OPINION:
As the Washington Post reported Monday, Hillary Clinton has moved so far left that she will be “running as the most liberal Democratic presidential front-runner in decades.”
But she is still not as liberal — or “progressive,” as liberals like to call liberalism — as some liberals would like.
Hillary will be facing some young feminists who use terms like “intersectionality” and believe that race and gender intersect, and all who feel victimized really ARE vicitimized.
The Democratic candidate has already pushed her liberal agenda in her book, “It Takes A Village,” which declares that parents need help raising children — and of course that help can only come from the government. But Hillary is also staking out far-left ideologies, like wealth redistribution and amnesty for all illegal aliens now in the United States.
A new article in the National Journal sets who Hillary might be missing in her campaign to gather “progressives.” The article talks to women who think she just doesn’t go far enough in her liberal credo.
” AT THE ANNUAL Women in the World Summit in New York this April, Sam Viqueira stuck out from the crowd. The summit, a high-powered gathering of leaders and activists launched by former New Yorker and Daily Beast editor Tina Brown in 2010, this year featured a keynote address by Hillary Clinton. Most of the women in attendance looked like Clinton’s crowd, her generation: Dressed business casual, the mostly middle-aged women flocked to the free coffee and Luna bars on offer, chatted in small groups, and snapped selfies in front of a Dove-sponsored backdrop. The 17-year-old Viqueira and her high school friend stood off to the side in a small lounge, looking like they were dressed for a regular day of school. They’d taken the train in from Maplewood, New Jersey. ’To me, feminism isn’t only about wanting equality for all genders,’ Viqueira told me later, ’but wanting and advocating for the equality of all oppressed groups, which can and do intersect.’
“In some respects, Viqueira exemplifies the rising generation of feminists—and their conflicted feelings about Clinton. She grew up with three sisters and parents who were big on women’s empowerment, encouraging the girls to play sports and study math and science. But she credits social media with teaching her about the intersection of race and gender, and the issues women face outside of the United States; she first read the term ’intersectionality’ online when she was just 15 and now follows a lot of young women on Twitter who help broaden her perspective.
This spring, she’s taking the first gender-studies class ever offered at her public high school. Next fall, Viqueira will be old enough to cast her first vote. That has led her, like so many other young feminists, to think long and hard about what Clinton would—and wouldn’t—represent as the first woman president. ’It’s nice to see a strong female candidate running for president,’ Viqueira says, but she can’t help wishing it were a woman with a different track record. She’s particularly troubled by Clinton’s support of the 1996 welfare-reform bill her husband signed and of the Clinton-era crime-fighting legislation that, among other things, lengthened prison sentences for drug offenses. At best, she says, Clinton has been inconsistent on social-justice issues; at worst, she has been a hypocrite.
“While Viqueira is hesitant to say she’ll vote for Clinton, she acknowledges that the limited options for progressive-minded voters will probably push her in that direction. But it bothers her to see Clinton held up as a model feminist: ’I think it’s problematic to assume that just because she’s a woman, she’s the best spokesperson for all women.’ “
Read the whole article here….
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