The victims are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence 
She was in her late 40s or early 50s, and she was angry. Hillary Clinton was losing the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama, and it was so unfair.
"I'm sorry, but African-American men had the vote long before any women did," she asserted. "We need a woman in the White House."
The argument is breathtaking, but it's out there, part of the narrative that many female baby boomers who support Ms. Clinton have constructed. But it misidentifies the enemy.
It wasn't a cabal of men led by Barack Obama that undermined Hillary Clinton. It was the "millennials," a cohort that came years after the boomers.
There has always been tension between the women's movement and the campaign for black civil rights. As far back as the 1860s, suffragettes complained the 14th and 15th Amendments were extending rights to black men that were still denied white women.
"If you will not give the whole load of suffrage to the entire people, give it to the most intelligent first," Susan B. Anthony urged. "Let the question of woman be brought up first and that of the Negro last."
Today, many resent the notion that race is more important than gender as a presidential precedent.
"Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot," Gloria Steinem wrote earlier this year, "and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women."
(Someone failed to inform Ms. Steinem that there are 16 women in the Senate; Mr. Obama is just the third black senator since Reconstruction.)
Former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro complained in an interview this week that "rampant" sexism has contributed to Ms. Clinton's impending defeat.
And Ms. Clinton herself observed that while allegations of racism toward Mr. Obama have ignited firestorms in the press, equally vicious sexist attacks against her have been more accepted.
"It does seem as though the press is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists," she told the Washington Post.
Claiming that sexism is an evil equal to or even greater than racism equates the metaphorical ghetto with the real ghetto, drudgery with slavery, suffrage with lynching, glass ceilings with Jim Crow.
And to believe that powerful misogynists within the Democratic Party and the media decided to subvert Ms.Clinton's campaign by banding together to support - not Joe Biden or Chris Dodd, veteran senators both; not John Edwards, who ran as a candidate for the vice-presidency; not Bill Richardson, who has both cabinet and gubernatorial experience - but a black freshman senator from Illinois, is laughable.
And it misses the point. The central fact of this election is the declining influence of the baby boom and the rise of the millennial generation. The boomers have always gotten everything their way. They are "the demographic that matters." And it is the boomers, especially boomer women, who most want Hillary Clinton. She represents the culmination of their lifelong struggle for power, access and respect.
But the young want Barack Obama. An entire generation of the turned off and tuned out has re-engaged because of his candidacy. And they made a tremendous difference.
The myth that the young don't vote was out of date in 2004, when people under 30 cast as many votes as people over 60. A Reader's Digest poll reveals that millennials - people who came of voting age after 2000 - voted for Mr. Obama over Ms. Clinton 56 per cent to 36 per cent.
"This is a historically unprecedented generational appeal for a national candidate and shows that an aspirational campaign based on hope and a better future hits the millennials' sweet spot," RD concluded.
No wonder the boomer woman was angry. Not only had her candidate lost to a man, but her own generation's power was on the wane. The boomers are losing their grip.
Barack Obama's challenge will be to remind this woman that he stands for everything she stands for and Hillary Clinton stands for, and little or nothing that John McCain stands for. He needs her vote. He needs independent and Democratic boomers to unite with the millennials, and with African-Americans of all ages and both genders. That coalition, and only that coalition, will bring him the presidency.
The baby boom generation may no longer call the shots. But it still matters, at least for a few more years.
- JOHN IBBITSON globe and mail
