The XX Factor: What women really think.

With Memories Like These

Followers and Their Leaders

To go back a couple of steps, but still in the general XX spirit of today, I think: Hanna, you've put your finger on what I've been thinking/worrying about lately—which is not the candidates themselves, actually, so much as their followers. I'm not sure where Paul Krugman got the impression that Obama supporters "want their hero or nobody," but I think there is a potential irony in the kind of "movement" backing Obama has: At least to judge by Dreams From My Father, he himself really doesn't have a crusading temperament at all, yet he seems to owe his success to stirring up those sentiments in voters. What remains to be seen is whether fervent followers turn out to be good compromisers, since surely that's the kind of constituency it takes to build the bridges, forge the consensus Obama so often invokes.

As for Clinton's followers, I think it's a big mistake to elevate Robin Morgan as the emblematic Hillary-ite (or as all that much like Hillary herself, though what do I know). There are plenty of fad-allergic realists of both genders—people who are miles away from being aggrieved feminists—who find themselves in her ranks. What remains to be seen is whether they really are no-nonsense pragmatists, eager and ready to join forces with Obama when—if—the time comes.

In the meantime, I keep remembering how much I liked that incredibly civil debate in Los Angeles, when both Democrats sounded like supersmart people, ready to tackle a lot of unwieldy problems—in a league apart from the Republican buffoons who had debated the night before.

But What About Thanks For the Memories?

Dahlia and Melinda, here's what I don't get. Yes, there have been moments of excess and misfire in Hillary's campaign--gender traitor, J'accuse moments. I haven't liked them, either. (And this latest from Erica Jong is a doozy.) But it wasn't all Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, emotional blackmail, and martyrdom. Was it? In fact, I don't think Hillary 2008 mostly or even substantially stands for those things. She has been on her game in every debate I've seen. She consistently shows better mastery of policy details than anyone else in the field. She has smart and thoughtful and comprehensive positions on the issues I think we all care about.

And there's also this: As David Greenberg points out today in Slate, working-class people have been supporting her presumably becasue they remember the first Clinton administration as better times, and trust her to take them there again. Shouldn't we celebrate all of that, and thread it into our memories of this campaign season, rather than making it all about the appearances of feminism-wielded-as-battle-ax? Those moments have been enthralling and instructive, yes, but I just don't think there were enough of those to justify the overall characterization, or to come close to erasing the good this campaign has done for women.

Running for president is utterly exhausting and awful. No one pulls it off with utter grace (not even Obama).  She has had to walk through the gender prism every step of the way, and yes sometimes she stumbles and sometimes she feels sorry for herself. OK. This week, at least, I'm ready to ease up on her.

The Audacity of Hopelessness

Emily and Hanna, I’m with Melinda on this one. Pity is the least interesting political impulse around and the faster we banish it the better.

Last night I had dinner with my former Fairy Slate-mother, Margo Howard—a second-wave feminist in feather mules. She captured what it is in the Hillary campaign that can really misfire with all the mass scolding and the guiltings. She said her problem with the Gloria Steinem/Robin Morgan story line was that she just doesn’t recognize her own life in it. Sure, there is and has been sexism, and it sucks and it should engender outrage. But her life just hasn’t been defined by those slights and obstacles. Mine hasn’t, either, and I don’t much like to be slapped around the room and accused of treason for feeling like my story isn’t one of pervasive gender suffering. Maybe if I were a Hooters girl, that would be my story. But I just can’t imagine a more disrespectful message to the generation of women who smashed through glass ceilings than, “Everything you did was for nothing. Life is as miserable for women today as it ever was.”

I’d been wondering how John McCain was going to inspire his followers with a rousing message of powerless victimhood, and yesterday I saw him do it: Dismissing Obama’s promises of hope as “only rhetoric” and “platitudes," McCain insisted that the events of 9/11 defined the scope of American hopes and freedom forever. This country can no longer afford hope! We’ve been hurt too badly! It’s all just fear and worry from here on out! Our enemies feed on our hope!  The decision to see yourself as the sum of the worst things that have ever been done to you by your enemies used to be the sole province of liberals. I say that if McCain wants to reimagine the GOP as the pity party for the new millennium, he’s welcome to it.   

Always With the Drama

When Hillary Clinton tugs on me, Emily and Hanna, it is usually not in a good way. Sometimes I do feel sorry for her, but I can't imagine casting a pity vote for president. Nor do I want to be guilted, frightened, fooled, or worn down to the point that I'll agree to anything. I do think her health-care plan is marginally better than Barack Obama's. But I'm not sure why I owe her anything for running a campaign that makes it look like the default mode for a woman, even with all of her advantages and abilities, is martyrdom and emotional blackmail. Where oh where is the feminism in the Evita model?  

Is This Really Goodbye?

Emily, I'm with you. Last night, despite the hoarse, bordering-on-Howard-Dean-breakdown speech, I felt a wave of gratitude toward Hillary. Even Maureen Dowd felt it. She managed to get through nearly two-thirds of her column this morning and keep her Hillary hatred in check. And this morning I found myself giving my daughter a spontaneous what-we-owe-Hillary speech on the way to school.

