Walk a Mile in My Shoes
My red shoes
What kind of shoes represent you? Or, maybe the better question is: if you were a pair of shoes, what would you be? Cowboy boots? Sneakers? Bare feet? My red shoes, as pictured below express my agreement that all the votes should be counted so that all the people will feel their voices have been heard. Democracy takes patience and participation. (No Dorothy allusions, please–her shoes were actually silver.) Check out the Walk a Mile in My Shoes Website and let the Democratic National Committee know what you think. Be sure to post your comment here too!
Here’s what Ginny said:
These shoes have been in courtrooms and offices, in grocery stores and auto repair shops, in soccer fields and the… principal’s offices, in second hand stores and homeless shelters, in emergency rooms and nursing homes, at family reunions and at funerals. I care, I work and I show up.
INTENTIONING
Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women
Will Take The Lead for (Everyone’s) GoodThe new book from Gloria Feldt about the future, taking the leadership lessons learned from this disruption and creating a better world for all through the power of intention.
These shoes have walked door to door in California, Texas, Nevada, Indiana and Oregon: for Hillary. I did not buy newer shoes because I sent that money to Hillary.
I send you these shoes to tell you that I am not going to sit down and shut up. Hillary women don’t just talk the talk – we walk the walk. See these shoes and listen.
GLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, a sought-after speaker and frequent contributor to major news outlets, and the Co-Founder and President of Take The Lead. People has called her “the voice of experience,” and among the many honors she has been given, Vanity Fair called her one of America’s “Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders, and Trailblazers,” and Glamour chose her as a “Woman of the Year.”
As co-founder and president of Take The Lead, a leading women’s leadership nonprofit, her mission is to achieve gender parity by 2025 through innovative training programs, workshops, a groundbreaking 50 Women Can Change The World immersive, online courses, a free weekly newsletter, and events including a monthly Virtual Happy Hour program and a Take The Lead Day symposium that reached over 400,000 women globally in 2017.
13 Comments
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Perhaps it’s time now to turn on the heels of these lovely shoes and walk away from your candidate, whose spectacular public implosion was further hastened yesterday after her coarse, wildly inappropriate reference to Robert Kennedy’s assassination.
Hillary Clinton will lose this nomination, and when she does what will her stalwart supporters do? Polish up their shoes and dash into the arms of John McCain, who would love nothing more than to relieve women of their right to choose, extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and keep us in Iraq for the next ten or fifteen years?
Tenacity and grit are wonderful things, but only when deployed in the service of honorable intentions. Hillary possesses just as much tenacity and grit as George W. Bush. And like his own supporters, die-hard Hillary fans are equally blind to the fact that, on their own, these qualities aren’t just meaningless, but dangerous.
Hillary Clinton disgraces herself at least once daily. As a Democrat, I’m ashamed of her.
Welcome back, Stout. I wondered whether you’d stopped commenting here as soon as you thought Obama had the nomination wrapped up. But the race goes on and I’m glad to continue the discussion.
As I recall you said you are in your mid-thirties. For those of us over, say, 55, some of the most important markers in our lives are moments such as the one Clinton referred to as far back as March– when no one took umbrage because it obviously was exactly what it appeared: a reference to an important historical marker that makes powerfully clear the primary process has often lasted through June. I can understand that the remark falls differently on ears that did not share the experience, and I accept criticism of Hillary for not recognizing that when an African American is in the race there must be extra sensitivities about everything one says. Still, we all should know enough about politics to see that deliberate negative spin was applied to make up seem like down.
It’s apparent that the generational differences in how people see, hear, and communicate about this presidential race are profound. Howard Kurtz remarked in the Washington Post that Hillary Clinton is a half-generation off–half a generation younger than the founding second wave feminists, and half a generation older than the 50-year-olds on down who are the core of Barack Obama’s supporters. Of course, age breakdowns are overgeneralizations, but they are sufficiently reflected in voting patterns to warrant attention.
I am pretty sure that most Clinton supporters will support Obama if he becomes the nominee. Will Obama supporters support her if the reverse is true?
Of course Obama supporters will vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination. Poll after poll demonstrates overwhelmingly that they will. Bizarrely enough, polls and exit interviews suggest exactly the opposite when it comes to Clinton supporters, particularly women, who say they’ll either vote for John McCain in November or not vote at all if Obama clinches the nomination.
