The announcement is here, and at the moment is followed by 1,984 extraordinary comments, most of the 'Shame on you, I'm no longer a NARAL supporter' variety. Near as I can tell, NARAL pissed off a nonnegligible portion of its membership/donor base with their announcement today (which was buried anyhow by the Edwards endorsement). The comments are remarkable but by no means inexplicable: they boil down to wish-fulfillment abruptly ended, and expose the nasty, often vengeful side of cultural feminist identification (vs. beliefs). It may be hard for these commenters to accept that the Hillary Clinton Self-Esteem Entitlement For All XX-Carriers will not in fact be disbursed this year, but what's even harder - what's prompting this vituperation, really - is the possibility that it was always going to be meaningless. That's the emerging media narrative, after all: Clinton's always been the cynic, the panderer, the old-fashioned politician, the relic of identitarian Boomer politics, and Obama's candidacy implicates her acolytes not only in the Clinton campaign's grotesquerie but in the state of politics these last years and decades.
NARAL's endorsement of Obama probably feels to some of these women (and men) like an assertion (a reminder?) that their mode of politicking is in the eyes of a younger generation part of the problem.
Whether or not such a charge is merited, I'm sure it hurts, and I'm sorry it's come to that. But the idea that a reproductive rights advocacy organization is obligated to support one presidential candidate because she has a vagina is as embarrassing as the notion that Group XYZ can only support a candidate who doesn't have one.
The cries of 'Judas!' are childish, shortsighted, and stupid. They reveal something ugly about us.
