Sexism Isn’t Holding Hillary Back By Kay S. Hymowitz
The Bear on May 02 2008 at 8:24 am | Filed under: Election 08’
Remember sexism? Remember when Hillary Clinton was at a disadvantage because she was a woman, when Gloria Steinem took stock of the primary campaign and concluded, “Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life”? Come to think of it, remember just two weeks ago, when New York and Salon published big think pieces by young women who saw, in Clinton’s declining fortunes, so much evidence of sexism that they predicted the emergence of Fourth Wave feminism? Well, that’s not going to happen. Not only does Clinton’s Pennsylvania win last week muddy most of the sexism charges; it makes the feminist critique of politics look as exhausted as the candidates themselves.
At this point, gender has become just another force in the turbulent demographic cross-currents of American politics. In the Keystone State, the clincher was class, not gender. Clinton proved far more adept than Barack Obama at romancing the reticent blue-collar voter. She (once again) reinvented herself, this time as Roseanne, a small-town, bar-hangin’, gun-shootin’ waitress type. Bittergate, a bowling malfunction, and a general image of cool aloofness left Obama, on the other hand, walking around with an ELITE sign on his back, insisting that he does indeed eat Jell-O, in an effort to minimize what Newsweek now calls the “Bubba Gap.”
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