Thursday, June 01, 2006
Hillary Clinton Will Never Be President
I read this post over at Steve Gilliard's shop about Hillary Clinton's polling as a presidential candidate (it sucks, big time). Let's address the big stinky dead animal in the living room, people: Hillary's a woman. For that reason alone she will never be president. Barack Obama has a better shot at being president than she does. Seriously. I once thought that she might have a chance, but not now. Her being the "wrong" gender means that the indies and the Fundies and the other potential crossover votes won't touch her no matter how many times she votes with the GOP Caucus. And her tacking to the right has alienated her from actual Democrats. So she's doomed. I don't care if she has more money than Bill Gates in her campaign kitty. If money meant everything, Steve Forbes would have won the GOP nod in 2000 and Howard Dean would have won the Democratic nod in 2004. She's doomed, and the sooner she admits that and coughs up some of her millions to other candidates (presidential or otherwise -- her Senate seat is safe; if she needs to spend more than $5 million to defend it this year I'll be very surprised), the better off she and we all will be. Sorry to break it to y'all so bluntly, but it's the truth.
Societies that are much less friendly to women have chosen female heads of state. Benazir Bhutto from Muslim Pakistan. Indira Ghandi from a country with strong fundamentalist tendencies, and that still burns wives. Violetta Chamorro from macho Nicaragua (granted, a bit of help from the CIA). And so on.
Women do face a greater hurdle than men in reaching positions of leadership. Nancy Pelosi is the first woman to head a caucus in the House. No woman has ever headed a caucus in the Senate. Or served as Chief Justice.
But in Hillary's case, the resistance is because her heart is not aligned with her head. People sense it. She can't win trust because of the struggle going on within her.
She's a complex person, a Goldwater girl who grew up to see how bankrupt the Republican Party was. A person who urgently wanted to do good, and did quite a lot of it... but also a very cerebral person who thinks through how doing good can help her do well.
I would call it a "Bradley problem" more than a gender problem.
But I agree, she will probably never be president. It's a shame. So few candidates have the depth of experience in foreign policy and domestic politics she has just by hanging around Bill.
She's smart and talented. Just not wise.
Mostly because she's a woman.
Women still have to prove that they are OK as leaders, even though they lack a penis, and it's not an easy sell to Mr. Average American Joe and his lovely bride, Mrs. American Joe.
: 6/01/2006 02:11:00 PM How many of those countries are parliamentary democracies? And of the women you've mentioned, how many of them have been subjected to fifteen-plus years of scathingly, deliberately wrongheaded coverage in virtually every "respectable" national media outlet?
Plus, click on the link with the polling data. Men -- even Democratic men -- dislike her more than do women. That should tell you something right there.
If this were 1980, before the GOP/Media Complex had had a quarter of a century to turn back the clock and undo not only FDR but Betty Friedan, she might have a chance. But not now.
Again, I carry no brief for HRC. But I think that she's being rejected by GOP/Media-brainwashed America not for her actual policy stances (which are hardly liberal), but because she's female.
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