Gender Betrayal

It all boils down to the definition of “is” and the Clintons. There are ANY number of qualified women in Amerika that could and should be Amerika’s president. Sadly, Hillary Clinton is NOT one of them. Ms. Fleming? You would certainly be qualified. Are you willing to saddle up and take the horrid ride into political infamy? I’m willing to bet not. The ‘Hill’ carries entirely too much political baggage and that would be of the “scandalous” type. If Clinton cared about Amerika as she professes she does, she would end her campaign and do that with the little remaining dignity she could muster. However being the power mad spooky that Clinton is, that will never happen and the Democraps will lose in November and the Democraps will lose BIG!

Although I have absolute respect for the views expressed here, I take issue with the claim that Sen. Clinton has not played the gender card during this election. Here in Iowa, I watched Clinton make allusions of all kinds to gendered concepts.

At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines last November, she cited the quote, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen” before unleashing a laugh line that she used repeatedly after that: “Well, I’m quite comfortable in the kitchen.”

Even before that at a union-sponsored candidates’ forum at Soldier Field in Chicago, she told the labor audience, “I’m your girl.”

You note that Clinton is often referred to as “Hillary,” while Obama is generally referred to by his last name. But your implication—that this occurs because commentators choose to call Clinton by her first name because she is a woman—misses an important point: she has embraced the moniker “Hillary” from the beginning. Her official campaign logo on HillaryClinton.com says merely “Hillary for President,” with no last name anywhere. Her yard signs and bumper stickers used the same logo.

I think it’s incorrect to claim that Clinton has not played the gender card, but the broader point that she has misused it or failed to use it effectively may be true. She relied on subconscious queues—the dogwhistle approach—by making quick jokes about being comfortable in the kitchen, or by framing her candidacy using her first name instead of her last name, but she failed to make the full argument in favor of a female candidate in explicit terms.

Perhaps she should have done so, but her campaign is not known for taking chances like that.

Gee Ms. Fleming, I agree with most of your article.

Except … I feel that her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq couldn’t have been any more considered, calculated, callused then coldly cast only to shore up her National Security credentials. At the time of the vote, Americans favored the action so was a safe vote for her.

It was also wrong and contributory to American’s largest foreign policy blunder of all time.

The fact that there was a 96 page NIE that dissuaded the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from voting for the authorization, that Senator Clinton failed to read, was a dereliction of duty she owed to the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. It was a dereliction of the duty she owed all of us.

That is shameful, unforgivable and fails the Presidential threshold test.

The really funny thing is that if she had shown due diligence and come to the same conclusion that Senator Graham did, she would have had this nomination sewed up by now.

Then she could have run as the woman who could sweep out the capital of all that typical men’s politics stuff, you know like unjustified and immoral wars of preemption.

But she couldn’t use it because she was on the wrong side from the beginning.

Like Barack Obama said about her, “She’s not so bad.”, but just wrong.

I could have voted for a woman. I couldn’t care less about the sex or sex life of the next President, I am however real mad about the Iraq war.

BTW is that a picture of Senator Clinton or Wal-Mart Executive Board Member Clinton?

Just wondering.

Great piece, Ann Fleming, balanced and on the mark, with your perfectly metered voice audible. And, although I’m part of the demographic sector that has not gone her way, I continue to support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy because, quite simply, her policy proposals continue to be the most progressive of the remaining candidates. But also because I know where she’s coming from as they say, and as you say. I see her pain, and feel that it’s time to let a woman be all that she can be!

Hokay byby washington “independent” from my favorites list

Considering a recent study which concluded that nearly 40 %of workplace bullying of women is done by women, I’m not surprised that Hillary’s playing of the gender card (and I do believe she did through her surrogates at least) hasn’t worked for her. You see, the gender card doesn’t necessarily work.

I’ve been bullied more by women than I ever was by men. I’ve had the gender card played by female coworkers throughout my entire career as a means of manipulating and marginalizing me. I’ve been treated with more straightforwardness and respect from men than I ever have have experienced with women. I suggest that Hillary’s failure to play the gender card successfully is because too many women recognize it for what it is – playing the “best friend” card whilst stabbing a “competitor” in the back. Playing the gender card is essentially a ploy to get power through manipulation and sex discrimination. A lot of women – even older white women like me – know it.

