Temper Tantrum Politics

Temper Tantrum Politics
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

Hillary Clinton is the presumptive Democratic nominee for President. A historic, glass ceiling shattering milestone. Epic. Inspiring. Long overdue.

And yet, this auspicious moment is overshadowed by petulant men stomping their feet.

Instead of today's papers talking about this landmark moment, much in the way they did when President Obama was the first black nominee for president, the chatter is about Bernie. He's still fighting. He's still going. He's still leading his revolution and nothing is going to stop him.

On the other side, Donald is firmly in racist territory at the moment, name-calling and threatening because he feels a judge isn't treating him fairly. Not that this is a wild trajectory from the countless insulting, inappropriate, inflammatory statements he's made, but it happens to be front and center right now.

I can't help but see all this as nothing but full-blown temper tantrums.

Yes, it must be frustrating when you worked so hard at a campaign, have so many people idolizing you, when all you have to do is talk for people to go wild. That must be intoxicating and certainly hard to voluntarily give up.

Frustrating too, to have past indiscretions brought to light. Unfair business practices shared as evidence in court has stymied the opportunity to steam roll over opponents with a louder voice and harsher insults.

Bummer guys. Life can be tough when things don't go your way.

As these two politicians scream louder, protest more, get more strident and extremist in their stands, they scarily are becoming more and more similar. And for both it's not about the economy, education, social security, terrorism, rape culture, climate change, political gridlock anymore--it's about them and their egos.

On March, 28, 1912, an anti-suffrage editorial in the New York Times stated, "No doctor can ever lose sight of the fact that the mind of a woman is always threatened with danger from the reverberations of her physiological emergencies (i.e. menstruation). It is with such thoughts that the doctor lets his eyes rest upon the militant suffragist. He cannot shut them to the fact that there is mixed up in the woman's movement such mental disorder, and he cannot conceal from himself the physiological emergencies which lie behind."

And yet, the candidates whose actions and statements are growing increasingly emotional and irrational, aren't women.

Our first ever female presidential candidate is campaigning on platforms and plans, not rhetoric and pipe dreams. While not all agree with positions, at least she has positions. She doesn't bully or demean to make her points, she makes her points through discussion and facts, research and experience.

Watching this race devolve into something you'd expect in an elementary school playground has become nothing short of a global embarrassment. One can only hope (wishful thinking is more realistic) that Mrs. Clinton's male candidates stop behaving like cranky children and start acting like responsible adults, not to mention presidential candidates.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot