Democratic Wings: Gloria Feldt on Hillary Clinton - it's high time for a woman president

August 24, 2007

Gloria Feldt on Hillary Clinton - it's high time for a woman president

From Gloria Feldt in WeNews:

Forty-some women listened intently last week in the cream and burgundy living room of inveterate Democratic fundraiser Sally Minard's Manhattan brownstone, as campaign advisor Ann Lewis described why Hillary Clinton, if she is to make history by becoming the first woman president of the U.S., needs them, and thousands more like them, to be her "ambassadors." Thousands of women speaking one to one and to small gatherings, writing letters to the editor and turning their e-mail lists into potent viral marketing networks are essential to a successful campaign.

"It's up to the women," Lewis said.

As announced yesterday, Clinton is making a major appeal to women during women's history month, and for good reason.

Personal validation by trusted friends was crucial to Clinton's first U.S. Senate race in 2000, when she needed to convince wary New Yorkers that she wasn't a celebrity with an enormous carpetbag but a serious, smart, hardworking candidate who empathized with her constituents' needs and would bring home the bacon. Judging by her 2-1 re-election in 2006, she won over even skeptical conservative upstate voters quite nicely.

But can our first viable female presidential candidate president replicate those strategies nationwide? Will Clinton's seemingly natural base--women--lift her to victory in her party's nomination, let alone the general election? Shouldn't women support Hillary in the same way support from African Americans is beginning to sway toward Barack Obama?

Why, 135 years after suffragist Victoria Woodhull became the first female candidate for president, must we still ask whether women will seize this moment to create gender equality in America's top leadership?

Sure, some women oppose Clinton's political philosophy: Democrats often disagree with her position on Iraq, for example; Republicans are often allergic to her belief that government can and should solve problems. These are legitimate differences. But we've seen time after time that the deciding factors in elections are perceptions of a candidate's personality and how she or he might affect us personally.

'Not Ready for One of Us' Fear

Some of women's resistance to Clinton is rooted not in ideology but in four fear-based factors which Hillary and her ambassadors must defeat if she is to become president:

First there's fear of the readiness test.

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's presidential campaign manager and now a political consultant, observes that despite much progress, oppressed groups still tend to assume the rest of society "isn't ready for one of us." That's why more whites than blacks say America is ready for a black president and more men than women say America is ready for a woman president.

In our diverse nation, how will we "get ready" for a woman, or an African American or Latino or Mormon, if they don't run?

'I Love Hillary BUT'

Second is the "I love Hillary BUT" factor. But she carries Bill's baggage. But she's polarizing. The demographic of women most like Clinton is the one that voices the most reservations. While 59 percent of women view Clinton favorably, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted last July, her stronghold is among 18- to 35-year-old women, a whopping 73 percent of whom view her favorably.

The older women are the generation who fought for the laws and social climate that make a viable Hillary Clinton candidacy possible. Many say she's a great senator, forgetting how she overcame the same "buts" in 2000, yet are dead set against her run for president. These women worry that if Clinton loses, they lose--that it will set back their accomplishments for women; they are clearly wary of that risk.

Young women are not immune to this fear. At the Ambassadors meeting, a professor described students who like Clinton very much but are afraid she can't win and "they fear losing." The professor was advised to take her students for pizza and walk them through data illustrating Clinton's elect-ability. For a woman not to run at this historic moment presents a far bigger risk to everything these women hold dear.

Media Fears

Next, there's the fear instilled by media maulings. The national media tends to trash any leading candidate. Still, women are singled out for criticism if they appear too "feminine" on one hand or too tough on the other.

I call this the Maureen Dowd effect. In a stunning display of sexist language, the New York Times columnist last December called a tiff between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman a "catfight." About Clinton, Dowd wrote that as first lady she "showed off a long parade of unflattering outfits and unnervingly changing hairdos" and that when Clinton "expressed outrage about Iraq," she "ended up sounding like a mother whose teen-age son has not cleaned up his room."

There will inevitably be vicious "Swift boating" too. It's instinctive to back away from attacks. But it's more constructive to get angry and call out the media's misdeeds.

