Is Hillary Stretching The Narrative On Suffrage?

h/t reader W Willie for this - a You Tube clip of Hillary's recent View appearance here. Two-minutes in Hillary starts talking about "all these women in their nineties" who come to her events and tell her about "being born" when women couldn't vote and how they say they just can't wait to see a women elected President for that reason. She even mentions the age 95. The dates jibe but does the narrative, especially to support her claim of large numbers of women expressing such a sentiment?

For example, a 95 year old woman would have been born in 1912. The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Do the Math. I don't doubt that there may be a few women "in walkers" who might think that way, but given that there likely isn't a single woman Hillary has encountered while campaigning who was ever prevented from voting for her gender and a 95 year-old woman was given that Right when she was 8 years-old, I have a hard time believing her on the road encounters rise to the level she suggests in the narrative she constructed for The View.

Comments

[Fred Beloit]

Yes indeed. Sounds like the truths in the writings for which Rigoberta Menchu Tum received the Nobel Peace Prize. Sure she told a lot of lies in her works but they all demonstrated a "higher truth". according to a liberal reporter (pardon my redundancy).

[seekeronos]

I reckon HRC's staffers must have dropped the ball on that one.

Now she'll have MoveOn.org locate a few 105+ year old biddies to carp about suffrage, or carp about giving suffrage to the poor voteless liberals living in DC and other non-states like Puerto Rico, the USVI, Guam and Samoa.

[Lala]

Seek

Do you think the deal would be to let them vote without becoming states?

There is no Federal Income Tax in Puerto Rico plus business gets big tax breaks.

Barbara Boxer's husband has interests in Guam, that's why the minumum wage was kept low. There is also no Federal Income Tax.

[jj]

"Representation without taxation", eh, Lala. Only a brainless liberal could come up with that scheme. And speaking of redundacy. Haha!

[Jody]

She, uh, never mentions the women themselves were denied votes. Just that they were alive at a time when women in general were denied votes.

[Robert]

Jody is right -- Senator Clinton says that she meets women who were born before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It's that simple.

[seekeronos]

"--- She, uh, never mentions the women themselves were denied votes. Just that they were alive at a time when women in general were denied votes. ---"

This may be true, but the message is that she is trying to use these old ladies to bolster herself, with the implication that they would have had a care about voting in national elections at the age of 8 years.

The vast majority of 8 year-olds *usually* don't think a great deal about politics.

By the time those 95 year old women reached voting age (18) in 1930, it was likely taken as a fact of life that women could vote ... in national elections.

Just more political posturing from Madame Hitlary.

[Toyboat]

You know, there is just plain stupid and then there is Riehly stupid.

[jj]

"...Just that they were alive at a time when women in general were denied votes."

Hmmm...it seems to me that there is a religious group of people in the World right now who deny women the right to vote. I wonder if Hillary is ready to listen to this group of women. And crap, that means we are all alive at a time when women in general are being denied votes in a large part of the World. I'm sure Toyboat and the rest of the liberals are ready to remedy this situation. Just like we did in Iraq.

[bargal20]

Wow...I...just wow. That post is so dense rationality cannot escape its pull.

[bargal20]

JJ, I'm sure you would have supported a pre-1920 invasion of the USA by a foreign power to secure female suffrage and the end of segregation. No?

[BobInStamford]

This is HUGE news. It opens the door for FRED! to take over.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/16/schneider.poll/index.html

Oh wait, looks like even the cons are catching on to the fact that ole Fred! is a lazy bullshitter. Sorry Fred. Time to go home and play with those little kids. Gotta remind them that you aren't grandpa.

[Jay B.]

"This may be true, but the message is that she is trying to use these old ladies to bolster herself, with the implication that they would have had a care about voting in national elections at the age of 8 years."

Are you guys trying to top one another with te3h Stupid?

You've never heard the "when I was born"...thing from an older person? These tend to note how much things have change (or how long progress has taken or how things are worse now than they were back then). It's a completely routine kind of human impulse. But not to you geniuses who see hidden conspiracies and evil lies within the most ordinary of claims (claims that, if you actually CAN do the math, make perfect sense -- try your toes, morons.).

Instead, your crippling fixation on the Clintoris makes you positively illiterate and more insentient than usual. Congrats.

Anyway, it's nice to see you questioning the integrity of the elderly now, it was tiring reading about your hatred of crippled kids.

[Elmo]

Dan, your dumbest post ever.

