possibly made a critical thinking process and decided that Obama’s far left and sometimes downright scary votes just don’t fit with their views. No, they’re insisting that Americans must just be racist and short sighted if they cast their vote in favor of McCain.

As a woman, the most infuriating theme that I’ve seen out of the election coverage is the Democrats anger over the switch that white women in America have made by swinging largely in favor of the McCcain-Palin ticket. Let’s flashback to Hillary’s primary run, where it was just fine with Democrats if white women supported another woman when it was in their favor.

What has been such a disappointment for me is that women such as Gloria Steinem (who I respected and admired) have gone and just made themselves look worse than any misogynist man I’ve ever seen by completely ripping apart Sarah Palin’s life and views. (What would have been the reaction had the Republicans done that to Hillary? There would have been cries out against the Republican Party being old and out of touch, but when the same happens to Sarah Palin, the same reaction is not had).

This is where feminism has lost its grip on reality. This is why women still have to deal with glass ceilings and why women have not made as much progress as they should have. Feminists, and Democrats, expect their women to be these bra burning, Roe v Wade supporting, rejecters of religion and men in their lives in order to be “progressive” women.

However, they’ve clearly completely missed the mark on most of the women in America, who hold middle class values in high regard, are juggling work and family life, and admire a working mother. Why aren’t fellow women at least respecting Palin, a working woman who clearly is the main breadwinner in her marriage, raising 5 children and one with special needs? It’s because she does not fit in the with the feminism role of the sixties and seventies.

She’s an unapologetic Christian, she’s attractive, and she can hold her own in such unbalanced interviews as the Charlie Gibson ABC debacle. The meltdown of some of these feminists against Palin has actually set women back: it’s a classic example of middle school girls in the schoolyard. Because Palin does not agree with the democratic feminist majority, they’re going to rip her apart in a brutal group mentality, and this trend has clearly turned voters off and in favor of McCain-Palin 2008.

That, compacted with the false racism accusations of the Obama campaign and the Democrats, will continue to hurt them in the upcoming election.