Blogger: Why Hillary Clinton matters
December 6, 2007 | 2008 campaign
I’ve never looked at it quite like this before, but Bitch Ph.D. has a thought-provoking post about why Hillary Clinton matters in this presidential race.
The reason Obama has to court women — in particular, feminist women — isn’t just because women are 54% of the electorate, as the NYT explains. It’s because for the first time in American history there’s a candidate whose presence in the race makes women’s issues and feminist issues a primary focus of the campaign. Women voters don’t have to choose between two men who may (or may not) give a shit about women’s issues based on their positions on everything else; we get a real choice between a candidate who, not coincidentally, is herself a woman and for whom women’s issues are central, rather than peripheral, and male candidates who have not, to date, made women’s issues central to their political careers.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:47 pm
If Hillary Clinton is to be the next POTUS, I hope that for her, women’s issues ARE as important as Bitch Ph.D seems to think they are. That would include issues like health care, poverty, war (including women around the world), workplace equity and the like. It does seem to me that Ms. Clinton’s primary benefactors are the military-industrial complex and everyone else comes second in line. In that way, of course, she’s little different from most of the Democrats and all of the Republicans save for Ron Paul. So perhaps that’s the point.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
But like any candidate, campaigning is one thing, actually being in office is another. Just because a candidate has a campaign platform supporting issues that are central to women does not guarantee those issues will be addressed if the candidate is elected to office.
I think this is true for any candidate, regardless of gender.