Support Ted’s Work

Herstory, for Real

Hillary Clinton’s probable victory in the Democratic presidential nomination is said to mark an important historical achievement for women. Certainly, she would become the first woman in the United States to be the nominee of a major party. From a broader historical vantage point, however, there’s nothing novel about a woman marrying a powerful political leader and achieving power as a result, which is what happened in Clinton’s case. It’s time for the system to reward women who achieve power of their own accord.

Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."

20 Comments. Leave new

  • falco
    June 10, 2016 3:17 AM

    First former-first lady as president, first obvious Goldman-Sachs surrogate president, first Democratic candidate to use GOP election fraud against her primary challenger (latest example tinyurl.com/gqvdyqz )

    You have to admit that her quasi-inevitable WWIII promises to be a doozy of historical proportions.
    e.g: tinyurl.com/j9mfnfs

  • Glenn
    June 10, 2016 8:32 AM

    In the tradition of W. Bush, in the 2000 election, the Democratic Party stopped the vote count while ahead and declared victory.

    Thank you Bernie for bringing so many issues to a public forum just as Occupy Wall Street did before you.

    Thank you for joining the resistance to the corrupt power elite, one I knew from the beginning you would leave, one way or another.

    The spirit of resistance exemplified by Muhammad Ali , who is honored today, meant that he would not submit to an illegal immoral war, even though he would not have served in any capacity beyond a pro-war propaganda role just as Elvis Presley did when he was drafted.

    Ali’s principles meant that he would not abandon the many to be drafted into an illegal war, nor abandon the many to be killed by these draftees, while he retired to his safe place.

    Now get the fuck out of the way, Bernie, there are battles to be fought that cannot and will not be won from within the corrupt electoral system.

    • mhenriday
      June 10, 2016 10:07 AM

      We shall have to see how Mr Sander’s behaves after the Washington DC primary and, not least during the upcoming Democratic Party Convention, but for the present, I view him in much the same manner as Andy Borowitz….

      Henri

      • Glenn
        June 10, 2016 10:48 AM

        “Thank you for joining the resistance to the corrupt power elite, one I knew from the beginning you would leave, one way or another.”

        Integrity is the ultimate disqualification for a presidential candidate.

        I will praise him to the rooftops as long as he remains thus disqualified with respect to the Democratic Party candidate.

        He must remain a principled Muhammad Ali, and not metamorphosize into an Elvis, a supporter of Hillary, instead of fostering the movement he appealed to for campaign support.

        Many have lost much due to the lack of an opposition party, the posture the Democratic Party lays claim to.

  • CrazyH
    June 10, 2016 3:30 PM

    Hey, Cleopatra slept her way to the top. But at least she did something to earn her honors…

  • michaelwme
    June 10, 2016 4:36 PM

    After the fiasco of ’72, the Democrats changed the rules so the party once again has full control of whom gets nominated, but it LOOKS fairer than it did in ’68. Plus, the New York Times and other major newspapers have said that Sanders and Trump are trying to destroy America by running against the ONLY person alive who is qualified to be President of the United States. They also say that Trump, if anyone were so stupid as to give him the button, would almost immediately start a nuclear holocaust.

    And so it looks almost certain we’ll have another President Clinton.

    Trump only started running after a chat with Bill. Trump and the Clintons are good friends, and Trump supported Senator Clinton in ’08. Is he only running to ensure that Bill gets back into the White House intern room?

    Dowd says that Trump is a good friend, no one should vote for him, but he desperately wants to be president. And the Times readers almost all say that she is not nearly as enthusiastic for Hillary as she should be, and the Times should fire her, preferably before the election started back in ’15.

    But DOES Trump really want to be president, or does he just want to make sure Secretary Clinton wins?

    His VP choice will answer that question. One person would prove he really wants to win. Almost anyone else proves he is only running as a favour to Bill, and that he’s doing his best and will deliver.

    My office mate said he was thinking of voting for Perot in ’92, but decided to vote for Clinton after he saw Perot’s VP choice, Admiral Stockdale, an elderly, distinguished, highly decorated retired officer in the US Navy who turned out to be borderline senile and could not answer the most simple questions in the VP debate. Likewise, Palin was a major liability for McCain, and he might have won if he’d chosen a better VP candidate.

    If Trump picks someone like Stockdale or Palin, he’s sure to lose.

    If he chooses wisely, he’ll have a chance to win. I can only think of one person who’d give him a decent chance, but I don’t know if he is going to pick her.

  • andreas5
    June 11, 2016 2:12 PM

    I built a time machine so I could go back and interview the ladies Ted mentioned in this cartoon to get their views on the subject.

