Hillary Clinton and the Feminine Critique (Ha! Get it?)

I've been hearing this a lot for the past several months, but it's really gotten unbearable in the days since Senator Clinton placed third in the Iowa Caucuses. Chris Matthews, that perpetually deranged irritant, has (naturally) been a particularly vociferous proponent of this theory. Maybe I shouldn't get so exercised about it, because it's just another facet of the horse-race coverage we get from the mainstream media instead of real analysis, but it touched a nerve nonetheless. Perhaps the real message to take from the prominence of this theory is the mainstream media's inability to see the underlying issues discussed herein, focusing as they do only on the superficial differences between candidates and voting blocs.

Here goes: Hillary Clinton is a big hit with older women, because they identify with her struggle to succeed in a man's world. Younger women are not flocking to Clinton in large numbers because they take the hard-fought gains of the women's movement for granted and don't remember what sexism was like before it was totally eradicated in...now when did we eradicate sexism again? Oh, that's right, we haven't, because anyone who criticizes Hillary Clinton is only doing so out of bigotry...ooh, that was unnecessary, wasn't it?

We've seen this sort of theory before, and are likely to keep seeing it as more members of previously disenfranchised (and currently oppressed) groups finally, happily rise to prominence in the political sphere. But kindly refrain from telling me that the reason I do not support Hillary Clinton is that I am either sexist or too young to remember what it was like to be discriminated against because of my gender (conversely, don't tell me that I must support a candidate with whom I disagree profoundly out of group loyalty). Are liberal African Americans who do not support, oh, let's say Alan Keyes simply too young to remember what it was like to live in a racist nation (because we also eradicated racism, right)? Does the NAACP prove that it is comprised solely of people too young to remember pre-Civil Rights Act America every time it disagrees with a Clarence Thomas opinion?

Nobody I've heard has yet dared to suggest that those Democrats who choose to support any (Democratic) candidate other than Barack Obama are doing so solely because they are racists (this is, of course distinguishable from the so-called Bradley Effect, where white voters overstate support for a black candidate because, presumably, they don't want to appear racist to the pollster. We're talking about declared supporters here, not poll numbers vs. returns...and there's no solid evidence of a Bradley Effect in the first place. Andrew Kohut, in a column published 1/10/08 in the NY Times, has a better explanation for this anomaly: poorer and less well-educated white voters, who are statistically less likely to vote for a black candidate, are underrepresented in polls).

The thing that makes this such a minefield is that Hillary Clinton, as a woman seeking political power in a nation (and world) still suffused with sexism and misogyny, DOES face sexist criticism (and outright hatred) because she is a woman who dares to seek power. A lot of the mainstream media's so-called analysis of her campaign has been rooted in the same kind of sexist double standard familiar to women everywhere. And, of course, even I know Hillary's no Alan Keyes or Clarence Thomas. But there are perfectly legitimate reasons to criticize her and support another candidate in the Democratic primaries, and those who do so in good faith, on the issues, should not be branded as sexist or ignorant.

Hillary Clinton was a lifelong Republican who was proud to call herself a "Goldwater Girl" until she saw the light sometime during law school (a bit late if you ask me, considering what the nation was going through at the time). She is a candidate whose much-bragged-about "experience" consists chiefly of relentless efforts to move the Democratic party to the right--away from organized labor, away from socialized medicine, away from the peace-and-justice agenda of the grassroots Left....and, in the process, away from the very heart of the party she now seeks to lead. She and her husband have, through their 'successful' transformation of the Democratic (party) agenda via the Democratic Leadership Council, in large part paved the way for the disastrous straits we find ourselves in now (thanks, Bill, for NAFTA, the WTO, DOMA, etc.). By moving the party to the right, they have rendered candidates and constituencies with genuinely progressive leanings political freaks, so that a candidate like Dennis Kucinich, who espouses policies closer to those of FDR, is not taken seriously within his own party. They have narrowed the range of acceptable debate within our party to the point where we cannot even discuss what once were our bread-and-butter issues. By making the Democratic party more like the Republican party and thus stifling the full range of political discourse, they have accelerated the nation's lurch toward fascism.

The foreign policy advocated by Senator Clinton, as evidenced by her votes to give the demonstrably dangerous Bush administration carte blanche in Iraq and Iran, is built on threats and aggression at a time when the U.S. should be seeking to rebuild alliances and work to end the root causes of terrorism and violence. Clinton voted to strip Americans of their civil rights and civil liberties under the guise of protecting us against terrorism, and has, through omission, been complicit in the Bush administration's shredding of our Constitution. With Democrats like this, what does being a Democrat even mean anymore?

The coup de grace came from none other than Gloria Steinem in the New York Times earlier this week, when she wrote that older women's support of Clinton--this is making me gag, seriously--"proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age." So now it's "radical" to take more money from the insurance industry than any other member of Congress save one (Republican)? It's "radical" to support a permanent base in Iraq and no firm timetable for withdrawal of our forces, after enthusiastically voting to go to war against a nation that posed no threat to us? It's "radical" to continue to deny equal rights to Americans based on their sexual orientation? If Hillary's supporters are "radical," what on earth am I for supporting Dennis Kucinich? Ms. Steinem, you have been a hero of mine and an inspiration to many women of my generation, but as you have just implied that my refusal to support Hillary Clinton is due to insufficient radicalism on my part, I must now respectfully ask that you bite me.

In conclusion (when Bill Clinton spoke those two words at the Democratic National Convention in 1988, he got his first-ever national ovation after a speech nearly as interminable as this screed), I'm not supporting Hillary Clinton, because I don't think she's a true Democrat. She has worked against the policies that form the core values of this party. She has, through her votes and her failure to speak out, enabled an extremely dangerous administration to cause untold death and destruction throughout the world, to commit torture, to destroy our Constitution, and to accrue powers to the executive branch approaching dictatorship. She has, so far, run an ugly, divisive campaign that seeks to use her gender as a way to inoculate against any criticism, substantive or otherwise (kind of like how anyone criticizing the Bush administration was labeled a traitor) and to simultaneously trash the legacy of civil rights leaders to put her African-American opponent in his place (see this NY Times editorial from 1/9/08).

In light of the above, I daresay the women left impoverished, sick, or dead as a result of Senator Clinton's support of "free trade" and illegal war and occupation of Iraq, to name just two of the profoundly undemocratic and unjust policies she has heartily supported, should not be labeled sexist or "too young to understand" if they take exception to the idea of another Clinton presidency.