Tuesday Reads: New Hampshire Primary Edition

Good Morning!!

I didn’t realize that the New Hampshire primary is 100 years old this year. Maybe it’s time to let another state go first–maybe one with a more diverse population? But for now, New Hampshire is what we’re stuck with.

Lately, every morning I have to psych myself up all over again to deal with the sexism and misogyny against Hillary. I never thought it could get worse than it was in 2008, but it really is a lot worse. That’s why my posts are always late these days. It takes me awhile to get my equilibrium back after reading political news and commentary the night before and then checking the headlines in the morning.

I could stop reading the news, but I feel it’s important to keep up what what’s happening in real time. I have pretty much stopped watching TV though. Actually I never got back to watching TV much after I shut it off in 2008.

Maybe the fact that the misogyny is worse this year has something to do with the person at the top? As Michael Dukakis used to say, “The fish rots from the head down.”

Tom Watson tweeted about this today.

I’m going to share some of the things I’ve been reading, and get this thing posted. We will have a live blog tonight to discuss the NH results.

Yesterday, Dakinikat wrote about the recent pile-on over remarks by Gloria Steinem and Madeline Albright. Last night, Jill Filipovic published an important defense of Steinem–not that it will have any impact on the Bernie bros.

Why Everyone’s Wrong About Gloria Steinem’s Controversial Comment.

Our feminist foremother has misbehaved. Gloria Steinem said young women only support Bernie Sanders because they want attention from boys. Can you believe it?

Don’t, because it’s not true. Despite media panting over feminist icons “scolding” young women,as the New York Times put it, and telling Sanders supporters “shame on you” (the Times, again), it’s not exactly the case that two batty old nags set out to wag their fingers at the sprightly young Bernie Babes. And those kinds of inaccurate, divisive characterizations do a disservice to honest political discourse about gender, feminism, and electoral politics.

Far from jumping on her soapbox to trash “kids today,” Steinem actually went on Bill Maher’s show last Friday to promote her new book, My Life on the Road, and had a bunch of good things to say about young women and feminism.

“I find the young women very activist and they’re way more feminist,” Steinem said. “We were, like, 12 crazy ladies in the beginning, and now it’s the majority. I do think that gratitude never radicalized anybody. I did not say thank you for the vote. I got mad on the basis of what was happening to me, and I think that that’s true of young women too. So they’re mad as hell because they’re graduating in debt, and they’re gonna earn a million dollars less over their lifetime to pay it back, they’re mad about what’s happening to them.”

Interesting how that context has been left out of the media reports, isn’t it? So what did Steinem really say? Again, the context matters.

Maher pressed her on Sanders versus Clinton, saying that young women “really don’t like Hillary.” Steinem responded that overall, women and African-American voters strongly support Clinton, and that, unlike men, “women get more radical as we get older.”

“Men tend to get more conservative because they gain power as they age, and women tend to get more radical because they lose power as they age,” Steinem said. “It’s not fair to measure most women by the standard of most men, because they’re gonna get more activist as they grow older, and when you’re young, you’re thinking, Where are the boys, the boys are with Bernie.“

It’s that last admittedly awkward line that got Steinem in hot water. Steinem “suggested younger women were just backing Mr. Sanders so that they could meet young men,” alleged the Times. According to Politico, “Feminist icon Gloria Steinem said that young women are supporting Bernie Sanders because they’re looking for boys.”

Bernie fans demanded an apology and Steinem did apologize–not that that will make the slightest difference to Sanders’ entitled, privileged followers.

Another great read: a case for Hillary Clinton written by Ohio State graduate student Zachary Leven. I learned some things I didn’t know about Hillary’s actions and votes around bankruptcy from this excellent essay. This is a long excerpt, but I hope you’ll still go read the whole thing.

The case for Hillary Clinton is mostly a matter of rebutting the case against her. Once that’s done, you’re simply left with the most qualified candidate, and someone who is, by all reality-based measures, progressive (ranked the tenth most liberal senator). And just as important, someone who is capable of achieving results (I’ll conclude with the case against Sanders, and there’s a very, very strong case to make against him). We’ll start with this specific example, which I think is illustrative of the sorts of attacks we see made on Hillary. It begins with this video of an interview with Elizabeth Warren that’s been making its rounds on the internet….

Warren tells a story about the bankruptcy bill initially supported by the Clinton administration in the 1990’s. Warren wrote an op-ed opposing the bill on the grounds that it offered deadbeat dads a mechanism for cheating their ex-wives out of child support, along with a few other issues. After the op-ed was published, Hillary phoned Warren requesting a meeting. They met in private, and Warren proceeded to educate Hillary on this issue. She said that Hillary was a “quick study” and really “got it.” Hillary returned to Washington, and by all accounts, single-handedly turned around the administration’s support of this legislation. When the bill reached Clinton’s desk, he vetoed it….

The second part of the interview is where it gets quite damning. According to Warren, First Lady Clinton became Senator Clinton of New York, and then things changed. The same bankruptcy bill came through congress, and this time Hillary voted for it. When Warren is asked what changed, she replies (paraphrasing), “Hillary started receiving all this money from Wall Street, and they became her constituency.” ….

Did Hillary vote for this bill because she became beholden to special interests on Wall Street? What excuse does she have? Here’s her explanation in her own words:

I rise today in support of final passage of S. 420, the Bankruptcy Reform Act. Many of my colleagues may remember that I was a strong critic of the bill that passed out of the 106th Congress.

