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Showing posts from January 14, 2008

Race and gender in the Democratic presidential primary

Your blogstress has spent the better part of a week examining the fascinating phenomenon of alpha-feminist participation in the top Democratic campaigns for the presidency. In fact, the campaigns of Hillary Clinton , Barack Obama and John Edwards each feature a leader in reproductive rights movement as senior advisers; in Clinton campaign, Ann Lewis , who once served communications chief for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is a top strategist. The Edwards campaign is graced by the presence of Kate Michelman , who ran NARAL for more than 20 years, and her predecessor at NARAL, Karen Mulhauser , is Barack Obama 's senior advisor on women's issues. This is truly amazing -- that each of the campaigns has taken up a feminist agenda, not just on reproductive rights, but an a range issues, including family leave and Social Security. But with a woman in the race, there is also a risk of division within the feminist movement between those who believe that the only tru