Clinton announces her presidency. Pelosi bangs the gavel to bring the House to order. It has taken the pundits a couple of weeks to clear their throats, but now they’re ready to analyze the chick thing.
Since my readers love me best when I’m angered, Jeremy sends me a link to a Linda Hirshman analysis of these events. As usual, the piece is all over the place at times picking at the stay at home moms and other times aiming her vitriol at women in general.
Hirshman wonders whether women will vote for Clinton. An excellent question. I’m very interested to see what happens on that front also. She decides to find out what women, who she describes as couch-sitters, will do by interviewing a dozen members of the Wednesday Morning Group, a D.C. area organization that provides speakers and programs mostly for stay-at-home moms.
These 12 DC women tell Hirshman that they formerly had jobs, they mostly read People and Real Simple, their husbands read real news, and the women ask their husbands for advice on politics. Good research work as always.
Since it’s DC, the husband probably all have jobs in government and need to read the newspaper for their work. These men probably do have the inside scoop on politics. It does not follow that women around the country also lean on their husbands for political opinions. It’s not clear if these women are any less informed than 99% of the rest of America.
Hirshman is on safer ground when she brings up other research that has been done on women and politics. She writes, “women have voted more Democratic than men recently, but since the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, only once has the women’s vote arguably been different enough from the men’s vote to determine the outcome of a presidential election.” Study after study shows that women consume less political information than men, are less informed about political events, and are less likely to contribute to a compaign. (Also less likely to write a political blog — at least political in a completely obvious way.)
To get elected, she advises Hillary to talk personal and give the dirt on life with Bill. Chicks like soap operas. She also tells Hillary to look good and appear popular; women like winners.
But women also like the slightly dangerous bass player with tattoos and long hair, so should Hillary get a CBGBs T-shirt and drive a motorcycle? Er… maybe that’s not women in general. Maybe that’s just me. Okay, nevermind.
So, are you surprised? I didn’t hate the piece. Sure, there are some slams and sneers at stay-at-home moms, but I was prepared for it this time. She’s right that women and men haven’t really gone their separate ways in the voting booth. However, it doesn’t mean that women are taking their bidding from men. It might just mean that other factors, like economic status, are more important than gender in the voting booth.
Women aren’t as politically shallow as Hirshman makes them out to be. Women may be less likely to read traditional media news sources, but they pick up opinions in other places — the soccer field, the PTA meeting, on the phone with their friends. I think that pollsters haven’t tapped into the politicalness of women, because the pollsters are men and they are asking the wrong questions.
Yes, image is important to women, but it’s important to men, too. It’s just a reality in our high tech world. Go ask John McCain.
Others are saying that Hillary and Nancy need to use the “mom” card. More tomorrow.
Apt. 11d 
I think if I were advising Hillary Clinton, I would give the opposite advice. I think the mom stuff would come across as fake, as well as unprofessional. She would do better to address herself to those who are slightly hostile to her, persuading them that even if she is a latter-day Lady MacBeth, that’s what the country needs right now–pragmatism, ruthlessness, flinty determination, etc. Even her enemies think she’s got those qualities in spades. It would also be helpful if her husband could be persuaded to spend the next two to ten years in a Carthusian monastery, or in Tibet if he prefers.
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I don’t know–given that the person who looks (at least from my vantage point) like the Republican woman most likely to run for president is Condi Rice–would these women be likely to vote for Condi, a woman who doesn’t have the mother card to play? I do think it’s true that class trumps gender at the voting booth.
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Sigh…my blood pressure rose perceptibly as I read this. But it was pretty predictable, no?
The funny thing, though, is that if you analyzed the political decision making process of most men, I suspect that you’d find that there isn’t a whole lot of “policy-based decision-making” either. Americans choose their leaders based on their guts–its all about image and personality, for voters of both sexes.
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Regarding using the mother card. I find the idea of Hillary using the “mother card” revolting. Not just because it is completely fake for her and has nothing to do with whether or not she would make a good president. But mostly because it is hypocritical for someone who has shown such open scorn for stay at home moms in the past to all of a sudden pander to them like they are the life or death of her campaign.
And just for the record, personally I have more respect for someone like Condi Rice, who had no children and devoted her life to a career than I do for someone like HIllary, who had a child, but chose to pursue her career over rearing her daughter (even though Bill made enough money that she really could have stayed home had she wanted to).
I know her choices were her own and she had every right to make them, but if she chooses to use the fact that she is a “mother” to make her more appealing to stay at home moms I will just be disgusted. And I will NEVER vote for her. Talk about flip-flopping.
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