While we have yet to achieve the kind of bankruptcy reform I believe is possible, I have worked with a number of people to make improvements that bring us closer to our goals, particularly when it comes to child support. Women can now be assured that they can continue to collect child support payments after the child’s father has declared bankruptcy. The legislation makes child support the first priority during bankruptcy proceedings.

This year, we have made more progress. The Senate agreed to include a revised version of Senator Schumer’s amendment to ensure that any debts resulting from any act of violence, intimidation, or threat would be nondischargeable.

Earlier today, this body agreed to include a cap on the homestead exemption to ensure that wealthy debtors could not shield their wealth by purchasing a mansion in a state with no cap on homestead exemption.

In addition, I was concerned about competing nondischargeable debt so I worked hard with Senator Boxer to ensure that more credit card debt can be erased so that women who use their credit cards for food, clothing and medical expenses in the 90 days before bankruptcy do not have to litigate each and every one of these expenses for the first $750.

Let me be very clear — I will not vote for final passage of this bill if it comes back from conference if these kind of reforms are missing. I am voting for this legislation because it is a work in progress, and it is making progress towards reform.

Now I deeply respect and admire Elizabeth Warren — but it seems she left out some important details from her account. Clinton, in fact, worked with other members of congress to include amendments that addressed Elizabeth Warren’s concerns. And the bill passed 83–15. So why didn’t Warren mention this? I really have no idea — I’d love to ask her. Maybe she became so locked into this anti-bankruptcy bill stance, she couldn’t free herself from an oppositional frame of mind. Maybe Warren didn’t feel these amendments went far enough (but if that were true, why not mention that?) For whatever reason, the story Warren tells in this interview is incomplete. Clinton’s position on this bill was no different than that uber-conservative, Barbara Boxer.

Here’s what happened next — the bill went to the Republican controlled congress, they stripped out those amendments, sent the bill back to the senate, the Democrats filibustered the bill, and Clinton voted to uphold the filibuster. Another version of the bill later passed that Hillary opposed. So that woman Warren describes in the first part of her interview — the woman who “really gets it” — turns out that woman never changed after all (and currently, Warren speaks very highly of Hillary).

Also well worth reading is Melissa McEwan’s take on the bankruptcy story: Sure, But What About the Important People Who Matter?

We’ve all noticed that Bernie Sanders knows very little about foreign policy. Now Wall Street expert William Cohan writes at Vanity Fair that: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know Diddly-Squat About Wall Street.

Sanders is right that Wall Street still needs reform. The Dodd-Frank regulations fail to measure up; Wall Street lobbyists and $1000-an-hour attorneys work away each day to gut the meager reforms signed into law by President Barack Obama in July 2010. It is also unconscionable that Wall Street’s compensation system continues to reward bankers, traders, and executives to take big risks with other people’s money in hopes of getting big year-end bonuses. Thanks to this system, which has been prevalent since the 1970s, when Wall Street transformed itself from a bunch of undercapitalized private partnerships (where those partners had serious capital at risk every day) to a group of behemoth public companies (where the risk is borne by creditors and shareholders while the rewards go to the employees), Wall Street has become ground zero for one financial crisis after another.

But Sanders never talks about the compensation system on Wall Street. In fact, he rarely mentions anything concrete at all. Instead, he dwells on bizarre and nebulous notions such as imposing “a tax on Wall Street speculation,” as he did during his speech on Monday night. This tax, Sanders noted, will generate “hundreds of billions” of dollars in annual revenue and help pay for his proposed program to make tuition free at public colleges and universities.

But what exactly is Sanders proposing and does it make any sense? The answer to the first question is: it is difficult to tell. The candidate’s website does not really flesh out the idea, other than to say that the tax “will reduce risky and unproductive high-speed trading and other forms of Wall Street speculation.” If one goes back to a bill that Sanders introduced in the Senate last May, there is slightly more meat on these bones; still, the proposed legislation seems to have very little to do with actually taxing “Wall Street speculation” and more to do with taxing every trading transaction—the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and derivatives—that Wall Street and hedge funds engage in. This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever—why tax the very behavior the system depends upon?—and it is probably why Sanders’s legislation went nowhere and why he doesn’t talk about it anymore.

Even if Sanders eventually elaborates on his plan more fully, does taxing Wall Street speculation even make any sense? That one is simple: nope, and it actually reveals the candidate’s ignorance about our banking system.

Please read the rest at the link.

I’m running out of space, so I’ll just share a few more links, headlines only.

Newsweek: The Best Historical Moments of the New Hampshire Primary.

Washington Post: A black Princeton professor says she was handcuffed to a table for her unpaid parking tickets. This woman has been tweeting that the cops are still harassing her, even calling her cell phone!

Ta-Nehisi Coates: A History of Liberal White Racism. How bigotry enabled progressive domestic policies of the early 20th century.

Huffington Post: #ItsNotOver: Why the One Year Anniversary of Natasha McKenna’s Death Matters. Natasha was tasered to death by police officers.

The People’s View: #DontBernMeBro: Why Sanders is Parroting GOP Talking Points on Obama’s Jobs Record.

Mike Konzal at the Roosevelt Institute: Why I (Still) Think Shadow Banking is Key to Financial Reform.

Alex Seitz-Wald at MSNBC: For Sanders, campaign finance purity not always possible.

Dana Millbank: Bernie Sanders is no revolutionary.

Hillary Clinton after winning the NH primary in 2008

Have a great day, Sky Dancers and don’t let the haters get you down. What stories are you following today?