[seekeronos]

"--- You've never heard the "when I was born"...thing from an older person? ---"

Usually, the way I hear it from older folks than I was more like "When I was your age, ...". The full breadth of experience usually doesn't account for much regarding even a very ancient elder's anecdotal remarks about their lives as _very_ young children, especially in an era when children were expected to be seen and not heard.

Factually, we are not disputing that Hitlary talked with females over the age of 95 years of age.

In fact, she may well have talked with women born in 1919, who'd be 88 this year. They were born before female suffrage yes, but their own anecdotal experience of it would be at best second hand, as their significantly elder sisters, cousins, aunts, mothers and grandmothers would have had much more to say about it. Most of whom, I might add, are as dead as shoe leather, or my confederate sockpuppet I use as a comic foil for some of the more lunkheaded posters here.

So yeah. Hillary gabs it up with centenariennes and nonagenariennes ... but that can only give us for the most part, anecdotal, second or third hand information about American female non-suffrage.

I think that was Dan's point - not that Hillar spoke with these ancient women, nor that they existed for the earliest years of their lives in a non-suffrage state that had little bearing on them in the first place, for most of them were no where near the minimum age of suffrage for ANY gender.

[seekeronos]

"--- This is HUGE news. It opens the door for FRED! to take over. ---"

Nice try with hte subject change, but you can save that poll for wiping your rear end with. Ain't a whole lot coming out of the Communist News Network that I give much more than a grain of salt to.

Try a real poll like the Rasmussen Reports or the other polls at RealClearPolitics.com

[Moltasto]

OMFG, Dan...you're so stupid. Riehl stupid.

Hahahahahahahahaha....

[Moltasto]

OMFG, Dan...you're so stupid. Riehl stupid.

Hahahahahahahahaha....

[Garrigus]

I can't stand Hillary (my senator), but I think she's being straightforward here. A 95-year-old American woman has seen a sharp upswing in women's rights during her lifetime. I can imagine the symbolism of witnessing both the onset of suffrage (even if not experiencing it) & the first female President could be pretty powerful for some people.

@seekeronos:
"By the time those 95 year old women reached voting age (18) in 1930, it was likely taken as a fact of life that women could vote ... in national elections."

Um, the voting age at the federal level was, of course, 21 until the ratification of the 26th amendment in 1971.

[JimK]

What's weird about this is it may have happened once. It IS a mathematically true possibility, but that same woman would have personally experienced World War 1, the Depression AND WW2. I think the suffragette movement that was successful before most of them stopped wetting the bed would NOT be first and foremost in their memories.

This story smells like one of Hillary's patented embellishments. Where I come from we call those lies.

Dan, I blogged this as well, but Typepad refuses to let me track you back, so...ping. http://www.right-thoughts.us/index.php/weblog/comments/another_weird_hillary_clinton_lie/

[seekeronos]

DISCLAIMER: I started this reply at around 10:30pm EST, and got distracted by a rather interesting cell phone... so, I take no responsibility for what others have written since. :P

"--- Um, the voting age at the federal level was, of course, 21 until the ratification of the 26th amendment in 1971. ---"

My bad. So that rolls back the earliest date of female franchise a few years: whereas under my (incorrect) assumption of 18 years of age, and a birth cohort year of 1902, it would be 21 years of age in 1920, and a birth cohort year of 1899.

It means the 95-y.o. women born in 1912 would have had franchise in 1933. Therefore, the earliest age where the 1920 amendment would have made a drastic difference would be to women who entered there 21st year in 1920, giving them a birthyear in 1899. I reckon that there is only a very small handful of people born that year left alive - such women would be 108 this year - for the Hildabeast to have interviewed. It would be the women of that cohort who would have the firmest story of what expectations they would have of a life denied of the franchise. Many older women from earlier birth year cohorts could certainly relate, but given the relative age of these women (over 108 years of age: not likely to have survived in any statistically probable numbers to meet Mrs. Clinton).

So: as I said, while the youngest of these ancient women (age cohort: birth years 1899-1919; age range: 88-108 years of age) - while certainly young enough to have lived the earliest portion of their lives in the tragic lack of franchise, would only have anecdotal connections to that previous era through significantly older siblings/half-siblings, cousins, and more likely, aunts, mothers and grandmothers who have long since left this plane of existence.

