Quote of the (I Dunno?) Year:
“Just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Just for the record, helping Carly Fiorina doesn't count.
As my colleague Charlotte Allen has commented Albright's bizarre remark at a rally for Hillary Clinton amounted to "threatening the youthful female feel-the-Berners with eternal damnation."
I don’t have to explain to you how desperate and pathetic this statement is. The key point to understand is that this is all they’ve got. They can’t win on the issues, so they have to appeal to emotion and superficiality, i.e., hoping people vote for someone based on gender. Even worse, the entire argument is garbage.
To prove the point, I want to turn you to an excellent article I read earlier today at Naked Capitalism, titled The Pressure on Warren to Support Hillary Clinton…
We've already noted on the blog that female legislators supporting Clinton have been trying in vain to get Senator Elizabeth Warren to endorse Hillary and join them in a bus tour of New Hampshire, site tomorrow's first-in-the-nation primary (where Mrs. Clinton is trailing Bernie Sanders in the polls).
In addition to being desperate, Albright's plea is just so . . . old and tired. Charlotte hits this point but I just want to add a few thoughts. Mrs. Albright's remarks remind us that she and Mrs. Clinton are women of the past.
Younger women assume that there will be a female president in their lifetimes, and polls indicate that a lot of them, even those who belong to the Democratic Party, would prefer she be somebody other than Hillary Clinton. Albright message: We own you and you will be punished if you don't give us what WE older feminist want.
Albright and Clinton have been relentless career women who have risen high in American life, and Albright seems to think it is all right to emotionally blackmail younger women into giving Mrs. Clinton, despite character and competence concerns, the ultimate prize, presidency.
I also urge you to read The Other Charlotte's piece (she compares Albright and Gloria Steinem, 81, who accused young women who are going for Sanders of being "boy crazy," and Albright,78, of being like the "aunts" who regulate the behavior of younger women in a Margaret Attwood novel).