The Icepick Cometh

Looking at the largely over-50 women and men disrupting the Democratic Rules Committee this afternoon with their sad Woodstocky cry of Denver! Denver! I realized something I had not previously considered. When people like them claim that this is the last chance ever for a woman to become president (which, if you believe that, then what the hell was the feminist movement about — promoting women's rights or promoting Hillary Clinton?), what they really mean is that this is the last chance for there ever to be be a Baby Boomer woman president, which might be true.

Because just like their hero, these Boomers are "all about me." It's not that there will never be a another woman who can be president (and one who hopefully won't need to ride her husband's coattails to rise to the Senate and beyond — you call that an inspirational story for women everywhere?). It's just possibly the last chance for a woman born before 1960 to become president. Quite frankly, it might possibly the last chance for any Baby Boomer to reach the White House.

Want to see the level of contempt Hillary has for the next generations? Right now on her official Hillblazers Web page — the page for "Young Leaders for Hillary in 2008" — the dominant item on the page is something called "Project T-shirt," which states: "We need your help to make a critical decision -- our next official campaign t-shirt."

So, on the day of the Rules Committee meeting, when her candidacy hangs in the balance, the major message on her Web page specifically geared toward the Next Generation is to design a fucking T-shirt. Not go out and protest with the Boomers. Go make a pretty picture to print onto a freebie.

In other words, you're too young to be of any good of us other than making a logo. This is perfect, because it's indicative of what both the Clintons and her Baby Boomer supporters are all about. I can just see her marketing department dreaming this up, like it's some bullshit corporate gain-share team-building exercise — "I know, let's draw in some younger voters by having them design a decal for a T-shirt. That's what the young kids like to do now, with their Photoshop and whatnot. It will help us 'connect' while letting the younger voters think that we think they're important."

To be fair, Hillblazers has links down the side with "5 Things You Can Do!," like becoming a Hillary supporter on the Facebook and other newfangled social networks.

I have to say I am truly sad for any Gen X'er or Millennial who supports this candidate, especially since she and her advisers see you as nothing other than expendable pawns in her campaign.

Incidentally, Obama has a Web page for his younger supports, too, called Generation Obama (ahem, and who coined a headline using a similar phrase? Um, yours truly) talking about grassroots activism and starting a support chapter in your community, with not a hint of anything so condescending as designing a fucking T-shirt.

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OK, now that we got that out of the way, check out this headline from Talking Point's Memo: Who's Disenfranchised? by Josh Marshall. This expresses what I've been cooking in the back of my brain but never made the full jump to put into words: If those in Florida and Michigan who voted for Hillary are so "disenfranchised," what about the people in those states who did not go out and vote at all on those days because they were told that their Primary was not going to count?

Now those people's voices will only be heard as part of this compromise Hillary supporters have unsatisfactorily pressured the Democratic leaders to concoct today, by counting those two against-the-rules elections at a 50% discount.

This does not erase the fact that people didn't vote in those primaries because they were told it was more-or-less a mock election, like those elections we used to do in middle school when the candidates were Reagan, Mondale and Bill the Cat. Hillary had no compunction to disenfranchise those would-be voters by making those elections "real," essentially discarding their worth as ballot-casters in order to change the rules to suit her. Typical of Hillary. Typical of a Boomer.