Why Is That?
Maybe somebody can explain this to me. I know I am biased towards Obama, but I am pretty certain nonetheless that Hillary has given Obama far more grief in terms of attacks than has come the other way around. Even if you subtract the who-shot-first part of the equation, Hillary is still more guilty of bashing her opponent than Obama is.
So why are Hillary supporters claiming to be more likely to shun Obama in the general election than Obama supporters are to shun Hillary? What, exactly, did Obama do to make Hillary voters so vindictive? Was it something he said that was somehow worse than anything Hillary said? Was the way he ran his campaign that much worse than the way Hillary ran hers? Is there a double-standard in play here? Is it that Hillary supporters saw this nomination as simply belonging to Clinton fair and square, and Obama stole it from her unjustly? Or is it that women who believed this to be a woman’s “turn” to become president saw the dream slip away from them, and they’re so angry that they’d sooner vote for a candidate who opposes their rights and would snub them once he gained office?
That’s what seems to be suggested in this NY Times story, which features women who support Hillary being outraged that their candidate didn’t win. One quote: “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus.” Beg pardon? This suggests that Obama won because democratic voters hated the idea of a woman president and so voted for the man–this despite the demographic data suggesting the opposite, that Obama was working far more against a racial boundary than Hillary was a gender boundary. Hillary lost not because she’s a woman, but because her campaign was run by a few key incompetents who didn’t look ahead very far or strategize very well, and Obama ran a very smart, grass-roots campaign. He had more general appeal and charisma, not more testosterone.
If anything, there is a bit of projection and role-reversal involved:
“There’s just been an attitude that if you aren’t voting for Barack Obama, then you’re a racist,” said Cowley, 49, a mother of four from Massachusetts who has vowed to never back the senator from Illinois. “I just find that intolerable. I feel like when the members of the media talk about how [Obama’s supporters] would react, they say, ‘Well, we can’t take the vote away from African Americans.’ Well, excuse me, there’s a higher percentage of women.”
Where did the idea come in that voting against Obama is racist? Voting against Obama just because he’s black is racist, just as voting against him because you want a woman to win is sexist (tempered only by the fact that such votes are for a woman rather than against a man, just as many black votes for Obama are for a black rather than against a white. But it’s still race- or gender-based, not reason-based). Nobody claimed California was racist when it voted for Hillary by a 9% margin; West Virginia was different because a lot of people were voting because of the color issue. But note how the speaker in the above paragraph turns things around at the end–suggesting that the idea of “taking the vote away” from a black candidate is “intolerable,” and then pointing out that women outnumber blacks–as to suggest that there would be a greater injustice in “taking the vote away” from a female candidate. The earlier quote about being “sent to the back of the bus” is an ever plainer iteration of this idea, that voting for Obama is somehow a slap in the face to women–with the inference being that Hillary should win because she’s a woman. The sensible answer is very simple: race and gender should not matter–neither one.
And will the hard-core Hillary supporters really be so spectacularly self-defeating as to vote for McCain in the fall? I just find that too hard to fathom, honestly. I know the idea of a woman becoming president is more than just empowering for many women in America, it is a breakthrough idea that would be life-changing for that constituency. But do you respond to defeat by burning your own house down? At this point, I really don’t like Hillary very much at all because of some of the things she did, but if she somehow got the nomination, no matter how down and dirty, you’d have to force me to vote for McCain at gunpoint.
Am I being too divisive or insensitive to suggest that these Hillary-supporters-for-McCain types are simply nuts?
Well, the reason so many Hillary Clinton supporters are touchy about being branded racist is because there really is an element of it.
Look at the landslides against Obama in West Virginia. There’s a base of blue-collar democrats that support Hillary and simply won’t support Obama. Have a look at this video interviewing Clinton supporters in West Virginia-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-q4MDQ0cDI
This quote really got to me: “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus.”
The most loyal constituency? Women? I’m sorry but nearly half the women out there vote Republican. I don’t know any women in my family that vote Democratic. Just what the hell is she talking about?
The most loyaly constituency has got to be the black vote. Something like 93% or more vote Democratic. Day in, Day out, Sunset, Sunshine. Just what the hell is she talking about?
No doubt that a women getting elected would be a ‘break through’. But I expected that perhaps some time in my life time a women would get elected. With 50+% of the voters being women, that’s not too much of a stretch. But if you were ever going to put aside a breakthrough, it would have to be for a black person to become president.
Let’s not kid ourselves here. Women have been elected to the highest office all around the world. But where has an African American been elected to the highest office in a first world country? Okay, that’s a weak argument. Howabout this one: Women have 50% of the vote, how many do blacks have? 13%? When they are not being kicked off roles, locked out of poling places, hit by a pole tax or made to work double shifts.
How many African-Americans make it to the U.S. Senate? How many make it become Governor of a state? How many make it to the house of representatives? How many become speaker of the house? I’m sorry but a women becoming President is small potatoes on the ‘break through’ front. i fully expect a women to become President in my life time, but African-American? Not, in mine, your kids or their kids lifetime, and by that time maybe never – because by that time they might be too small a minority do to other groups moving in. I expected for their to be Women priest and/or Married priest before their would be an African-American President.