Hillary didn’t use the gender card? Oh come now. She used it in NH…she used in the debates….and, no doubt, she will use it again. And when you think of her ‘experience’, what significant experience has Hillary garnered by herself? All her major ‘experience’ has been a direct resulf of who she married. Would she really have been picked Healthcare Tsar if her last name was Connors? We must face the fact that Hillary Clinton, most of her adult life, has had a free pass to her success….She didn’t ‘win’ it. It was handed to her by her husband. She never would’ve won New York had she not been married to a President. And when she doesn’t have the “experience’ to boost herself, she lies. It’s time we move on from such reasons to vote. I refuse to vote for anyone based on gender, race, or age. That’s what a TRUE feminist is.

’...notice, for example, how often she is referred to as “Hillary” ‘

How long ago was it that HRC become “Hillary?” Was it much earlier than her sparring with Rudy (that is, “Rudy”) for Moynihan’s seat in 1999-2000? “Rudy” dropped out in May 2000 to attend to one or another of his marital or endocrine tribulations—and by that time, he had been “Rudy” for at least a term or two as mayor. I think HRC morphed into “Hillary” as part of her campaign to ingratiate herself with NY voters and become known as “just folks,” an effort to deflect the charges of “carpetbagger” that were continually thrown her way.
taylortoone: I went door-to-door for her as a registered Indie in Suffolk Co., Long Island, because I had been following Rick Lazio’s antics on LI and in Albany far too long to sit home and watch. And while there was certainly throw-weight, as the Joint Chiefs used to say, gained from her husband’s position (always “Bill,” by the way), she won by busting her butt up and down the state and standing up to Lazio, a world-class sleaze and playground bully.

Before the Iraq vote, I wrote to my Senator, Hillary Clinton, and urged her to vote against the measure. I got back an email which said, in essence, “You don’t understand; there are weapons of mass destruction there.”
I believe that Clinton believed that, but that does not absolve her of the vote. There are weapons of mass destruction in many other countries. There was no reason to believe that any of them in Iraq were aimed at America. It was all a scam. Many Democrats saw through the chicanery; Hillary did not. That disqualifies her from the presidency in my mind, no matter what her gender.
I am an educated woman of the same generation as Hillary, and I have to say most of my compatriots in the same demographic are strong Hillary supporters.

Hillary, or Hillary Rodham Clinton, or Hillary Clinton HAD to support the war. Why? Because had she voted against it, she would ‘appear’ as ‘weak’. So she voted for it and now we have 4,000 American dead. Heckuva job, Hillary.

Vivt: Hillary ran against one of the weakest candidates the GOP ever had…Hillary was lucky: she had her husband and Rudy dropped out. Face it, Hillary never earned anything on her own….she owes her entire career to Bill and the follish women that support her merely because she’s a woman.

If I said: “I’m voting for McCain because he’s a man” that would be sexist, but if I say “I’m voting for Hillary because she’s a woman”, all the so called ‘feminists’ would cheer. Again, a TRUE feminist does not vote on gender, age, or race. Just foolish ones do.

well, drifting off task here, but what the heck:

taylortoone: I don’t think we are in disagreement about fundamental weaknesses in HRC’s putative candidacy—experience (peripheral), independence (missing: take look at The Body of War [Spiro&Donahue], especially at the montage of senators at the podium repeating, word for word, every GWB fabrication concerning WMD’s, Al-Queda-Iraqi connivance, etc ad nauseam), authenticity (watch, in the NH video, how ferociously she works the room with her eyes, gauging the response of every person in the room), flexibility (?), adaptability (??). What people, me, too, at moments, admire is the fighter—but so what, ultimately: this isn’t a Golden Gloves tournament, right? And 4,000 US lives, 30,000 US casualties later, 750,000+ Iraqi lives and several million Iraqis displaced, HRC still does not get it, as ariehl points out above.

the worst of it is: if these three are the best the country can up with, what does that say about the corruption & depravity of the political system?

