If you’re an anti-war woman Democrat, you might be wondering why the patriarchal Democratic Party Establishment still seems reluctant to nominate a pacifist woman or a radical feminist anti-corporate woman to be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 2008. Yet the patriarchal Democratic Party has a long history of promoting institutional sexism in the world of U.S. Establishment mainstream media politics. As Why And How Women Will Elect The Next President by Eleanor Smeal noted in 1984:
“Many women…spent 10 years begging Democrats to do more and to place the ERA higher on their agenda—all to little avail. The ERA was defeated in Democrat-controlled Oklahoma, Florida, and North Carolina…Several key leaders of the opposition to the ERA in these states were Democrats, notably Senator Dempsey Barron, dean of the Florida Senate, and Lieutenant Governor Jimmy Green of North Carolina, president of the North Carolina Senate…
“The same picture holds true for other women’s issues. Leading opponents of women’s rights of access to abortion are Democrats as well as Republicans. The 1983 attempt to pass a constitutional amendment permitting Congress and/or the states to ban abortion was cosponsored by…Thomas Eagleton (D-MO)…Many women are suspicious of both political parties and view themselves as `independents’…”
(Downtown 6/26/96)
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