I can’t, for the life of me, imagine a women having a ‘pushed to the back of the bus’ attitude for the sake of an African-American man becoming President. That’s not just being conceited. That’s beyond conceit. That’s borderline narcissistic neurosis. Obama becoming President is likely to be the greatest single historical event in my life time, and I am old enough to remember men landing on the moon, the Berlin Wall & the Trade Towers coming down. That, and that alone would be reason enough to persuade me to back him. But as you said, you don’t have to have those reasons.
Obama has managed himself and his campaign in amazing fashion. The only major gripe you could have about the guy is his lack of experience, but he’s out performed/acted/thought/strategized the more experienced players out there. He’s even keeled, he’s honest, and I mean really honest for a politician, he’s reasonable, he’s certainly smart, and of course, he’s got the Charisma, so, what’s not to like?
These people are just sore losers. They thought they had it in a walk and then they bungled it. And I still believe the most intransigent ones were ones that saw personal gain in it for them – an political appointment or some such thing. They’re angry at Obama because they don’t want to blame themselves – and you can see that kind of anger in Hillary’s vendictive political tactics. For once I’m glad a startegist is eclipsing a tactician in this too. We’ll have better policy as a result over the long term. The other way there is no long term – just a series of short terms.
Clearly Clinton has been the target of sexist attacks… dog-whistle attacks mostly. I have heard many over the last year… O.K., over the last 17 years or so, actually. Never the less, one thing that I find really annoying about those Clinton supporters you describe is that they cite sexist things that media talking heads that have said as reasons to be bitter about the Obama (who has suffered through his share of dog-whistle attacks). They want to punish Obama (and the whole country including themselves) because of bigoted comments made by third parties. Can they not distinguish between the Obama campaign and some elements of the media/public? Or – are we all, in the minds of some of these frustrated people, just part of some overall organized force of oppression? “The Man”, if you will.
There is a generational aspect to this. Clinton is a baby boomer feminist (born 1947) and Obama (born 1961) is on the cusp of Gen X (beginning somewhere between 1961 and 1965). Obama presents himself in a distinctly different and more modern way than older black leaders such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Imagine how different the race would be if it was one of those gentlemen in place of Obama. Mind you, they are eloquent and wonderful advocates for their causes (I voted for Jackson in the 1980 primary)… but they speak a language that is dated… they are dated (as we are all doomed to become)… We see a shift from “tolerance and multi-culturalism” to “one America”. It is a different frame.
Then, of course, there is the self-defeating aspect of Clinton (is that generational too?). Many, including myself, have shifted from being supportive and hopeful about her candidacy to becoming completely disgusted. She has run her campaign so badly that coupled with her apparent intelligence I wonder if she actually wants in some Freudian way to come up short – to fail – indeed to go down in flames.
Her supporters see the disgust from people such as myself and assume that it is because she is a woman. Could it be that they see her gender as primary – and thus, through those same eyes, see everyone else as also judging her based on gender? If gender is your only issue, then disgust must equate to sexism.
Looking at Kentucky’s results–66%-33% Clinton over Obama, with only 33% of Clinton supporters saying they’d vote of Obama–and you see spectacular evidence of how Obama has suffered far more from racism than Clinton has from sexism.
The evidence? Name one state where such a huge chunk of the population did not vote for Clinton because she was a woman.
It just shows how out-of-touch Clinton is. She seems to honestly think that the reason she’s lost (and she has lost) is because of gender bias.
The reality is that she lost because Obama is just so much more compelling and inspiring.
I have to say that the “back of the bus” comment by the Clinton supporter is particularly tone-deaf considering that Obama is half BLACK. I mean, duh.
The really nutty thing about the Clinton fans who’re proclaiming that they won’t vote for Obama (and worse, will go vote for McCain) is that THEY are the ones indicating a gender bias. There is simply no comparison betwen Obama’s positions on the issues and McCain’s if you’re a Clinton fan; the fact is that Obama and Clinton, when compared with McCain, are essentially identical candidates.
Therefore, if they’d really rather go vote for McCain than Obama, it’s only because Obama beat their candidate. Sour grapes.
Well, they need to wake up and get over it, or else four years from now the United States will be in even WORSE shape.
Yeah, the “back of the bus” comment kind of grated. Rosa Parks was a woman and a black, but she was not asked to sit in the back of the bus because she was a woman.
I don’t think we should make the mistake of downplaying the sexism that Hillary Clinton has been subjected to, both in this campaign and throughout her career, particularly from the media. I’ve heard some truly horrid things said about her, particularly coming from the media.
I don’t want to generalize, but since the policy positions Clinton, Obama and Edwards took weren’t all that significantly different, for women (particularly older women who lived through the peak of the feminist movement or even earlier), voting for Clinton then became a symbolic act of overcoming sexism. Frankly, I find that completely understandable. But it’s the conflation of Obama with sexism where things get rather dubious. (Dubious? Okay, downright weird.)
But I wouldn’t call them nuts, or narcisstic, or sore losers. Women have been waiting literally their whole lives for a viable female presidential candidate, so this defeat is sure to cause true pain. And I expect not much different if the tables were turned. (Of course more Obama supporters are willing to say they’d vote for Clinton were she to become the candidate. It’s easy to say that when speaking from the perspective of having your candidate be the front-runner for months.) Right now, we’re in the heat of the moment, and I expect most Clinton supporters to come around. We still have six months, after all.
“But where has an African American been elected to the highest office in a first world country?”
Um… well, you know, there’s only one country an African American could possibly be qualified for.