Friday, March 21, 2008

Why is Barack Obama keeping women hidden?

So today I stumbled upon zuzu's interesting critique of Senator Obama's record on women and reproductive justice. At the end of this must-read, zuzu says:

Then there’s the way he doesn’t talk about them — his campaign website doesn’t have these issues listed anywhere I can find (Faith? Yes. Women? No).



Following zuzu's lead, I popped over to the Obama campaign website, and I came across something interesting.

On the Issues page, there are 20 specific topic areas plus 1 catch-all called Additional Issues which combines Art, Child Advocacy, Katrina, Science, Sportsmen, and Transportation. Now, why those issues are deemed marginal or less important... that's a separate conversation we could have. Although I'm hard pressed to figure what what voter wouldn't care about at least one of these [a creationist pedestrian pedophile from the northern U.S.?]?

So, 

Observation #1: "Women" do not appear anywhere on the Issues section of the Obama campaign web site.


Observation #2: Senator Obama's Blueprint for Change, the downloadable .pdf file, DOES have  a "Women" section in it.

In this section in the blueprint, the Senator lays out his agenda on issues such as pay equity, reproductive choice, health care, and domestic violence--all critical issues, in my opinion.


Observation #3: There is only one topic that appears as its own section in the Blueprint but does NOT appear on the Issues web site.

You guessed it.

Women.

So here's the obvious question: why would the Senator's platform on women appear in the printed document BUT NOT be readily accessible on the website?

Well I can't speak for zuzu (obviously) but I think we both would agree that part of the rationale for omitting a "woman's issue" [problematic term] such as reproductive justice from the web site might be to (1) avoid having to be drawn into the "abortion debate," and (2) avoid having to be held accountable for his (actual?) position, and (3) try to court more of the misogynist vote? [I wish I were being sarcastic about (3).]

Quite a strategic move, actually: you can't say he doesn't have a position on something 'controversial' like abortion, you just have to dig a little to find it (I'd be curious to know how many supporters of the Senator have, in fact, downloaded and read his entire Blueprint. If you never looked at the printed Blueprint, you would, as zuzu found, have no real clear sense of where the Senator stands on crucial issues such as reproductive justice.

It would be absurd to think this is somehow just a haphazard oversight, wouldn't it? Perhaps a justification exists out there. I'm just not so certain.

What I am certain of, however, is that Senator Clinton doesn't keep women hidden--on her web site, or in her actual work.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a huge part of my issue with him - and on this set of issues where he's particularly questionable, Senator Clinton is particularly strong.