I'm fascinated by Hillary's campaign for presidency. Here we have a strong female candidate with a real shot at the White House. How is she doing things differently from the men?
Hillary has some high cards in her hand. She's got the campaign bucks. She has experience. She's got name recognition. All good stuff, and she's playing those cards heavily.
But is being a woman a good card? If she spoke to women and their particular policy issues, wouldn't she nail 50% of the voters? I don't think she's playing the chick card seriously. I haven't heard her say with any seriousness, this and this and this are women's issues and if you vote for me, I'll take care of your interests better than any of these other jokers running for office.
Why isn't she playing the chick card?
Maybe she realizes that playing the chick card won't help her cause with women, and it would end up alienating the men.
Women haven't been rallying around Hillary. The prominent women bloggers and pundits are siding with Edwards. He's more to the left on economic issues than Hillary.
If Hillary spoke more about women's issues, would they side with her? I'm not sure. The problem is that women can't decide what women's policy issues are. Younger women say that birth planning is their biggest issue. For women in their thirties and forties, it's family matters - family leave policies, education, health care for children. Older women are struggling to become CEO in a world that doesn't know how to deal with women leaders. We're fighting amongst ourselves and looking towards the male pundits for voting cues.
I've heard rumors that Hillary has a plan to put more women in positions of power in her new administration, but she's keeping that plan quiet. She doesn't think that it will bring in enough women voters to compensate for the male voters who would be freaked out by such a plan.
I think that we shouldn't be above identity politics. If we put in all our chips and said that we were going to back Hillary, because she's a woman, maybe she wouldn't be so shy about championing our causes. If we said that, for a short time, we would stop fighting with each other for a while and find commonalities, could we end up with a candidate that actually spoke to our needs?
It would be nice.
