July 17, 2007
· Filed under Angela Merkel, Hillary's platform, Obama, corruption, female voters, female vs. male politicians, feminism, gender, iraq, pioneer, sexism
I recently received some interesting and timely correspondance from a questioning reader. She writes,
“I have spent some time this summer talking to my mom and her friends about politics. These older women, mostly of Hillary’s generation, say that they see her as the most unethical of the candidates, someone who would lie and cheat and stop at nothing to get her way. No matter how much they would like to see a female in the White House, they would never vote for Hillary. I think that most people would agree that political candidates in general are far less moral than we would like. Is Hillary really any worse than the others?”
These questions are timely because they remind me of a recent cover story in The Nation, which focuses exclusively on the way women, and more specifically feminists and/or her generational peers, view Hillary Clinton. The article addresses many of the questions that my reader asks.
So, is Hillary really more unethical or ruthless than the other candidates?
Read the rest of this entry »
June 25, 2007
· Filed under Bill Clinton, corruption, democratic nomination, democrats, republicans
For those of you who ready Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball (political analysis/election predictions), you will have noticed that he recently wrote an article entitled “The Hillary Dilemma.” He concludes that although Hillary’s credentials outweigh the other candidates’, making her seem like the strongest candidate in the field, she would actually be the weakest nominee for the Democratic party.
Like Clintonfan42, I think that many of Sabato’s points are weak in his analyis. First, he states that any Democratic nominee this election can count on inflated, if grudging, electoral support because the republican party has managed to dig itself deeper and deeper into an Iraq and scandal-lined hole over the past eight years. However, he then says that “The final several percent of swing voters needed to get Hillary Clinton over the top in the general election will vote for her only with the greatest reluctance, more as a way to stop a Republican than as an endorsement of her.” Is this really a problem for the Democratic party? Clearly, the best candidate would be, as Sabato says, a ‘unifier’ able to bridge the growing partisan divide, one that would sweep swing voters off their feet during the election, and encourage productive cooperation across the aisle once in office. I just think that’s wishful thinking. The Democrats can’t produce a candidate like that right now, and counting the inability to generate a wave of good feeling for the party as a particular weakness of Hillary’s is a misplacement of criticism. Read the rest of this entry »