I could huff and puff about the rank stupidity of such a decision, or bloviate ad nauseum about how these inexcusable poll numbers prove that Clinton supporters are exactly as hysterical and emotion-based as the worst sort of Republican voter, but I think Arianna Huffington put it simply and best:
“We’ve seen the exit polls. We’ve read the unequivocal quotes. Many women who are avowed Hillary Clinton supporters are declaring they won’t vote for Barack Obama in the fall. I get the anger and the disappointment. But to quote SNL’s Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers: Really? You’d rather vote for John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman’s right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade “must be overturned”? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be “a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement”?
That just about says it all, doesn’t it?
As for the never-ending primary race, it’s a funny thing. Almost daily Hillary Clinton cites instances of lengthy primary contests but neglects to mention the more common instances of candidates bowing out in the name of party unity when the political math, as well as the tide of general sentiment, was against them. It’s a clever argument but a flimsy rationalization for continuing her destructive campaign. Coupled with her shameful insistence that she’s winning the popular vote (she is not), Friday’s crass reference to the RFK assassination is just further evidence of the death-spiral her campaign is executing right before our eyes.
And the worst part? Her supporters, it seems, are dishonest enough, or deluded enough, or, in the case of Kentucky and West Virginia, racist enough to believe her.
Still, I wonder—do you believe her, Gloria? Do those who value your endorsement believe her? Do Clinton supporters within your sphere of influence privately acknowledge the fact that Barack Obama wasn’t on the ballot in Florida and that he didn’t campaign in Michigan, and then quietly agree to swallow the lie in order to preserve an untarnished belief in their candidate?
It’s absurd. More than that, it’s offensive when Hillary and Bill paint themselves as victims for being pushed aside, when the sole reason for that shove in the back is their own despicable campaign tactics. Worse still, the Clintons are flat out lying when they use Bill’s own primary race as justification for continuing Hillary’s scorched-earth campaign. They cite June 1992 as an important marker, but in his memoir, My Life, Bill Clinton himself writes:
“On April 7, we also won in Kansas, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. On April 9, Paul Tsongas announced that he would not reenter the race. The fight for the nomination was effectively over.”
As for Hillary’s RFK reference, I think it’s much ado about . . . well, something. But nothing, I admit, as insidious as many bloggers and pundits are making it out to be. True, Hillary appeals shamelessly to fear. From her 3 a.m. ad to her flame-fanning during the Reverend Wright flap to her slippery doublespeak on the subject of Obama’s Christianity and patriotism, Hillary Clinton speaks in code. The hateful, the stupid, the racist, and now the willfully deluded Clinton masses that comprise her base are listening. Make no mistake about it: they interpret Clintonese quite well, thank you very much. It’s just another element of fear-mongering being injected into this campaign, and it should be rejected outright.
As I’ve said before, for someone so attuned to the intricacies and hidden meanings of language, you’re mysteriously tone deaf when it comes to the plainspoken lies of your candidate. I find that depressing.
Sorry for the lengthy post. Thanks for welcoming me back.
Correction: Obama wasn’t on the Michigan ballot and didn’t campaign in Michigan or Florida. The point, however, remains the same.
Well..actually it’s well known that he did de facto campaign in both states. But put that aside for a moment.
It seems to me that those of you who hate Hillary, hate Hillary and interpret anything she does as having evil intent. I see or hear the exact same thing very differently, sometimes diametrically opposite. I am not and have never been a Hillary groupie. So this isn’t blind loyalty or rose colored glasses. Apparently you think I am misinterpreting her at best or being “dishonest or deluded” at worst. I do not appreciate that. Does that make sense to you?
You write: “It seems to me that those of you who hate Hillary, hate Hillary and interpret anything she does as having evil intent.”
Evil intent, no. Desperation in the midst of her failing power-grab? Absolutely.
I don’t hate Hillary Clinton, but I do find her campaign despicable. More than that, I find the intellectual dishonesty of her supporters even more unsettling. Even now you refuse to acknowledge that Hillary’s blatant and utterly transparent lies regarding Michigan and Florida should have no place in this election. Without any hint of irony, she invokes slavery, the civil rights battle of the 1960s, Jim Crow, and the bloody, corrupt elections in Zimbabwe as justification for seating Michigan and Florida delegates as-is.
