An Open Letter to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents

An Open Letter to Democrats, Republicans, and Independents

by DONEDems.com

September 6, 2008

To whom it may concern:

We, as supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, are alarmed by the vile denigration of Sarah Palin and her family by unsavory elements of the media glitterati and the fringe left. These sensationalist bigots attack Gov. Palin’s motherhood, insinuating that she cannot achieve what male Vice-Presidents have done for decades in balancing family life and executive duty. We wonder why this has never been asked of John McCain, father of seven; Barack Obama, father of two; nor of Joe Biden, who began his Senate career as a widowed father of two.

Sexism from the chattering classes diminishes Gov. Palin’s successful gubernatorial experience, ignoring her credentials as an executive who managed a $10million budget and her record as a reformer who fought the good-ole-boys in her own party and won. We wonder where the outrage was when John Edwards – a one-term Senator with no foreign policy credentials or executive experience – ran for Vice-President and President. We wonder also why the media does not question the inexperienced Obama – who has spent his single Senate term running for President.

We stop our wondering when we note that Gov. Palin is a woman while these others are men.

Moreover, the use of Gov. Palin’s special-needs child and pregnant daughter as bludgeons to diminish their mother horrifies us. Ham-handed schlock artists in the press – prominent among them NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, CNN’s Campbell Brown, herself the unapologetic working mother of an infant child, and the New York Times’s sewage spewing Maureen Dowd – are practitioners of the most loathsome kind of ‘journalism’ imaginable. Their juvenile, sexist political analysis belongs in the gutter or in a boys bathroom stall – not in mainstream discourse.

The hateful treatment of Gov. Palin proves that the liberal establishment has learned nothing from our much-publicized journey with Sen. Clinton. We are upset that continued abuse of female candidates leaves us in the unenviable position of rallying around one who holds many views antithetical to our own. But whether the candidate in question is progressive or regressive, we are unable to tolerate sexist attacks which turn our stomachs and cheapen the discourse.

We challenge politicians to stand with male and female Hillary Democrats as they failed to do during the primary season. Democrats and Republicans must unequivocally assert that attacks on any woman candidate focused on gender and not on her record must immediately cease. They must reject and denounce sexist rumor mills like the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and any other smear monger in the press.

We will be watching closely over the next two months. Our pleas for decency cannot be met with just more silence. We urge that sexist attacks against Gov. Palin be shut down forthwith – removing the politics of identity, grievance, and prejudice and allowing all to refocus on ideas, qualifications, and character.

Otherwise, if need be, we are prepared to use the ballot box to make a final statement against hatred of women.

We are saddened that it has come to this.

UNDERSIGNED by

DONEDems.com