To start off today’s lesson: the difference between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, as defined by academia:
Sex = the biological signification of femalehood or malehood
Gender = a social construct that exists outside of biology and the body; has more to do with subjective terms like ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ which can be applied to a person regardless of sex
so why is Salon saying that Hillary is the male-gendered candidate while Obama is the female one?
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 »
I was listening to NPR’s Talk of the Nation today, and one caller asked the question, “If Obama or Hillary Clinton ended up getting the Democratic nomination, would a joint ticket be possible?”
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