Categories: Election 2008
November 1, 2007
The Hillary Clinton mixtape from this week's debate
Tough bit from Andrew Sullivan today, who's had it up to here with people saying Hillary Clinton deserves props as a tough woman for fending off the attacks of six other Democratic presidential contenders:
What's next? Congratulating her that she didn't burst into tears? And can we please retire this hideous "Hillary" thing? She's Senator Clinton. And she can't play the gender card both ways.
Any attempt by the Clinton campaign to frame the race in terms of a gender battle would likely backfire in ways they cannot possibly imagine.
Don't they realize that Clinton is to women as Obama is to blacks?
I wholeheartedly agree with Andrew Sullivan on this. It's a variation of the expectations-lowering that Bush used so effectively in his first campaign.
An argument could be made that she has to contend with plenty of sexism working against her, so why not try to make lemonade and to turn it to her advantage. But it's such a disingenuous approach.
I just hope that the degree of success she's having serves to make this kind of ploy less useful in the long run.
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