Well, boys, you'd better sit down for this one: This is no longer the playground of your youth. The girls aren't sitting in the stands keeping score and cheering whenever you're at bat. In fact, the girls aren't girls at all anymore. We're all grown up, and we are so done with this notion that the trajectory of our lives must end at the border of your comfort zone.Ms. Schultz was strangely silent when the pundits and poobahs of the GOP pressured Mike Huckabee to drop out. Rather than recognize their intervention for what it was -- more evidence of the blatant anti-Christianity of the Republican Party -- she chose to remain silent, apparently believing that Huckabee was being asked to drop out only because He Had No Mathematical Chance Of Winning and it was Time To Unify The Party.
Male columnists, male politicians, male talking heads, male "surrogates" - all of them harrumphing that it's time for Hillary Clinton to stop it, just stop it, with all this talk of being president.
Who cares if the race is close? So what if millions of Americans believe their yet-to-be-cast votes matter? Voters, schmoters. When was this ever about them?
Since January, Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic nomination have plummeted from better than 60% to less than 15%. That's a function of math and momentum, not male chauvinism.
Numero Two-O: IT'S TIME TO UNIFY THE PARTY. Every day Hillary Clinton continues her campaign -- especially the mean-spirited snarky one that's characterized the last two months -- is a good day for John McCain and the Republicans. McCain's been given a window to define himself before the Democrats can -- although, judging from his lackluster tour so far, he seems intent on blowing it.
Worse still, the attacks that McCain will use against Obama in the general election are being previewed and sharpened by the Clintons, much to the GOP's delight. Enablers like Connie Schultz will surely rejoin that it's good to Obama to face these attacks now; it strengthens him, makes him tougher, immunizes him for the general election.
Nonsense. What these attacks do is make McCain's job easier in the general election. Why should he run an ad in which he tells Americans that Obama is not ready to be Commander-in-Chief, when he can run an ad in which Hillary Clinton does his dirty work? Why should he run an ad in which he warns Americans to be afraid, very afraid, of a man whose middle name is Hussein and listens to Reverend Wright, when he can run an ad where Bill Clinton says the same things?
This is the fine mess that a continuation of the campaign, now that it's impossible for Hillary Clinton to win, will get us into.
So, Senator Clinton, stay in if you want to. It's your $109 million. But start running a positive campaign. Avoid complimenting McCain while back-handing Obama. Tell your husband not to question Obama's patriotism while praising McCain's. Contrast yourself with Obama, to be sure, but contrast both of you with the out-of-touch Republicans and their clueless standard-bearer.
UPDATE: Jonathan Chait covers much of the same ground in an essay in the New Republic.
UPDATE #2: Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos fame addresses the same issue in a Newsweek essay.
2 comments:
Deece,
It interests me how often references are made to the feminine (or lack of) qualities of Hillary Clinton and her campaign tactics. As if one should have anything to do with the validity of the other.
I've not notice much in your blog about the manliness of her opponents and/or their campaign tactics. What say you?"
Judith, thanks for commenting. I think you're right -- there's a lot of noise out there about Hillary Clinton's femininity as an element of the persona she's presenting, some of it critical.
In part, that's because she is running AS A WOMAN. Her gender is certainly an implicit, and IMHO an explioit, part of the rationale for her candidacy: it's time for a woman to be President.
In the column that inspired my post, Connie Schultz starkly frames any opposition to Hillary's candidacy as just the boys ganging up on the girl they're scared of: "Male columnists, male politicians, male talking heads, male 'surrogates' - all of them harrumphing that it's time for Hillary Clinton to stop it, just stop it, with all this talk of being president."
If I were Hillary, I'd reject the male-bashing premise of Schultz's column, but it's clear that part of Hillary's appeal is that she is a woman -- and she wants it that way.
What's interesting to me is a phenomenon I tried to address in a previous post: that although she's running as a woman, she's not articulated (or, at least, I have not seen articulated) a rationale for why her gender might make her a better candidate.
Don't get me wrong: I do not think she has to do that. She may think, with some reason, that it will be her toughness and hard-won competence that voters will embrace, and her more feminine qualities -- empathy, compassion, and so forth -- will be seen as weaknesses. That's unfortunate and, to that extent, sexist -- as Ellen Goodman has pointed out, it allows Barack Obama to be the more empathetic, compassionate candidate.
As for campaign tactics, to the extent I've been critical of the Clinton campaign, they've deserved it -- and it has nothing to do with her gender.
I think it's bad to say that she and John McCain have "crossed the threshold" to be Commander-in-Chief, and Barack Obama hasn't. I think it's bad to say that a general election contest between Clinton and McCain would feature "two great patriots" and imply that Obama was not one.
Maybe Barack Obama's said that a general election battle between him and McCain "would not include someone whose husband was impeached" or "would feature two Americans with penises," but I have not seen that, and I think we all would have.
The aforementioned comments by the two Clintons do a disservice to the Democratic Party, and should be avoided. There are plenty of contrasts between Clinton and Obama that do not require either of them to suggest that McCain would be better than the other.
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