Gerri Ferraro Needs To Chill

I know I said something about this earlier, but former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro (who ran on the ticket with Walter Mondale in 1984) had complained of “sexism” in the treatment Senator Hillary Clinton received in the most recent Democratic presidential candidates debate in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago.

Well, she wrote a letter on the subject that was published in the New York Times today as a follow up, in which she states as follows (and repeats the sexism charge)…

It will help if, next time out, John Edwards and Senator Obama stick to substantive policy disagreements with Senator Clinton. If they can’t, they’ll only prove themselves unworthy of our party’s nomination.

Since Ferraro provides no examples of alleged sexism by Edwards or any other presidential candidate, I reviewed the transcript of the debate here. And I found out some interesting information, paying particular attention to what John Edwards said:

Edwards made a lot of good points about the effects of trade on our communities, as well as the need to enroll more candidates in nursing education programs and establish better staff/patient ratios for those nurses in practice.

Regarding the issues of early education and nutrition, Sen. Chris Dodd was named Senator Of The Decade by the Head Start Association.

I also found out that John Edwards was opposed to decriminalizing marijuana (I don’t quite agree, but that is a bit of a slippery slope I’ll admit – I don’t think the cops or our criminal justice system should be forced to prosecute cases where somebody was caught with a dime bag fill of seeds, but I respect the other point of view also).

In a related vein, I found no question posed by either moderator (Brian Williams or Tim Russert) as to whether or not students convicted of minor drug offenses should be entitled to student aid for college (I believe they should – the ban was put into place under Reagan, and it needs to be repealed).

I also object to the concept of a “lightning round” in these debates; I think it further trivializes an exercise which, at this point, is becoming tedious and repetitive already, unfortunately.

However, I found absolutely no traces whatsoever of sexist behavior towards Clinton from Edwards or anyone else (boneheaded, leading questions by Russert, sure, but no sexism).

So basically, I challenge Geraldine Ferraro to provide a shred of evidence to back up her charge. Otherwise, she should shut her yap.

Update 11/20/07: And by the way, speaking of Edwards here, how does "I'm not willing to talk about that at this point" (with "it" being HRC winning the nomination) turn into "I won't support her"?