And what do her supporters do? Cheer at the top of their lungs. Threaten protests at the upcoming DNC meeting. Ramp up the talk about sexism. Stir Hillary’s base and pressure Obama to offer her the VP slot.
The whole thing is astonishing for a lot of reasons, but mostly because Hillary stated early on that both states “don’t matter” because they broke the rules (until, following Obama’s remarkable winning streak, they suddenly did matter), and because she reneged on a signed pledge to remove her name from the Michigan ballot, a pledge John Edwards and Barack Obama honored.
So, Gloria, where do you stand personally on the issue of Michigan and Florida? I’m interested to know.
I’m sorry you feel insulted by my words earlier. Initially I came to your site after reading one of your pieces on the Huffington Post, a piece in which you referred to me and other Obama supporters as “Obamabots,” gleeful that your words would get us “hopping mad.”
What does “Obamabot” suggest if not “blind loyalty,” “rose-colored glasses,” and willful self-delusion of the sort you find objectionable when leveled at Hillary supporters?
Does that make sense to you?
Here’s the challenge as I see it. The issue of Hillary’s ongoing campaign has become an emotional argument. And you just can’t win an emotional argument, even when logic, rules, polling data, pledged delegates, superdelegates, public sentiment, pundit sentiment, major endorsements, and the media spectacle of Hillary’s final death-throes all point to one conclusion: based on every measurable criterion, Barack Obama will win this nomination. Fair and square.
It seems like there is no middle ground with respect to Hillary- people seem to love her or hate her- I’ve never really understood the outright hatred but I do understand the disappointment many progressives feel with respect to her foreign policy (the war, comments about Iran) and some of the statements she and her campaign have made- either themselves or through their surrogates. I have found some of their campaign strategy to be outright racially divisive and provacative.
And as Stout House suggests, some Hillary supporters have been incredibly condescending when discussing Obama supporters- as if people don’t have a right to make a choice and have that choice be respected- and as someone who supported obama initally, this really rubbed me the wrong way and still does. But it cuts both ways and the rancor against Hillary supporters seems equally intense.
Stacy writes: “It seems like there is no middle ground with respect to Hillary — people seem to love her or hate her.”
Gloria writes: “It seems to me that those of you who hate Hillary, hate Hillary and interpret anything she does as having evil intent.”
It’s convenient, yes, but not especially helpful for Hillary supporters to view things this way. To enter a discussion about this contest with a predetermined attitude like that (Obama supporters hate Hillary, therefore Hillary is being unfairly treated) is tantamount to a de facto ad hominem attack on any and all who are justifiably angered by Hillary’s “divisive and provocative” campaign, to borrow Stacy’s phrase. It places the individual Obama supporter in the crosshairs, emphasizes his or her personal bias, and dismisses without examination the legitimate points that individual is making.
What many Obama supporters “hate” about Hillary is not the woman, but the campaign. There is a difference.
I’ve been posting here for a while, and until now, with Stacy’s acknowledgment of Hillary’s questionable strategy, not a single person has allowed that Obama supporters have every reason to be outraged by the Clinton campaign.
Does that anger resemble hatred? Sometimes, yes. But in my particular case (and I think I speak for millions like me), I’m angered by Clinton’s patently Republican-like campaign strategy of pandering, dissembling, fear-mongering, racial divisiveness, and transparent lies of the sort she issues daily on the subject of Florida and Michigan. Coupled with overwhelming polling data that indicates Clinton supporters will be disinclined to vote for Obama when he clinches the nomination, the result is the kind of vitriol that has come to characterize the final stretch of this race.
Hillary Clinton’s mock outrage at the “disenfranchisement” of Michigan and Florida voters is one of the most ludicrous political displays I’ve ever witnessed. Every day her supporters consciously abet the lie is a day we should all be ashamed to call ourselves Democrats.
Stacy, it would be interesting to know more about what moved you from Obama to Clinton.
Stout, Clinton supporters earlier in the campaign were almost universally inclined to say they’d vote for Obama if he were to be the candidate. Not so much Obama supporters re Clinton. Since the beginning, those who hated Hillary, hated Hillary, and were not to be moved. You say your reasons are anger rather than hatred, so I take you at your word. Since we are just about at the point where it’s going to be important to coalesce everyone around the winner, the topic is becoming moot and needs to shift to how we get everybody together. Whether angry at or hating Hillary doesn’t matter, if Barack is the candidate–you’ll need her supporters to win so better start focusing on her positives.
