Gloria Steinem

Toughest Democratic Race To Take Sides: Ed Markey Vs. Joe Kennedy III In Massachusetts

Ronald 1 Comment

The toughest Democratic race for Congress is coming to a conclusion on Tuesday, September 1, when Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts faces Congressman Joe Kennedy III for the nomination for the US Senate.

Both are clearly progressives, but Markey is seen as more Left than Kennedy.

Markey has been endorsed by Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, former Vice President Al Gore, former Democratic Presidential nominee (1988) Michael Dukakis, documentary creator Ken Burns, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Carole King, Tom Steyer, many environmental groups, and the Boston Globe Editorial Board, as well as most Massachusetts mayors and many Democrats in the state legislature. and half the Congressional delegation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Kennedy, and the Kennedy Family is, of course, behind Kennedy, and also many Congressmen, including the late John Lewis and Joaquin Castro, but he has alienated many who think he should have waited until Markey retired, or Warren ended up in a potential Joe Biden cabinet.

The seat is guaranteed to whoever wins the primary on Tuesday, as Republicans have not won state wide except with the first African American Senator since Reconstruction (Edward Brooke) decades ago, and Scott Brown, who succeeded Ted Kennedy and then was defeated by Elizabeth Warren.

Markey has served since 1976, 44 years in Congress, starting when he was 30 years old, with 37 in the US House of Representatives, and then he took over John Kerry’s Senate seat when Kerry became Secretary of State under Barack Obama in 2013. In so doing, Markey set a record as the longest serving Congressman, who then ended up in the US Senate at age 67.

Markey is just about the most liberal Democratic Senator, while Kennedy in eight years in the House, and now nearing 40, is also liberal, but it could be argued not as much, whatever that means!

So two men, who started off at 30 and 32 in Congress, now face each other, as the old guy with the long record, and the young guy, who is a Kennedy, but seems likely to lose the primary, based on recent polls, which show Markey 12 points ahead of Kennedy!

This might mean the end of all Kennedys in Massachusetts always winning, and it could be that Joe Kennedy III might not get another chance to go to the Senate, and might not be able to run again for the House of Representatives.

This is quite a gamble by a Kennedy, and it seems likely to be a lost cause!

The inclination of this blogger and author is that if I lived in Massachusetts, I would vote for Markey, but not be happy about rejecting a talented Joe Kennedy III!

This race should not have happened, as Joe III should have waited for either Markey or Warren to leave the Senate, without this pitched battle now coming to its end on Tuesday!

Major Blunders: Bill Clinton’s Denunciation Of Bernie Sanders, And Madeleine Albright And Gloria Steinem Critical Of Young Women Who Support Bernie Sanders Over Hillary Clinton

Ronald 20 Comments

The Democratic Presidential campaign is getting extremely heated, but the Hillary Clinton campaign is making major blunders that could reverberate on her chances to be the nominee of the party long term.

Husband Bill Clinton unleashing a denunciation of Bernie Sanders is totally unwise, and reminds us of how he helped to ruin his wife’s candidacy in 2008, when he bitterly engaged in what many thought was racism in his attacks on Barack Obama.

The best thing Bill Clinton could do is SHUT UP, and stay out of the campaign, and let his wife fight her own battles, as his involvement is counterproductive.

But also, the decision of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at a Hillary Clinton rally; and of feminist icon Gloria Steinem on Bill Maher’s show, to be critical of young women who are flocking to Bernie Sanders’s campaign, is also extremely counterproductive, as no young woman or young man or anyone has an obligation to support Hillary because she is a woman!

All these new developments are doing is make the chance 0f unity of Democrats for the Fall campaign far less likely, and the end result could be the Democrats could lose the national election to the Republicans, and condemn America to a right wing extremist government, that will have the ability to transform the Supreme Court to the far right, and lose a generation or more of reasonable constitutional law!

MS Magazine Hits 40! The Great Impact Of The Feminist Movement

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It is hard to believe that it has been 40 years, two generations, since MS Magazine was started by the founders of the National Organization For Women, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan.

How much the role and life of women has changed in those 40 years!

Not only are a majority of college students now female, but also that is true in medical and law schools and other professions.

Women have come to be an important influence in Congress, in both the House of Representatives and US Senate, and we have had women running for Vice President and President, and ending up as top presidential advisers. Also, women have occupied the governorship of many states and been major factors in state legislatures.

Women have ended up on the Supreme Court and other federal and state courts, and they have reached the pinnacle of power in many corporations as Chief Executive Officer.

Women have become a great success story in so many other ways, and the treatment of women in social situations has also undergone dramatic change.

Women have definitely been “liberated” in ways no one could have believed forty years ago, and they have become a model of what should be happening in much of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, where there is still much oppression of women, in some cases shockingly so!

Marriage and personal relationships have been transformed, changing the family structure, and the differences between men and women relating to what they are capable of doing and being, has been narrowed to the point that they can be seen as equally capable of just about anything except child bearing.

Not everyone likes what feminism has done, but it has, overall, improved America for the better!