I wasn't going to do much with this column other than tuck it away for future reference. That's not because I didn't agree with what its author, the irrepressable Katha Pollitt, wrote--I actually agree with just about all of this, and certainly agree with her major premise: that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has made it easier for women and all non-white guy candidates to run for office--but because diaries that cast Clinton in anything but the most unflattering of lights are usually exercises in futility around many places on the left side of the blogosphere. This is especially true of DailyKos.
But this column, I believe, offers something different. For while Pollitt does not dwell on Clinton's own particular nastiness--she also never excuses it--and while she does take serious issue with much of the sexist vitriol that has been hurled the Senator's way, Pollitt's major point is not that anyone should feel particularly sorry for Clinton, and it's not that Clinton lost the nomination because of a gender-loathing press, but that, in the end, Hillary Clinton has, through her dogged and relentless campaign for the presidency, paved the way for the next serious run by a woman for the office.
I started this diary before Clinton's speech, but was unable to finish it. Now having seen and heard the speech, I am struck by the themes that Clinton raised and how so much of her speech addressed the concerns Katha Pollitt raised in her column. That gives me reason to believe that for all the anger we directed at Clinton, we've seriously undervalued her candidacy and what it means for our future. Pollitt's columns, as most of you know, appear approximately bi-weekly in the Nation. This one is entitled, pointedly (and ironically) enough, Iron My Skirt.
Pollitt begins:
Hillary Clinton came this close. In fact, as of this writing, she hasn't formally conceded. Nobody really understands why: why she stuck it out this long, given the math, and why she gave such a grudging, graceless version of her stump speech after the South Dakota primary clinched the nomination for Barack Obama. Suggestions I've heard are not very flattering: she hopes to whittle down her multimillion-dollar campaign debt with donations from the deluded die-hards screaming Denver! Denver! She wants the number-two spot. She's a crazy narcissistic rhymes-with-rich. Maybe she's just ticked off because pundits have been trying to hustle her off the stage ever since her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
But this is key:
Some think Clinton's loss, and the psychodrama surrounding it, will set women back. I think they're wrong. Love her or loathe her, the big story here is Americans saw a woman who was a serious, popular, major-party candidate. Clinton showed herself to be tough, tireless, supersmart and definitely ready to lead on that famous Day One. She raised a ton of money and won 17.5 million votes from men and women. She was exciting, too: she and Obama galvanized voters for six long months--in some early contests, each of them racked up more votes than all the Republican candidates combined. Once the bitterness of the present moment has faded, that's what people will remember. Because she normalized the concept of a woman running for President, she made it easier for women to run for every office, including the White House. That is one reason women and men of every party and candidate preference, and every ethnicity too, owe Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, even if they can't stand her.
But this was never to be done without sacrifice, and much of it Clinton's, for she did endure more hateful barbs than any candidate has the obligation to. Election campaigns should not be punitive. She took on the chattering class who told her to get out. She took on the outright misogyny of the likes of Limbaugh and Matthews, and though it's doubtful that she ever personally saw it, her supporters certainly took on the self-righteous bombast from all corners of the Left-wing blogs. Any attempt to catalogue what was said about her on this site alone would be enough to make Lee Atwater and Roger Stone blush.
Pollitt, therefore, congratulates and properly thanks Clinton for laying herself out there on the line, and having done so, quite likely, with full knowledge that were she to enter, continue and someday end this race, she will have been badly bloodied for the attempt. She was. To quote:
It's as if every obscene phone caller and every exhibitionist in America decided to become an amateur political pundit.
Pollitt was prescient, too, in that her column pre-dated Clinton's endorsement speech. She called upon Clinton to rally her supporters behind Obama, but, perhaps because of the divide between their campaigns, and the constant drumbeat of the media to highlight that divide, Pollitt was less than optimistic::
It's incredibly important for Clinton to do the right thing and rally these women to Obama, and I wish I felt surer that she would rise to the occasion.
Pollitt need not have worried. Clinton came though in full-throated support of Obama's candidacy and with all the determination she could muster, called for all those who came to her campaign "to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States." Indeed, much of what Pollitt called upon Clinton to say found its way into a moving speech that called her supporters to arms, not just for Obama, but for the larger work to be done to eliminate the demeaning and denigrating pundidtry that dogged her campaign. Clinton's speech, too, will help pave the way for the candidacy of the next serious woman who seeks the presidency (perhaps, even her own).
And so, too, Clinton spoke to where her candidacy and Obama's have indeed broken some of the barriers to our moving forward toward the normalization of a woman and an African American running for the presidency:
Think of the suffragists who gathered at Seneca Falls in 1848 and those who kept fighting until women could cast their votes. Think of the abolitionists who struggled and died to see the end of slavery. Think of the civil rights heroes and foot-soldiers who marched, protested and risked their lives to bring about the end to segregation and Jim Crow.
Because of them, I grew up taking for granted that women could vote. Because of them, my daughter grew up taking for granted that children of all colors could go to school together. Because of them, Barack Obama and I could wage a hard fought campaign for the Democratic nomination. Because of them, and because of you, children today will grow up taking for granted that an African American or a woman can yes, become President of the United States.
When that day arrives and a woman takes the oath of office as our President, we will all stand taller, proud of the values of our nation, proud that every little girl can dream and that her dreams can come true in America. And all of you will know that because of your passion and hard work you helped pave the way for that day.
I heard a lot of Katha Pollitt--and not just this one column, but many of the themes she regularly strikes--in Hillary Clinton yesterday, and it makes me confident that those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling are only the beginning.