Among McCain's long list of objectionable traits, starting with his infamously outrageous temper and ending with being a pandering bozo, is that when he's got no legitimate argument in his arsenal to use against a Democratic opponent, he has a tendency to use ancient misogynist slurs, as when he suggested that an Iraq War resolution introduced by Rep. Jack Murtha was a result of Murtha's being "too emotional."
Or as today, when Obama gave a speech criticizing Bush's appeasement shtick, which a McCain spokesman promptly denounced as a "hysterical diatribe."
Casting Democratic rivals as "girly men" through the use of overt sexist rhetoric, innuendo, and dog whistles is a classic strategy in the GOP playbook. This is something all Democrats, Democratic voters, and semi-conscious lefties should know.
Which makes the abject failure of so many of them to give the tiniest, microscopic shit about sexism during this primary so patently short-sighted, aside from unconscionable on an ethical level.
No matter which Democratic candidate goes into the general, misogyny's going to be used against them. And it would be a significantly less successful strategy if the Democrats were sweeping into the general on a cresting wave of misogyny-busting awesomeness, instead of having no goddamned leg to stand on.
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