(by the way, don’t underestimate the RNC oomph that was thrown behind Lazio in 2000—he could easily have stepped into D’Amato’s shoes, dogshit and all, against a less-feisty opponent.)

”...always deflecting any pity…”

Are we talking about the same candidate? Her campaign (and career) has seemed to me like one long game of playing the victim card. When a villain isn’t handy, find one, like Bob Shuster. It’s why she’d make a lousy president—the public doesn’t want a victim as a leader.

I have read many articles and a book by you and listened to you on the radio, but by far, this is the most absurd piece that bears your name, Ms. Fleming. Her peers, woman over 60, mostly white and educated are her ground troops. These are woman showing up to do the work for Hillary. It is absurd to say “But she didn’t hold the allegiance of her own cohort: the higher-earning, college-educated white women who you would have thought…” And unless you are hangiing out and discussing politics at your local laundromat, I doubt the “I have been privy to heated battles among women” occurred between you and “lower-income, non-college-educated women.”

More absurd is this sentence; “She never played the gender card, never figured out how to make it work for her, for the rest of us—how to summon up the old historical goose bumps by conjuring the days we stormed the barricades.” As many above have written, she certainly did play the gender card, numerous times. What “barricades” did Hillary Clinton storm? She was a rich girl who attended the best universities in the nation, she was given positions in jobs based on her affluence(Wellesley connection for first job), or later her husband’s position as attorney general of AK(Rose Law firm), Governor(partner @Rose) and then the head of Health Care(President Clinton).

And to top it off you write, “younger women who get bored by feminist memories of yore,” as if boredom where the cause for throwing out so-called feminist memories. The problem is that there was a lot to be desired by the “of yore” memories. First of all, feminist, never really fought the fight that needed to be fought. No, the educated white woman who ran the movement were either unmarried, or married to men with means. If they had children, they had nannies or family to step in to take care of the kids. Did they ever consider that their “lesser” sisters might not be able to afford the luxury of a full time job and a family? The reason younger woman are not bowing at their older sister’s feet is that the older sisters where blind to anyone not in their class. Hillary epitomizes this, as she dragged her mother and father whereever she went, one to watch over Chelsea, the other to watch over Bill. She never had to juggle a lower to middle class family- never. She was eating with a silver spoon. She doesn’t connect with younger woman because there is NO connection.

Gee, can we get past these entitled older woman boomers such as Fleming, Ferraro, H Clinton, Ann Rice, Gloria Steinham?

Not a great analysis. We’ll see how much Obama is a post-racial, biracial figure when the GOP unleashes the big guns. BHO has a great many challenges to overcome.

First off, she should have NEVER made comments like this ->At the Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Des Moines last November, she cited the quote, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen” before unleashing a laugh line that she used repeatedly after that: “Well, I’m quite comfortable in the kitchen.” {if she is comfortable there then that is where she should be, NOT running for president)
Even before that at a union-sponsored candidates’ forum at Soldier Field in Chicago, she told the labor audience, “I’m your girl.”(what is this about???)
I had a dad like her’s and yes it made me a fighter but I am smart enough to know when to step over the line and when not too.
All she has proven to the American males, is that a woman will lie, cheat, cry or whatever to try to achieve her goal and that makes the rest of us look bad.
Shame on you Hillary!!!!

The most astounding aspect of beating Hilary out of the race even though she has not lost it, is how many excuses people, but mostly women, will find not to vote for a woman who, as the only candidate, offers them health insurance and who, as the only candidate, helped them to get maternal leave.

As a professional woman, I am surprised and disappointed in women who clearly fell for the gender trap and expect a man to look and provide for them.

As Obama is soundly beaten by McCain the war drains all our resources, people die in thousands and at home we keep dying of treatable diseases that no one will insure us against and we cannot afford to pay for the medication, remember you are victims of your own folly.

Kittycat, since when does the president, whether male or female, provide for you or anybody else? Hillary “offers” you health insurance. Yeah, she bravely wants to hit up your neighbor to pay for your health insurance. Or worse, she wants to hit you up to pay for your neighbor’s. The war costs pennies compared to what we spend on follies which the government has no right. Maggie Thatcher she ain’t. If she was, she’d already have won.