    Bending physics wasn’t even the hardest part, trying to communicate meaningfully across that many centuries turned out to be the real challenge, and one’s dis-temporaries tend to view one as either as a fellow deity or as the devil depending on the respective belief system and epoch making it hard to build rapport.

    But when I did get them to understand the current predicament to some extent, it seemed they were generally supportive of our foreign Queen’s plight having to fight another contender to the throne after having only narrowly beaten some old Jew who came out of nowhere. I had a hard time communicating that last part, but once I got across that said Jew was riding on a wave of uppity commoners, the queens seemed to feel a level of sisterhood and helpfully suggested various techniques ranging from poison, to poisonous snakes, to sharp knives laced in more poison. Most of them were quite knowledgeable and verbose on the this part, but several also brought up machinations, slander, and innuendo as somewhat effective alternatives. (Cleansing by fire and pyres were mentioned as well, but this may have been merely in reaction to my ill-advised attempt of explaining the sadly linguistically non-universal concept of “feeling the Bern” to them.)

    After having conducted this experiment in comparative politics and and having conferred with said queens, I shall have to disagree for once with Ted: Hillary is indeed making (more of the same) history. I stand with her (since I am afraid to turn my back, ask Ray McGovern).

    • CrazyH
      June 11, 2016 2:29 PM

      Nicely done.

      Hey, on your way back could make a quick stop in 1938 & pick up a mint copy of Action Comics #1? Tx.

      • andreas5
        June 12, 2016 6:19 AM

        Sure thing. Give me a day or two, there is always a long line of war-porn time travel tourists for that particular year and one has to schedule a pre-jump into the near-future just to cut down the waiting period.

  • doubtingapostle
    June 11, 2016 6:06 PM

    None of those women were elected and got three million more votes than Bernie Sanders.

    • mhenriday
      June 12, 2016 2:22 AM

      «None of those women were elected and got three million more votes than Bernie Sanders.» Well, «doubtingapostle», you certainly get full points for historical knowledge ; the accuracy of your claim above is unassailable. On the other hand, you forget to mention that neither did any of the husbands/consorts of the women to whom Ted refers above achieve there power through elections – primary or otherwise, rigged or otherwise – and that the excellent Mr Sanders, though, of course ancient, 74 to Ms Clinton’s youthful 68, isn’t quite old enough to have been around in their times….

      Comments don’t have to be relevant to be published here – radical that he is, Ted exercises no censorship (at least none that I’ve hitherto been able to detect) – but I suspect most readers here do appreciate a certain degree of pertinency…. 😉

      Henri

    • andreas5
      June 12, 2016 8:00 AM

      Yup, HRC’s unassailable democratic credentials and popular support.

      HRC lost in 2008 even though she enjoyed massive support from the party establishment running against Obama (who was the surprise candidate run by the Chicago machine) and Edwards (who actually ran as a populist and split even with the other two for quite a long time).

      Her lesson for 2016 was clearly neither to learn about style from Obama (which ironically was lifted from Bill Clinton down to the hope and change slogan) or appealing to populist demands from Edwards. Rather than actually winning the primary on her own merits, HRC ensured that this time her prior establishment support wasn’t merely the biggest, but so overwhelming to nib all rival establishment candidacies in the bud. Had e.g. Joe Biden and Elisabeth Warren been on the ballot, it would have likely been a replay of 2008. Quite possibly a lot worse. So much for voter choice.

      This strategy was executed beautifully and so she did run unopposed apart from Kucinich type spoiler candidates who have next to no party organization or corporate money. Such candidates can safely be disregarded along with the 5% hippy vote they represent.

      Except that she almost managed to lose against a grass-roots patchwork campaign running against the party establishment (i.e. the very people who make the rules, schedule debates, and count the votes). This prompted the likes of Joe Biden to lament that had they known what a paper tiger her campaign was they should have run for the good of the party.

      She will get the nomination by the rules of the system and by nothing else. That system was biased in her favor. Credentials have to be sought elsewhere, hence the appeal to the popular vote talking point.

      This is ironic to put it mildly, for when one starts asking what people actually think of her as a candidate apart from not being Trump things turn ugly quickly…

      The 3 million number is cherry-picked, as you likely know. HRC did badly in caucus states as opposed to individual voting. What this reflects is that when people actually got together to mull things over, it becomes apparent to most of them that the virtually unknown opposition candidate is actually taken seriously by enough people (albeit not the establishment media) to merit consideration. So the caucuses massively swing to Bernie. Is this something to write home about?

You must be logged in to post a comment.
css.php