Obama, his campaign, and his supporters have used all the same strategies you berate Hillary for, but that’s not unusual in political campaigns. A key difference here is that the most influential pundits are in love with Obama and have from the beginning framed their comments about Hillary unfavorably. The media’s sexism has been rampant, as women in both camps have agreed. How she even keeps going given all this is quite extraordinary. I have said before and will repeat that both sides have been much milder in their attacks on the other than is typical in politics and certainly nothing compared to what will happen in the general once the Republicans get going though, so winning in November is going to take a candidate who is tough as nails and indomitable in the face of all kinds of political maneuverings.
I hope to goodness that if Obama is the candidate, he will measure up to that bar. We know Hillary does.
“Obama, his campaign, and his supporters have used all the same strategies you berate Hillary for. . . .”
This is simply untrue. Some of Obama’s supporters have had unkind things to say about Senator Clinton, but from the Obama campaign itself there’s been very little in the way of offensive rhetoric. Plus, Obama doesn’t control the pundits who prefer him to Clinton, and so can’t be held responsible for their words. Elsewhere on these boards I’ve cited polls confirming that Clinton’s own supporters acknowledge as much, even as they continue to back their candidate, so I don’t understand why you won’t simply concede the point once and for all.
I agree that we now have to coalesce behind the Democratic nominee. I’m just relieved it’s almost certainly going to be Barack Obama. He’s “tough as nails” and every bit as “indomitable” as Hillary “in the face of all kinds of political maneuverings,” as you put it. Look how he’s handled the Jeremiah Wright flap, or how he and Axelrod have been so effective in going on the offensive against Senator McCain. Look also at his level-headedness in the face of the well-documented daily attacks launched by the Clinton campaign throughout this contest. Always she swings and connects, and Obama straightens his tie and continues collecting more money and more delegates.
Obama is defeating one of the toughest and most deeply entrenched political machines in American political history. That tough enough for you?
So yes, Hillary is tough. But remember, it’s that same toughness, coupled with her steely-eyed political pragmatism, that led her to cast her vote for a catastrophic, unnecessary war in Iraq without bothering to read the National Intelligence Estimate. It’s that same indomitability that convinced her to go negative on Obama from the outset and never let up, even if it means taking the fight to the convention floor, at the expense of her own party.
Hillary Clinton is tough but exercises poor judgment (Iraq, her ridiculous gas tax holiday, her negative campaign, her Bush-like loyalty to intellectual mediocrities like Mark Penn, etc.). Plus, she seems unable to distinguish between a weather vane and a compass, particularly on the issue of Iraq. Obama, on the other hand, is just as tough, but so far has outsmarted, outplayed and outclassed his rivals at every turn. When it comes to electing a president, I’ll take toughness and good judgment any day . . .
You say the Clinton vs. Obama point is moot. I say, let’s wait until the DNC meeting is over and see.
I’m still interested to hear your view on the Michigan and Florida delegate mess.
Neither candidate fully represents my views on the issues- they spend far too much time trying to convince the country, which ironically holds moderate to left views on almost all domestic issues, that they are not “liberals.”
I’ve researched both candidate’s views on gay rights and Hillary’s views on that issue seem most genuine to me, although both candidates have caved when it comes to gay marriage- separate but equal has never worked and won’t now but I’ve learned when an interest group has to be sacrificed for a larger democratic party cause (ie. getting any Democrat elected), it’s usually us gay folk that will be standing on the side of the road going “what the hell just happened?”.
I certainly don’t doubt Obama’s belief in gay rights or reproductive choice for that matter, but Hillary has been more vocal and interactive with the gay community- she’s actually sought us out. Of course, Bill Clinton did to, and we got Defense of Marriage Act, so we’ll see…
I think it’s easier for me this election season- I am not a die hard for either candidate so I will have little trouble accepting whoever ends up getting the nomination. At the end of the day, I’d rather have a viable third party which truly espoused progressive ideals. But that’s a whole other subject.
Geez, that’s unebileavble. Kudos and such.
quS4MO brwfzrsquvew