Likewise, by the time the birth cohort of 1912 (those 95 year olds of today) attained to their high school years, (say, 1925-1929) suffrage would have already been a political fact of life on their horizons. For them, the dark time of female non-franchise would have already been but a dim childhood memory, only brought to mind by their then-alive elders (by some elder males likely regretting the 1920 Amendment, and by elder females rejoining in it) to whom it may very well have been an annoying reminder of a former injustice then rendered irrelevant by the passage of the Amendment.

Sort of how my grandpa (age cohort: 1900) would speak of the Great Depression, annoying my father (born at the tail end of it, and therefore, not fully cognizant of the realities of that time) and myself (born much later, and having absolutely no connection to it at all).

[craig]

Dan,
You ignorant POS. Get a dictionary and look up "born" and "vote". Hillary didn't say the grannies weren't allowed to vote. They are telling her about "being born" when women couldn't vote. You cannot think clearly, therefore you cannot reason clearly, therefore you are an ass.

[seekeronos]

Hey Craig:

Dan never disputed that the grannies were born in an era when women couldn't vote.

What you and a few other incredibly dense lunkheads here blinded by partisan fervor have missed is that most of these women were barely past toilet-training age when women got the vote, and probably didn't give a flying fig about it until the mid-1920s at the earliest, and more likely the 1930s, when female voting was a FACT OF LIFE.

Most of them can only claim anecdotal knowledge of "life before the vote" at best, unless they are over 100 years of age.

And you might want to check into reality, as there ain't many 100 year-old biddies left, and fewer still to whinge to Hillary about how rough they had it when the only way they could express their independent womanhood was to light up a "Virginia Slims" cigarette.

You tell me: how many important political issues can you expound on from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE at eight years of age?

For me, that would be the Nixon Administration. Lots of anecdotal info from my parents, and from history books... but even though I was alive at that time, it didn't mean a hill of beans to me other than some old codger saying "I am not a crook".

I hope you can understand that, and perhaps you can re-read Dan's post... unless the Liberal "Ed-Ja-mah-Kay-shun" and brainwashing you were cruelly subjected to has failed to give you reading comprehension except for the most simply worded MoveOn.org talking points.

[Dan Riehl]

I love the smell of liberalism in the morning, smells like ... stupid.

[mark]

Hyuck, hyuck. Dan made a funny. How about another? "He who smelt it, dealt it."

But seriously, Dan. People remember stuff. I remember images of piles of Vietnamese bodies being loaded on trucks after the Tet offensive. I personally didn't have to go to war against my will, kill foreigners, and load their bodies unto flat bed trucks, since I was 9 at the time. But I remember.

Try not to be such a pathetic dolt, dude.

[Fred Beloit]

My mother-in-law is 93. She never mentions that she couldn't vote as an infant. She was too young. Now she never mentions that she is grateful for suffrage so she can vote for Hillery. Is there something wrong with her? Or is there something wrong with the Lefty turdicants who spout there daily nonsense here?

[Officious Pedant]

Boy, when I'm in the mood for some uptight and defensive stupid, this is the only place worth coming to.

As is the norm, the not so quick-witted immediately jump into the middle of the argument and start parsing what a 95 year old woman probably knew about voting at the time, or what they feel about it now. As if the Riehl stupid hadn't happened. HRC says that she meets women in their nineties, who look forward to the day a woman is elected President, given the fact that when they were born a woman couldn't vote. All those things, less how they feel about a female President, are true. Women that lived before 1920 could not vote. A woman of 95 today would have been born and living during that period. And it's a fairly astonishing transformation, possibly, to them that a woman is now running for President.

It's a fairly simple thing, so I'm not surprised Dan and his merry band are having so much trouble with it.

[Al in St. Lou]

Libruls shore ar dumm.

[Fred Beloit]

Officious proclaims: "HRC says that she meets women in their nineties, who look forward to the day a woman is elected President, given the fact that when they were born a woman couldn't vote."

One stands, how shall I say it, in awe before the blinding glint of cold logic! (Partial thanks to Richard Harris, now deceased but not when he played English Bob in "Unforgiven".)

"In 1971 the United States ratified the 26th Amendment to the Constitution granting the right to vote to 18-20-year-olds."

Whenever I speak with someone born before 1971, they always tell me we need a constitutional amendment that would change the minimum age of qualification to be POTUS to 18. They look forward to a day when an 18-year-old can be elected Preseident, given the fact that when they were born an 18 to 20 year-old couldn't even vote.

[AndyS]

There are just over 2 million women alive in the US aged 87 or more. Hillary could easily have met "a lot" of women who were born before women were granted the right to vote.