Live Blog: Hillary Victory Dance!

Thanks to ANonOMouse for this graphic.

The big night has arrived, Sky Dancers! Tonight Hillary Clinton will claim the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. She will be the first woman ever to accomplish this feat. It’s a historic achievement, and I hope the media–as well as Senator Sanders–will treat it as such. Here is what Joan Walsh wrote at The Nation yesterday before the AP announcement:

Hillary Clinton needs just 24 more delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, when the total of delegates she’s won in primaries and caucuses are combined with her superdelegate supporters. Assuming she wins New Jersey on Tuesday night—and she is leading there 64-36 in the latest polls—she will get them, hours before the polls close in California, where she and Senator Bernie Sanders are still locked in a tight race.

As a former Californian, I’ve been ambivalent about rumors that Clinton plans to declare victory after her New Jersey win, reportedly with a big rally in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. An early call by the networks could dampen California turnout. Plus, while I’m a Clinton supporter, I’m concerned about party unity, and I think her campaign should take every opportunity to reach out to Sanders voters.

Then I looked back at what Barack Obama did in 2008, the night he crossed the delegate threshold—like Clinton, with pledged and super delegates. And I looked at the way The New York Times covered it. And I shed my good-girl reservations about an early Clinton declaration of victory. She will win the nomination Tuesday night, no matter what the Sanders campaign says about superdelegates (more on that in a minute.) She will become the first female major-party nominee for the presidency, and she should claim that victory for herself, and for the tens of millions of women who support her. And the media should cover it as the historic event that it is.

Here’s The New York Times story from June 4, 2008. It is headlined “Obama Clinches Nomination; First Black Candidate to Lead a Major Party Ticket.”

Notice that it’s treated as a big, historic occasion; Obama doesn’t share the headline with Clinton. There’s no hedged “Obama claims victory, but Clinton vows to fight on” at the top of the paper of record. The headline and story cover Obama’s proud claim to a historic victory, and it’s treated as a done deal. While it’s true Clinton didn’t concede that night, the next day she scheduled her concession speech in Washington, DC, for the following Saturday. On June 7, 2008—eight years to the day before she will clinch the 2016 nomination—she paid tribute to her voters, those “18 million cracks in the highest and hardest glass ceiling”—and asked them to support Obama.

We’ll find out later tonight if The New York Times is capable of showing the same respect to the first woman “candidate to lead a major party ticket.”

From MSNBC: Hillary Clinton Makes History.

Almost eight years to the day after ending her first presidential bid while celebrating the 18 million cracks her supporters put in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” Hillary Clinton took a major step towards breaking through that final barrier Monday evening, and towards becoming the country’s first woman president.

Clinton surpassed the “magic number” of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic Party’s nomination, according to NBC News projections, to become the first woman in America’s 240 year history to be selected as the nominee of a major political party….

“It’s been an incredible journey,” Clinton told reporters Monday in California before she was declared the presumptive nominee. “My supporters are passionate. They are committed. They have voted for me in great numbers across our country for many reasons. But among those reasons is their belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement, about what kind of country we are, what we stand for. It’s really emotional.”

The historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy has been an undercurrent throughout her second presidential bid, but rarely at its forefront. That will likely change Tuesday night when Clinton declares victory at a celebratory rally with supporters in Brooklyn.

“It’s a revolution, really,” said Terry O’Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women. “It’s not quite yet the highest, hardest glass ceiling, because that would be the presidency, but it’s just an amazing first.”

I’m sure that Bernie and his bros are going to try their best to ruin this night for us, but I’m not going to pay them any more attention. They can go into the dustbin of history and stay there as far as I’m concerned–unless they want to wholeheartedly join the fight against Donald Trump. I think the majority of them will come around in time.

Meanwhile, I recommend reading this post that Delphyne tweeted earlier. It’s fantastic!

hecatedemeter: Managing Your Feelings Is Not My Job.

One of the almost unconscious (and completely unpaid) jobs that women are doing all the damn time is managing their own behavior in order to manage men’s emotions.  We do it so much that we’re often not even aware that we’re doing it.  While the Jungian projection is that women are “too emotional” and “let their emotions run away with them,” the fact is that, of course, it’s most men who really can’t manage their own emotions.  Margaret Atwood famously said that men are afraid women will laugh at them, while women are afraid that men will kill us.  Women must never dress in ways that make it OK for men, who can’t control themselves, to rape us.  We must never lean in too hard or we will threaten the men.  We must soothe their hurt feelings, let them feel as if they won even when they lost, always be receptive to their desires.  Failure = death.  I do it all day long, the only woman in the room most of the time, figuring out exactly how to manage the mens’ feelings in order to herd us towards a legal strategy that will actually win the case, while letting this guy think it was all his own idea, letting the other guy imagine that he just won a point, gently dealing with the asshole who always interrupts me.

All women do it and we do it all the damn time.   It gets old.

As we’ve edged closer and closer to the moment (sometime within the next 24 hours) when America will, after 240 years, select a woman as the nominee of a major political party, women are being warned not to be, as my grandma would have said, “poor winners.” ….

Above all, we’re being told, don’t gloat.  Don’t spike the football, don’t high-five each other, don’t whoop and yell, don’t chest pound, don’t do anything to rub it in.  No!  Hillary and her supporters must wear ashes and do even more, and more, and more to “reach out” to the Bernie Bros.  Otherwise, their delicate feelings will be hurt and they will vote for Trump, or Jill Stein, or just stay home and peruse MRA websites….

But, you know, fuck that shit.  I am declaring a 72 hour moratorium on women having to worry about men’s delicate feelings.  I’ve waited 60 years.  America has waited 240.  All 44 of America’s presidents — all 44 of them — have been men.  Suffragettes were beaten, spat upon, ridiculed, arrested, imprisoned, hung from their wrists, beaten, force-fed, and terrorized just to win women the right to vote.  I’ve shown up every election of my adult life and sent money to, handed out literature for, walked door-to-door for, and voted for one damn man after another.  I am going to spike the ever-loving hell out of this football, do a dance in the end zone, fall to my knees and call on Columbia, high-five everyone I know, do the wave, show the English my bum, and then I’m going to open the champagne and really get crazy.

I’ll skip the champagne, but I plan to really enjoy this victory–follow the returns, watch Hillary,s speech, read your comments, and do my own little victory dance. I’ve waited my whole life for this night.

What are you hearing and reading? What’s happening in New Jersey, Delphyne and Joanelle?