A couple of days ago, Linda Hirshman made the claim that Hillary wasn’t going to much play from women in the voting booth. Women were not likely to vote for her, because women are just dumb cows that follow their husbands on political matters. The feminist blogosphere basically told her to fuck off (links to come). Wish they had said that more clearly when she was just picking on mothers.
In general, women do not vote much differently than their spouses, though probably not for the reasons that Hirshman gives. However, women haven’t been given the choice of a woman for president before, so it’s hard to say what they are going to do this time.
I asked my students yesterday whether they would vote for Hillary just because she was a woman. Some women and some men said they would.
The press has been giving Hillary pointers on how much to play up her femininity and her motherhood. Should she play the mom to America?
Being the broken hearted mom gave Cindy Sheehan a moral edge and public sympathy. An appealing face to the antiwar movement. But a president shouldn’t be a martyr. And everybody hates doing what their mom tells them to do, so I’m not sure if this is a good strategy for Hillary.
Most women who have kids are more than just moms. They have other interests. Some have fulfilling careers. Most moms aren’t the helmet-headed PTA chief carrying muffins and frowning on fun. However, women find it difficult to escape from that confining stereotype. It’s hard to convince people that you’re a mom and a teacher, a mom and an artist, a mom and a professor with a growing list of addictive habits. I think it will be hard for Hillary to push the mom and a politician thing.
Question of the Day Would you vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman? Should Hillary use the mom card?
Apt. 11d 
I think she has to do something to humanize herself, at any rate. But at the same time, I don’t think she can do so in a way that won’t come off roughly as phony and public-relationsy as Kerry, Gore and Dukakis trying to “humanize” themselves. She has the same problem those guys did, in my view. I don’t see her able to be “Mom”, and being “Professional Woman” (as opposed to just “Policy Wonk of No Particular Gender”) probably only helps with the votes of Professional Women, and maybe actually loses votes with working-class women. (I’m reminded of the class divide in the way that Anita Hill was viewed by women.)
So if she can find a way to move from being a policy-wonkish technocrat, gender may not actually be central to that move.
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A colleague asked me today sudddenly: Obama or Hillary? And I said Hillary. I think that was my impulse – at that instant at least – not because she is a woman, but because she has been around longer, has more experience, both good and bad, and, thus, may have better judgment. I like Obama, and could vote for him and maybe will (will I get a chance?). But Hillary’s strength is also her weakness. It is not gender but familiarity.
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Interesting. On the way women vote: at my precinct, I am always amazed at how many women are democrats while their husbands are republicans. That doesn’t mean they necessarily vote that way, I know, but I still think it’s interesting.
As for Hilary, I hope she doesn’t play the mom card. I’m not particularly thrilled about her as a candidate. I do really want a woman president, but not Hilary. I disagree with her on a few policy issues and I just find her to be disingenuous. I’ve seen her speak in person a couple of times and she’s slick, but she’s too much of a politician for my taste.
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Hmmm. They would vote for Hilary becuase she is a woman. I trust that’s because she is a woman in the Democratic Party. Or would they prefer Elizabeth Dole to, say, Edwards?!
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I remember you had a good post, Tim, about Kerry’s inability to humanize himself. I think that your right about Hillary. She’s a little too chilly and one dimensional for the rest of the country.
Heh. I didn’t push the kids that hard, RC, to see if they would vote for Elizabeth Dole. I’ve got three classes tomorrow. I’ll ask them that one tomorrow.
What about a Clinton-Obama ballot? Would that round things out? Obama’s got a lot more likability. He handled that Biden gaff very well. He doesn’t have those nagging issues of policy swishy-ness that irritate a lot of people, like Laura (Geekymom).
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Clinton’s ‘executive’ experience is dreadful: Hillarycare. She had huge resources to try and pull together something complicated and did a dreadful job. That’s the thing we have seen her try to do which is most like the job the President needs to do. She hasn’t run anything big, or successfully gotten people to join together in compromises. She’s now been a moderately successful Senator – better than Kerry, not as good as Daschle or Lott or Bradley. Obama has even less executive experience.
I don’t think Hillary is the Dems’ strongest candidate in the general – if they were smart they would be buffing their governors, Rendell or Vilsack would seem to me to be the most likely – but if they do nominate her, the last thing they should put on the ticket with her is another Senator. A month or so ago I posted (at Half Changed World) this quote from center-left economist Brad DeLong – who worked in the Clinton White House and, though he doesnt have quite Krugman’s level of spittle-flecked hatred for the Reeps, has very little nice to say about any Reep ever:
“..My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.
So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation’s health-care system…
Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch–the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president..”
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My wife surprised me yesterday by telling me that she feels somewhat guilty over the fact that she simply doesn’t find Hillary appealing. Leaving aside her concerns about whether or not her opinions about Hillary were justified, there was also just this general feeling that she, as someone who cares about feminist issues, ought to be supportive of Hillary, that to not be supporting of her was somehow letting down her side, and so that therefore her doubts about Hillary meant she was failing somehow.
This general feeling of hers wasn’t strong enough to overcome her reservations, but it was there nonetheless. Which really surprised me; I’d never thought that she harbored much of the old-school women-must-elect-women-to-advance-the-cause sensibility at all. I wonder how many women, in the midst of limited information and the usual Election Day lesser-evil choices, will be swayed by that sensibility? And I wonder how much Hillary and her people are counting on that sensibility–the “here’s-our-chance-girls-don’t-let-your-gender-down!” feeling–to make a difference?
