Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton and the front of the line
Posted 45 weeks 16 hours ago byGloria Steinem's op-ed in this morning's NYT has been troubling me today, and I think I know why.
The basic assumption of the piece is that Hillary Clinton is on the precipice of losing the Democratic nomination because she's a woman. Certainly, Clinton's gender has made navigating the campaign a little trickier -- the slightest hint of any kind of emotion has been magnified in ways I think wouldn't be applicable to a male candidate.
With that caveat, though, let me say this. I don't think the nomination process is breaking the way it is because Hillary Clinton is a woman. It's because Barack Obama is Barack Obama.
Steinem suggests that Clinton's a better candidate because she has a longer resume on the national stage -- but if that's all that mattered in choosing a candidate, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden would be running away with this thing.
It's incredibly demeaning to Obama, in fact, to suggest that he might owe his apparent victory to sexism. And that's the case that Steinem seems to make.
Thoughts
Jim called it
Submitted on January 9th, 2008 by Joelon the humanizing to voters angle, it seems. And before the polls closed! Clearly your predictive abilities are greater than mine; I bow before you.
Pat Schroeder's run for the White House
Submitted on January 8th, 2008 by Katherine LawrencePat Schroeder the former Colorado Congressional Representative from the First Congressional District broke down in tears at one point in the 1987 presidential primary. Although it might have been from sheer exhaustion, some voices suggested that this proved a woman was not tough enough to be President of the United States.
A lot has changed in 20 years and how we deal with a woman running for the highest office in the land. Like Obama, the fact a woman is taken as seriously as Senator Clinton means that we have come quite a distance since women marched in the streets for equal rights.
Though the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) did not get ratified, something has happened more powerful than any laws or amendments. It is that attitudes have changed profoundly, and that is a victory for all, no matter who wins the nomination.
Re: Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton and the front of the line
Submitted on January 8th, 2008 by Jim LakelyGood points, Joel. As I note in my blog post on this site, Hillary has good reason to cry right now. But I don't think it's fair to say that her exposure of emotion is magnified because she's a woman. It's magnified because she's Hillary, The Most Accomplished Professional Woman in History.
Ed Muskie cried, and paid a dear political price for it. And if Mitt Romney cried because he was seeing the nomination slip away, he'd be hit on it a lot harder than Hillary is because voters would see him as wimpy.
Yet Oprah Nation has taught us that it's OK for women to publicly "cry it out." It makes you more genuine. I'd argue, in fact, that Hillary getting teared up -- even if it is only tears over her ambitions going down the drain -- humanizes her to voters.
The other side of Hillary losing because "Barak Obama is Barack Obama" is that Hillary loses because "Hillary Clinton is Hillary Clinton." It would be ironic, indeed, if Hillary's campaign rallies after people see that there is a real human being after all under that stiff pantsuit.