John Aravosis points us to an article by E.R. Malcolm that essentially argues that Hillary should be encouraged to remain in the race because, well, she’s a woman.
This borderline sexist argument rings especially ironic given the pervasive, under-the-breath sentiment articulated by Ferraro that Obama’s victories testify not to his exceptional merits, but to a sudden national epidemic of reverse-racism.
In the face of such a canard, how strange it’s been that Clinton has been assuming the posture of victim, deserving of all manner of rule-adjusting and special consideration, in spite of her wealth, universal recognition and early establishment blessings.
Clinton's sense of entitlement appears to stem from a view of herself as dynastic royalty, rather than as a delicate waif unfairly out-muscled. However, because so many women look to her iconic example, it is puzzling how Hillary’s seemingly boundless demands for a re-negotiation of election parameters can be viewed as anything other than degrading to herself and to all women.
As the candidate who started out with unimaginable advantages, the one who claims to be "tougher" and more experienced, Clinton has shown herself to be remarkably thin-skinned and unwilling to live by the standards to which she holds her opponent.
She has dispatched her husband to accuse a demonstrably gentle Obama of "beating up on a girl" (invoking the charged image of a young black man doing violence to an upstanding older woman), while Hillary herself has shivved, shanked and sucker-punched her way through the campaign process. Clinton and her surrogates have been quick to cry "sexism" in debate formats, and to demand swift retribution against media figures charged with making sexist remarks against her.
However, Hillary saw nothing wrong with her former insider trapping Obama into a thinly-veiled, racially noxious game of "let’s make Stepinfetchit dance" in the guise of a debate. ABC moderators slandered Obama with degrading, tabloid questions, and blocked Obama's rebuttal after Hillary held forth at length lumping him with Wright, Ayers, Farrakhan, Hamas, and terrorism in general. Obama brushed it off, dismissing the sordid affair as "DC politics," but Hillary's campaign nonetheless cast him as a wimp, and "unable to take the heat."
On the thinnest of grounds, Hillary has accused Obama of "playing the race card," while her own campaign dogwhistled "uppity negro" by calling Obama "elitist," and has chummed the already-bloody racial waters with bait like: "I am the choice of hard-working voters--WHITE voters." But beyond the double-standard of her campaign rhetoric, Clinton has demanded kid-gloves treatment and a massaging of the rules at virtually every crossroads of her campaign.
For example:
- Clinton blew her massive initial financial advantage by presuming she would win early, by ignoring the internet potential of small donors, and by hiring expensive Rovian idiots to manage her campaign. Instead of dropping out as her campaign flagged and her money ran low, Clinton loaned herself truckloads of cash, the better to further "bloody" Obama. Now, the media’s latest rumor is that Clinton can expect Obama’s campaign to rescue her from her debts to small businesses and incompetent advisors.
- Clinton failed to plan for the caucus states, and got blown away in them. Her response was to complain about the caucus system itself, arguing that it disenfranchised lever-pulling voters. She opined that the "popular vote" should become the new metric, knowing that no "popular" votes were recorded as such in the caucus states she lost.
- Clinton failed to plan for proportionality in delegate wins, and got punished in the delegate totals. Her response was to dismiss the Democratic party's process of allocation, arguing that she should instead be judged by the GOP state standard of winner-take all.
- Clinton failed to create the 50-state strategy necessary to gain the nomination, and got hammered in red states and medium-sized states. Her response was to dismiss the importance of anything but the "big states" and "swing states" she had bothered to campaign hard in.
- Clinton has long insisted on a disconnect between superdelegate decisions and the pledged delegate total, aggressively courting early superdelegate endorsements and arguing that superdelegates should be free to "vote their conscience." However, when Obama claimed a commanding lead in pledged delegates, and the DNC chairman asked the supers to let their preferences be known, Hillary suddenly protested that the supers should hold off, and "allow the people to vote."
- Clinton continues to glean social sympathy for the outrageous levels of harassment she historically received at the hands of the right-wing media. However, profiting from this "victim" stance has not prevented Clinton or her husband from crawling into bed with the very serpents who spearheaded the "vast right wing conspiracy," when doing so gave her the chance to skewer Obama, or gain empty, misleading votes from "Operation Chaos."
- Clinton pledged to honor sanctions against Florida and Michigan for "cutting in line"--penalties that her own campaign surrogates voted for. However, when she began to lose the greater contest, Hillary did a sudden about-face and demanded a hasty re-vote in Michigan and Florida under shady conditions that would shut out Democrats who crossed over in the faux-election, while inflating the power of Limbaugh’s "Operation Chaos" minions. (Not to mention the conflicts of interest inherent in the Clinton campaign's offer to orchestrate and fund such an enterprise.) When Obama's legal reps balked at this skewed scenario, Michigan's GOP-led Congress adjourned with the issue unresolved. Florida, meanwhile, nixed its own re-vote, having never tried a mail-in vote and unwilling to fund a statewide do-over. Nonetheless, Clinton melodramatically cast the "disenfranchisement of MI and FL voters" entirely at Obama’s feet.
- Now, having sneakily left her name on the MI and FL tickets in violation of her agreement to not-participate in the elections, Hillary insists that her ill-gained MI/FL delegates be seated as is. She makes this demand despite the Soviet-style Michigan election in which Obama was absent from the ballot (Hillary would also deny Obama the "uncommitted" delegates, thus fully shutting out prospective Obama voters), and the Florida scenario in which she enjoyed universal name recognition while Obama was forbidden to campaign.
All of Hillary’s cries for special consideration and midstream rule-changing set a despicable precedent for women seeking higher office, suggesting that they somehow lack the skills and fortitude to compete by fair or conventional means.
Hillary’s symbolism thus devolves from her formerly established image of a valiant, determined warrior, triumphant shatterer of glass ceilings. Her recent campaign tactics regrettably evoke the distinctly anti-feminist, historically insidious image of a weak, whiny woman who cannot succeed except by manipulation and exceptional dispensation.
Hillary owes her admirers a far stronger, more noble and gracious legacy than this. And because other opportunities can emerge from the ashes of this temporary defeat (be it a cabinet position, majority leadership, Supreme Court appointment, or vice-presidency), she owes it to herself to start acting like the stately champion that she lost touch with somewhere along the bitter road.