2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Where is Bernie Sanders on Gender Justice? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)he knows very well the problems that women and people of color have. No doubt whatsoever.
He will embarrass Congress into changing our justice system and into passing legislation to help women.
He is advocating for abortion rights and a woman's right to control her body, equal pay, maternity leave and other issues that will help women.
One thing a lot of women overlook is the importance of Social Security to us. We earn less than men. Social Security benefits are based on what you earn. I know a woman who married a man younger than herself. She has retired and has to rely on the lowest payments from Social Security -- not really Social Security -- until her younger husband retires and she gets some additional benefits based on his work.
I personally do not trust Hillary on the Social Security issue. Regardless of what she says, she is friends with people like Pete Peterson and many on Wall Street who want to privatize Social Security. That would really hurt older women.
Women on the average, from a statistical point of view, live longer than men, so a woman not only may be dependent on Social Security for a longer time than her husband, but the savings that a couple or a single woman may have accumulated will have to stretch further.
Social Security is a make or break issue for women (although we do not think about that fact much).
In 2008, Obama advocated for raising the cap on the income subject to Social Security taxes. Hillary objected if you recall suggesting that an income of $250,000 per year is middle class. I don't know about you, but I consider myself to be middle class, and my husband and I together never, never made that much money in a year. It was quite a mistake on Hillary's part.
I think Bernie is a fighter and more likely to fight the oligarchs for us than Hillary is.
Hillary is a nice person, but she does not have the stubbornness or the understanding of the lives that most of us have and the economic and workplace issues that we have that Bernie has.
When I think of how the Republicans just dug their heels in and refused to support any of Obama's good ideas or work with him, I think we need a strong fighter who will mince no words in dealing with Republicans in Congress.
I like Obama. He is a great man, but he has been too easy on the Republicans. He just does not have the toughness that Bernie has. He has not been able to answer the Republicans' nastiness in kind. The Republicans have bullied not only Obama but the entire country in the last 25 years since Reagan. It's time we get someone who can stand up to them.