Fear of Identification With Imperfection

Fourth is the Arianna Huffington paradox.

Huffington criticizes Hillary for doing what every politician who ever got elected does; crafting positions that attract a broad spectrum of voters. Huffington characterizes this as being inauthentic and she has a point. It's similar to how Rudy Giuliani, the Republican front runner, is trying to assure the Republican Right he really hates abortion and didn't mean it when he appeared in drag.

Paradoxically, though, Huffington reserves her fiercest vitriol for the candidate of her own gender and her own party. Perhaps the author of "Fearless" fears being defined by a female leader she doesn't like more than throwing the election to men with whom she agrees even less.

Activist Sherrye Henry identified a "deep divide" in her 1994 book by that name between the equality women say they want and how they vote. Does this divide still exist? Are women our own worst enemy, as those who would like us to be claim?

The first female president will probably not be perfect in every way. Figure the odds of any president of either gender meeting that standard.

It is, as Ann Lewis said, up to the women.

America ranks 67th in percentage of female congress members, behind Pakistan, Liberia and Mexico. Women are heads of state in countries as disparate as Liberia, Chile and Germany, and their numbers are increasing globally.

Only when we have gender equality will we have the luxury of gender neutrality in our political choices. American women should get a grip, get over their fears and get together to create the tipping point for women seeking high public office.

Because in the end, our fear is not about Hillary Clinton. It's about ourselves.

"Probably, hanging onto the past brings more destruction than any other single cause. ...It's the Muslim fundamentalists who worship the past and ignore the reformist spirit with which Muhammad viewed women. It's the backward-looking Christian literalists who interpret religious teachings in a way that consolidates their power..." ~ Gloria Steinem

"'Inherent differences' between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsberg

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the world." ~ Virginia Woolf

"...remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors... If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." ~ Abigail Adams

"Bloody treason, murderous act
Not by women were designed.
Bells o'erthrown nor churches sacked
Speak not ill of womenkind."
~ Gearoid Iarla Fitzgerald

"Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse gift will find a fitting place." ~ Margaret Mead

"Of my two 'handicaps' being female put more obstacles in my path than being black." ~ Shirley Chisholm

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?" ~ Zora Neale Hurston

"Eventually, all things merge into one; and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs..." ~ Norman Maclean

"There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone?... It was a spring without voices." ~ Rachel Carson

"If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." ~ St. Francis of Assisi

"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

"God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but He cannot save them from fools." ~ John Muir

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders." ~ Edward Abbey

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it... Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love." ~ George Eliot (Marian Evans)

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." ~ John Muir

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." ~ John F. Kennedy

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~ James Madison

"When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." ~ C. P. Snow

"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." ~ Albert Einstein

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." ~ William Pitt

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Benjamin Franklin

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If somebody tells you you ought to quit, it's because they're afraid you won't." ~ Bill Clinton

"Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." ~ Robert F. Kennedy

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? But the good Samaritan reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise." ~ Marian Anderson

"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth in a few hands, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis

"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life." ~ Jane Addams

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; But it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." ~ William Shakespeare

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it." ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"When men talk about defense, they always claim to be protecting women and children, but they never ask the women and children what they think." ~ Patricia Schroeder

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"What difference does it make to the dead whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" ~ Mohandas Gandhi

"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." ~ Agatha Christie

"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." ~ John F. Kennedy

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." ~ Jesus

"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

"When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?" ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil." ~ William Shakespeare

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing... in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men... But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret..." ~ Jesus

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, ... legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law." ~ Thomas Paine

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!" ~ Albert Einstein

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else." ~ Clarence Darrow

"When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell

"To (say) that we are to stand by the president right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it's morally treasonable to the American public." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." ~ Adlai Stevenson

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." ~ H.L. Mencken

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." ~ John Stuart Mill

"I don't give 'em hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell." ~ Harry Truman

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" ~ Will Rogers

"I never was surer of my position that no self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her political rights." ~ Susan B. Anthony

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August 24, 2007