This isn’t going to be profound. I’m just a little annoyed. As someone who gets most of her news via on-line newspapers rather than TV, I think it’s easy to select the reports to which I’m paying attention (i.e. reports on world leaders getting assassinated-worth reading, story about a presidential candidate female or otherwise showing emotion- not so interesting). Yesterday, though, I took a break and was watching CNN en espanol’s coverage of the primary in NH. I’m sure this is surprising to those of you who are subjected to the inane prioritization of news as offered by most television channels, but it was the first time that I came across the clip of Hillary Clinton tearing up (not even crying), as well as all of the to-do about how this must be the reason she won the primary in NH despite her loss in Iowa (something like 47% of female votes went to her). Last night, I clicked on a few more of the links on nytimes.com and cnn.com following the “story.” All I can really say is that I almost feel bad adding more writing on a subject that is complete speculation (for really obnoxious writing, no matter your candidate preference, try reading Dowd’s editorial in the times….not that I should be encouraging its popularity).
We’re finally at a point where we have at least 2 very viable Democratic candidates that would probably do a good job as President. For all of the personality traits that one has versus the other, the differences are quite often relative instead of absolute. As voters in the primaries seemed to have been prioritizing, they’re both “electable.” What that means is that we are left free to focus on their policies, which do differ a bit, including on health (will have another post later on that).
Regardless of whom we ultimately choose, I wish we didn’t have to cheapen Clinton’s candidacy by harping on this factor as more important than her politics, especially in a woman who has done little to “exploit” this characteristic herself.
A good op-ed by Gloria Steinem was sent to me by Payal, linked here. The interesting quote, in my mind, though, was the following: “What worries me is that male Iowa voters were seen as gender-free when supporting their own, while female voters were seen as biased if they did and disloyal if they didn’t.”
The article brings up a few ideas I didn’t bring up here. Steinem says, “What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.”
Despite graduating from an all women’s college (as Hillary Clinton did), I think it would personally be hard for me to vote along those lines alone, as much as I want to honor the path. As Steinem acknowledges, “This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”
Entries (RSS)