Fear among Senators and Congressmen

Maureen Dowd has fun with the fear among US Senators and Representatives in Congress in her column "Roadkill on Capitol Hill."

She quotes a worried Alan Simpson who in 1991 had sympathy for poor Clarence Thomas, whose reputation was being bombarded by a woman who had "come out of the night like a missile" revealing his past sexual conduct.

Yes, it's sad that Nancy Pelosi's instinct was to protect poor old John Conyers.  We want to be nice to old black gentlemen, right, even if they are sexual predators?

Dowd applauds Kirsten Gillibrand's calling a spade a spade with regard to Bill Clinton, in spite of his years of affairs and predator behavior.  I agree with Dowd and Gillibrand.  I ended my support of Bill as soon as the revelations came out detailing his use of Monica Lewinsky as a sex toy.

It's sad that Hillary Rodham Clinton's survival instinct led her to defend her husband and defame his prey. 

It's sad that she still stayed with him after the Lewinsky mess.

It's sad that she still wanted Harvey Weinstein's money, even though Lena Dunham and Tina Brown informed her staff that "Harvey's a rapist."

I refuse to condemn her, however, the way Maureen Dowd does with these words: "The muddled message of Hillary campaigning as a feminist while being a key cog in Weinstein's complicity machine..."

Hillary was a true feminist in each of those instances, and her choices--however wrong they may seem in our currently somewhat changed culture--were those of a woman who wanted to get ahead, who wanted to become president.

Eleanor Smeal, Nancy Pelosi, and other bona fide feminists made similar choices at the time.

Probably all of our presidents made unsavory alliances to work their way to the nation's highest office: JFK and the Mafia, LBJ and the war in Vietnam, Nixon and the Watergate break-in...

I want a woman president, and if in 2016 she took money from an asshole, I don't care.  

In 2018 candidates for office will be more cautious--unless they are like dt and Roy Moore, so far gone that they refuse to take responsibility even for their own law-breaking actions.