"This Woman Claims To Be A Feminist, But She Seems More Interested In Apologizing For Radical Opponents of Women’s Rights."

Professor Althouse approvingly links to some winger interviewing Kathleen Willey, who asks people to look at what Hillary Clinton “has done to me.” Needless to say, Althouse omits the fact that one of the things that Willey believes Clinton to have done to her is to have her husband killed. Admittedly, to Althouse the fact that Willey is fabricating lunatic conspiracy theories about the Clintons probably adds to her credibility, but to people capable of a modicum of rationality where the Clintons are concerned this may serve as a reminder that one reason why feminist groups may not have given Willey the level of support she deemed appropriate is because her story was utterly lacking in credibility. Willey also trots out this classic routine:

The feminists, NOW, they’re all about one issue: abortion. They’re not talking about women’s rights, being an advocate for women, or equality in the work place. Those aren’t issues anymore. It’s abortion, plain and simple.

Indeed; for example, NOW completely ignored the major employment discrimination case that ruled in favor of companies engaging in rank discrimination (thanks to the decisive vote of Althouse’s beloved Justice Alito) that came down this term! And refused to try do anything about it! The claim is also transparently wrong in another way. NOW and other feminist groups came out strongly against Bob Packwood, a strong pro-choicer who opposed Bork on the grounds that he would vote to overturn Roe, because there was actual credible evidence that he had repeatedly sexually harassed members of his staff.

At any rate, it’s obvious that while Bill Clinton has engaged in personal behavior that is potentially objectionable on feminist grounds he’s certainly never done anything remotely bad enough to justify supporting alternatives who are vastly worse on women’s rights in policy terms. And while Hillary Clinton overall would be no higher than fourth if I was ranking the potential Democratic candidates in order of overall preference, it is overwhelmingly likely that if elected her administration would do more to advance women’s rights than any previous one — this is one of her strongest selling points. When you’re reduced to citing Kathleen Willey against this (and are a Rudy Giuliani lickspittle selectively claiming that how a candidate treats the women in his or her personal life is of overriding importance), it’s pretty clear that you don’t have a serious rebuttal to this.