Female ex-candidate to 'protect' Hillary Clinton

[Herman Munster]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/01/wclint01.xml

The first woman to run on a US presidential ticket has promised her friend Hillary Clinton that she will help her fight Republican "dirty tricks" in the race for the White House. "The only thing that can stop Hillary becoming the next president would be smears and dirty tricks," said Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats' losing 1984 vice-presidential candidate. "I've told her I'll go anywhere and speak any time to make sure that doesn't happen."

She outlined her plans for a display of female solidarity with the Democratic presidential frontrunner last week in an interview in her office overlooking Ground Zero, where the World Trade Centre once stood in lower Manhattan. Miss Ferraro, 71, now the managing director of a large corporate public relations and consultancy firm, has joined the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Billie Jean King, the former tennis star, in a "rapid rebuttal force" of well-known women on standby to defend and promote Sen Clinton's candidacy.

"We've learned our lessons from 2004," she told The Sunday Telegraph, referring to the so-called Swift Boat campaign when some former Vietnam veterans who served with John Kerry, the Democrats' last White House nominee, questioned the medals he won for valour.

"The Democrats' mistake was to sit back and think nobody would believe this garbage. But some of it stuck and the harm was done. This time we'll be out there fighting back," insisted Miss Ferraro, a feisty New York native who is a regular commentator on Fox News, the conservative television network.

[Colobo]

1. Jesse backs Obama, Geraldine backs Hillary

I'm so surprised...

[Kutjara]

2. Well, middleaged white guys have been backing...

...middleaged white guys since the country began, so turnabout is fair play.

[emilyg]

17. You got it

right!

[MADem]

6. Well, that's a total no-brainer. His kid wouldn't get reelected as dogcatcher in

sweet home Chicago if he dissed the hometown candidate.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Lesson #1: Watch out for those photographers

http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2007/03/31/ap/business/d8o7e2h00.txt

[orwell]

4. That's funny...n/t

[DCKit]

5. Shirley Chisolm (sp?) was the first

Not to be a bitch about it, but I was there.

[MADem]

8. Geraldine never ran for President. But she was the first female on a NOMINATED ticket.

It's not a question of first, it's a question of who made it past the primaries to the general.

[DCKit]

10. I stand corrected

It's all in the details. I'd make a GREAT RepubliCon.

[MADem]

12. The details are actually kinda interesting. VICTORIA WOODHULL was waaaaay back when!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_United_States_presidential_and_vice-presidential_candidates

And that was before women even got the vote!

See, technically, not even Geraldine was first to make it past the primaries. But she was the first to make it past for a "major" (read: one that had a chance in hell of winning) party.

Amazing how long it has taken in this country to see females dancing on the glass ceiling. Way too long, IMO.

[salin]

14. I think that being "on the ticket" was what was meant

Chisholm was the first candidate (and a personal hero of mine), Ferraro was the first on a national presidential ticket (as VP to Mondale.) Granted VPs don't have to do the primary gauntlet that the presidential candidates have to survive.

[salin]

16. Some great women former legislators have been brought back into the limelight

first with Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker of the House, and now with Sen. Clinton's run.

Days after Pelosi was the clear new House leader I heard frmr (and brief presidential candidate) Patricia Schroeder on several news shows (I still find her as inspirational as I did when I first worked on the Hill and she was a high profile Dem in the mid eighties.) Now we see others such as Ferraro come into the lime light. I love it! Whether or not one is a Hillary backer - it is inspirational to see these women come back in to the media focus and remind us of the role that some women, no longer in the lime light, have played in paving the role for a female front runner for a presidential nomination. I seriously did not think I would see this in my life-time.

While I am not yet a Sen Clinton (or anyone else) backer - I do recognize and appreciate the significance of this run. I knew then self-proclaimed progressives who opted out of voting for Mondale due to "Ferraro's inexperience"... that wasn't an issue with Quayle a few years later - I believed then, and still do, that the explanation was masked for not being willing to have a WOMAN be so close to the presidency (and in that era a presidential assassination, a presidential candidate assasination and two presidential assassination attempts were all in close historical proximity so the issue of VP was a salient one.)

Very glad to see Ferraro back in the public light. She was (and is) a trail blazer.

[UTUSN]

7. K&R for fighting back n/t

[rodeodance]

9. happy to.

[Rock_Garden]

11. Ferraro's iconic. It's so very weird she's on Fox News.

How on earth did that happen?

[WorldResident]

13. I'm glad to see Geraldine is doing OK with her health, presumably

n/t

[ShortnFiery]

15. Lovely!

:eyes: :thumbsdown:

It always disgusts me when other women choose to out machismo men - instead - of bringing out the prized (for evolution!) "typical" feminine qualities that make us GREAT, i.e., examples are increased tendency toward consensus building and diplomatic type behaviors.

[Gloria]

18. She had some sort of cancer...apparently, she's either in remission or

beating it.....

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

19. Excellent news

Common wisdom on the 08 race boils down to "Dems will win it if they don't fuck it up." I would like to amend that to "Dems will win it if we don't let them fuck us up."

Every Dem candidate should have a rapid-response team. Obama clearly has one and it's been doing pretty good. "Ignore it, rise above it and it'll go away" is not a strategy for success.