Traitors to their Gender!!!

Women Superdelegates
AP
April 19, 2008 -- Some female superdelegates backing Sen. Barack Obama are having their "sisterhood" questioned, just as some black Democrats have been challenged for their endorsement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

By LAURIE KELLMAN
WASHINGTON _ Some female superdelegates backing Sen. Barack Obama are having their "sisterhood" questioned, just as some black Democrats have been challenged for their endorsement of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

No one has actually accused Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., of betraying her gender in supporting Obama over Clinton in the race for the party's nomination, but they've let her know they're disappointed.

The reason some give: If Clinton does not win the White House this year, no woman will reach that goal in their lifetimes.

Klobuchar gets it; her mother, 80, is one of these women. The senator's 12-year-old daughter, meanwhile, supports Obama.

Mother's Day, when the three will next spend time together, could be a bit uncomfortable.

"Early on, I had a few people call and say, 'Please don't do this. We don't think it is a good idea for you.' They tended to be donors," Klobuchar recalled. "No one actually yelled at me to my face."

Superdelegates are members of Congress, elected officials and other party leaders who can back any candidate regardless of the vote in their state or district.

For those voters who feel betrayed by their superdelegates, the question isn't so much why they endorsed one Democratic candidate, it's why they rejected the other. Sometimes, the query is coupled with a veiled threat: Don't take your own success for granted.

"There's no question that some of our members are very angry," said Ellen R. Malcolm, president and founder of the EMILY's List political action committee, which gives money to female candidates who favor abortion rights.

"They feel that they elect the women and they've gone to bat for the women and they want every single woman to go to bat for every woman candidate," she added.

Asked whether Klobuchar and fellow freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, another Obama superdelegate, risk losing their seats over these endorsements, Malcolm said, "We'll just have to wait and see."

The issue is so sensitive some superdelegates are remaining neutral until a clear winner emerges. Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan, who is black and a woman, remains uncommitted.

Kilpatrick's staff late Thursday referred to a statement the congresswoman made in February in which she said she was remaining neutral because she's the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus and did not want to take sides.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California is avowedly neutral but intimately aware of the conflict. "My family is divided," she said.

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