Pride and Prejudice

7:29 pm, 11/5/07

Pride and Prejudice

Hillary Clinton breaks down during a Democratic debate. John Edwards takes the shot:


Hillary, meanwhile, is angry that she's being "targeted".


That reason? According to failed 1984 Democratic vice-presidential pick Geraldine Ferraro, BIGOTRY!

In this corner, former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, D-NY, the 1984 vice president nominee, who tells the New York Times that "John Edwards, specifically, as well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours they way they attacked her. It's O.K. in this country to be sexist. It's certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours -- well, I don't think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours."

"We can't let them do this in a presidential race," Ferraro said. "They say we're playing the gender card. We are not. We are not. We have got to stand up. It's discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman."

Can't let them do what? Question the positions of their chief opponent in the primary? Is this what liberal feminism has spent decades fighting for?

"Don't hit me, I'm a girl."

In the other corner, Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL Pro-Choice American and an adviser to the campaign of Clinton's rival, former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC.

She blogs that "(w)hen unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Senator Clinton embraces her political elevation into the 'boys club.' She is quick to assure listeners she is plenty tough enough, that she's battled tested, ready to play by the same rules as the boys."

"But when she's challenged, when legitimate questions are asked, questions she should be prepared to answer and discuss, she is just as quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules. She then calls questioning, 'attacking;' she calls debate among her peers, 'piling on.'"

Perhaps, just perhaps, the real problem is that Hillary is not a very good candidate.

More on this in the next couple days, I've been planning to do a post on the Democrats' overconfidence for a while now.

Update: Bill Clinton rides to the little lady's rescue:

''I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again,'' Clinton told some 3,000 members of the American Postal Worker's Union at a convention.

''It's fine for Hillary and all the other Democrats to discuss Governor Spitzer's plan. But not in 30 seconds - yes, no, raise your hand,'' he said.

Actually, "no" would've been the correct answer.

He compared the driver's license dustup to television ads during the 2004 presidential campaign that questioned Kerry's patriotism, and campaign commercials in 2002 suggesting that former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., who lost three limbs in Vietnam, was soft on terrorism.

Did Bill Clinton just ask people to, er, please stop swiftboating his wife?