One form this wistfulness takes is the very beginnings of suspicion about Obama, or at least reluctance to being sucked into the charisma. And this, for me, is focused on that "Yes We Can" video. Each time I watch it, I find it a little more creepy. First of all, I'm not so happy to see him surrounded by the likes of Amber Valletta and Scarlett Johansson. This blind Hollywood love is a little too Clinton throwback to me. Secondly, the phrase "Yes we can" is not one I find inspiring (It's better in Spanish). This is not Martin Luther King Jr. territory. It's more like the kind of pablum you hear around D.C. public schools. Thirdly, the worrisome thing about Obama is that people see in him what they want to see. The George Packer piece in last week's New Yorker inadvertently got at this in his quotes from Robert Reich. Reich talked about how the power of Obama, like the power of Robert Kennedy, lies in "his effect on others rather than in any specific policies." The "Yes We Can" video captures the most disturbing aspect of this phenomenon -- a group of people, and not necessarily intelligent or admirable people, literally stealing the words from Obama's mouth. In that video, Obama fuses with the supermodels and Hollywood starlets. They all forge into one big, bright light shining in your eyes. 

Charisma is strange like that. It leaves you feeling high and ungrounded. Women (outside of Evita, of course) have good reason to be wary of it.

Of course, none of this will help Hillary. Wistfulness is usually a feeling you have when the game is over.   

All Hat, No Cattle

When Hillary lost Iowa I started to regret my Obama allegiance (though I recovered by the New York primary) because I'm a sucker for the underdog. But now I find Hillary-as-loser a major turnoff. She really hasn't mastered the art of the concession speech.

At her El Paso rally last night she didn't congratulate Obama and failed to officially concede defeat (or did I miss something?). In fact, she only mentioned her opponent by name to criticize his health care plan. I also found her riff on the old "all hat, no cattle" joke a little off; she said "after seven years of George Bush we need a lot less hat and a lot more cattle!" Obviously she meant Obama's all talk, whereas she would bring home the bacon, or something. She also clearly meant to suggest that Obama is like the current president, which made me shudder. I hate to say this but last night it was Hillary who reminded me of W. - she can't admit her weak points and goes on the attack too much.

And Starring Hillary Clinton as Evita Peron

When I lived in Seattle, I was a regular at Cineoke, where participants sing along, karaoke-style, to songs from movie musicals. My big number was “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” from Evita. I’d bring audience members up on stage to serve as my descamisados, swaying and humming in the background as I did the signature double-arm raise of the former Argentine first lady from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical.

I’m telling you all this because I caught Hillary Clinton’s speech in El Paso, Texas, last night, and I swear the former U.S. first lady was making the Evita arm motions. Hillary was a little hobbled by a hand-held microphone, so she couldn’t do the full double-arm benediction, but she did strike that pose before she took up the mic—check out her Evita form in the photos below. Could she be channeling Evita Peron to attract Latino voters?

Analysts have offered a lot of theories to explain Hillary’s appeal to Latinos, who, along with Asians, women, and over-50s, gave her the edge in the California primary last week. I’ve always resisted the “Latinos are used to women leaders” explanation. After all, of the many disparate groups that comprise the Latino electorate, very few have roots in countries that have or have had female rulers (Argentina, Chile, Panama, Nicaragua).

But, hey, in Hillary’s current position, I suppose it’s a good idea to try everything. 

I did wonder if the Evita lyrics held any wisdom for the Clinton campaign. Let’s hope this snippet from “High Flying, Adored” doesn’t reflect the former front-runner’s experience too closely:

So famous, so easily, so soon, is not the wisest thing to be
You won't care if they love you, it's been done before
You'll despair if they hate you
You'll be drained of all energy

Hillary Is Losing Women

I don't think the point is that women are not responding to her the way African-American voters are responding to Obama—though that is true—but that no demographic is responding to her as it is to him. The guy won every income group, the Catholic swing-voters everybody said he'd have trouble with, independents by a mile, and Latinos. Which is a blow to identity politics but not, as I see it, to women; on the contrary, isn't it a testament to how far we've come that just because she is a woman doesn't mean she's automatically our woman? Yesterday, when a friend of mine said she didn't understand how any woman could decide not to support Hillary, all I could think was that that made no more sense to me than if she'd said she didn't understand not voting for the white person.

What We Owe Hillary

Since the Iowa caucuses, I've been feeling the Hillary tug. Most of the women I've talked to in the last couple of months have felt it, too: Even if they weren't sure they'd vote for Hillary, they were rooting for her on some level. They wanted her to make a strong showing. They didn't want the girl who worked hard to lose willy-nilly to the guy who waltzed in. Those feelings must have helped bring more women than men to the polls in state after state, almost always in favor of Hillary.

But you know what? The tug doesn't feel the same to me now. I wonder if that's true for other Democratic women who could have gone either way, too. If Obama's margins are wide enough to carry women in Maryland and Virginia and D.C.tonight—and so far, according to the exit polls, he has the majority of women in Virginia, by a lot—maybe this shift will help explain why. Hillary has been an excellent first for us. No one else could have done what she's done, with all her aplomb and professionalism and seriousness. But she doesn't have to be the nominee, or the president, to have come through. She hung in there past every other contender, save one. She made it to the finals, the last round, overtime—whatever sports metaphor you want to use. I don't mean to suggest that she's done. But if she loses for good in the next weeks or months, she loses with dignity and heft and heart. And she'd leave us feeling, in a way I know I've never felt before, that a woman can be elected president. We already owe her. We'd owe her for that, too. Even if we don't owe her, or give her, our votes.

Read more posts about Hillary's losses in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.