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I do feel a bit guilty about not feeling supportive of Hillary, but one of my main reasons is that I don’t like her for her personality, and not for the issues. I have no guilt in not voting for Dole or Condi Rice, because I disagree with their stands on issues. While I may disagree with Hillary on some specific issues, I doubt that I disagree with her significantly. So, that leaves personality as the reason for my lack of support, and personality is prone to prejudice. Do I really dislike Hillary’s personality, or is that my sexism coming out?
To pinpoint the personality problems, I used to like Hillary. I liked the idea of a strong woman who nevertheless could love a person enough to follow him to Arkansas, the woman strong enough to not change her name, but enough of part of a family unit to do it for her husband’s career, the woman who was a player in the children’s defense fund, and who wrote the book “It takes a village.” I even liked the woman who tried to accomplish a national health care plan that we desperately neeeded (in spite of the failure, which I do blame partly on her, but not completely).
But, I don’t like the woman who seems like she’s become a “cv” builder, who runs for senate in a state that she’s never lived in, who stays in a marriage of convenience for political reasons (I know, we can’t know the details of any marriage), who take positions that try to move to what the voters want in hopes of getting elected, rather than leading.
So, I can’t support Hillary in the primary, but my reasons are mixed enough that that I wonder how much subconscious guilt plays a role. Of course, I’ll support her if she wins the democratic nomination. I’m not sure how hard I want to work to support someone to defeat her in the primary (my husband has picked Obama). I’m not sure I can pick someone to get behind yet, but I’m toying wit Bill Richardson.
bj
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When I was 15 Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of my country, a position which she held for 11 years. Most OECD and many developing countries have had women as Heads of State and Chief Executives. Once you’ve had one, you wouldn’t dream of voting for someone just because they’re a woman. If you get Hillary, you’ll feel the same.
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I’d vote for her just because she’s a woman IF she were pro-life.
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But, I think having one person who breaks the identity moldof an office weakens thebarrier; having two hopefully breaks it. That’s why I have sympathy for identity politics. That’s why the first is so important.
In my heart of hearts, though, I have another plan: Nancy Pelosi as our first woman president. I mean, really, what is going to be accomplished by the current administration in the next 2 years? My guess is nothing; there’ll be fiddling while Iraq burns, Iran simmers, and our boys die, in small enough numbers that no one takes to the streets. So, nothing changes until the administration changes. Cheney & Bush resign, and Pelosi becomes president, that’s a plan I could get behind.
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Like some have mentioned, I used to like Hillary a lot more. She’s too much the slick politician these days.
I actually think it’s a step forward for women to be able to vote just like men. Meaning, we are all individuals whose thoughts and life trajectories are not determined by our gender. Please, judge us by the content of our character, not by our reproductive organs. 😉
I also personally think it’s great to see women politicians playing the mom card. Being involved with kids is a critical life experience. I see the world thru such a parent lens, and I am so aware of how much my worldview broadened when I had kids. I accept an analyst or an academic type with no kids; I do not expect perspective from them. This goes for both Condi Rice and David Souter — it’s not just a woman thing. But the president? Puh-lease. If they *didn’t* have kids I’d be asking all kinds of questions about how much they know about the kid world, and what’s happening with the younger generations. They would have to *overcome* their non-mom status.
But then again, I’m a mom. Of course I’m going to think being a mom is a great credential. I wonder how the rest of the world sees it?
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Is Pelosi “pro-life”?
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Pelosi is not “pro-life”. She is, in fact, pro-late term abortion.
I would never vote for someone for any single issue and definitely not because of their gender. My husband and I influence each other’s voting quite a lot. I’ve allowed his passion for a particular issue to convince me to vote one way or the other and I know he’s done the same when I’m passionate about something. Although mostly we just agree on issues and political candidates.
One thing I don’t get is how come no one is talking about Richardson? He seems like such a great choice for the Dems. He’s not super liberal, he hasn’t had any major (Or minor- that I know of) scandals, he’s a governor and he’s hispanic.
It’s all about Hillary and Barak, neither of which have it to carry the country, in my opinion.
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I would not vote for HRC in the primaries. I would vote for any Dem in the general. I am a woman, but I don’t believe HRC represents my views as well as, for example, John Edwards. I, too, believe that Pelosi would be a better President than HRC, because she has demonstrated her ability to play hardball politics in pursuit of principle. I don’t believe Pelosi would be electable at the moment…of course there is another route by which she could become pres.
Although I worry about HRC’s electability should she win the nomination, she does have a history (NY senatorial race) of winning people to her side.
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If women tend to vote the same as their husbands (and where does Hirschman cite any proof of that?) isn’t it a simpler explanation to say that people tend to marry others with similar values? Or at least such marriages are more likely to last?
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I have read studies that show that husband and wives tend to vote the same. However, the authors of those studies speculate that the reason is that people vote based on their economic interests. Since husband and wives share the same economic status, it makes sense that they would vote the same way. I have never read any study that said women vote the same way as men, because they expect men to tell them what to do. That Hirshman dreamed up herself and boltressed those ideas on a study of six DC moms.
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