An excerpt from Susan Bardo’s new book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton was posted yesterday at The Guardian and it sums up a lot of the feelings I had last year. I know I’m not alone in thinking the take-down of Hillary as a corrupt corporate “Establishment” candidate during the primary was unfair and helped defeat her in the general. We need to think about how we characterize women who are running for office so this doesn’t continue to happen.
The history of feminists within progressive and leftist movements is one of pushing for space and a voice...it is a history of being told to hush with our ‘social issues’ and always taking a backseat to the men who lead the Movements. I think Susan does a good job of laying out the fault lines within the feminist movement, over time, and how they affected perception of Hillary. There are quite a few competent women serving in our state legislators and in Congress and we should treat them the same way we do our male candidates when they seek higher offices if we would like to see better representation for women in government. Women have no other option to gain power than to go through established channels such as the Democratic party. Are we going to paint them all as craven corporate cronies because George Clooney donates to their campaigns? Will we critique the male candidates who give high dollar speeches now too? Or was this a special case?
Are we going to ‘hold our noses’ and vote for women in the future because they seem un-likeable’ (whatever the F that means) or ‘insincere’ (because male politicians are known for their sincerity)?
Are we going to demand they pay homage to the Rust Belt Man, elevated above other voters, with hard hat photo ops and toned down, not so feminist-y, appeals to these so-called “Real Americans?” Should we be ‘ashamed’ as Democrats if they don’t vote for a liberal woman?
Will we call our next female candidate ‘unqualified’ for using the same kind of PAC money and corporate donors that our male candidates have traditionally enjoyed access to? Or was it just her?
No one likes to admit that we have a problem with sexism on our side too but if we don’t understand the challenges women face when they run for office, Democrats will reinforce a system that leaves the voices of many Americans out of their government’s policies.
Here are some of her points:
Progressive. It’s a term with a long, twisty history. In the 19th century, it was associated with those who argued for the moral “cleansing” of the nation. A century ago, both racist Southern Democrats and the founders of the NAACP claimed it for their purposes. The Communist party has described itself as progressive. By the time Sanders argued that Clinton was “not a true progressive”, the word was not very useful descriptively – one can be progressive in some ways and not so progressive in others, and no politician that I know of has ever struck every progressive chord. Context matters, too. As Jonathan Cohn wrote, in May: “If Sanders is the standard by which you’re going to decide whether a politician is a progressive, then almost nobody from the Democratic party would qualify. Take Sanders out of the equation, and suddenly Clinton looks an awful lot like a mainstream progressive.”
As I watched Sanders enchant the crowds, it was something of a deja vu experience to see a charismatic male politician on stage telling women which issues are and aren’t progressive. Cultural histories of the 60s rarely acknowledge what a sexist decade it was. We imagine that breaking through the suburban 50s fantasy meant that old-fashioned gender roles and attitudes had been discarded. Far from it.
In fact, in many ways the decade was more male-centric than the 50s; it just privileged a different sort of male. Those men loved having us as uninhibited sexual partners and helpers in their political protests, but they never let us forget who was in charge of creating the platforms or who belonged in the political spotlight.
Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a generation that knew very little about her beyond what Bernie told them. Like progressive, establishment is a pretty meaningless term, particularly when lobbed at one Washington politician by another. Neither Sanders nor Clinton had been working outside the system.
Appearances to the contrary, Sanders was not a union organizer, but rather a longtime member of the Senate. And if Clinton had more support from the Democratic party, that was due in large part to the relationships she had cultivated over the years, working with others – something Sanders was not particularly good at. Nonetheless, for weeks during the early months of the primary, I listened to 19-year-olds and media pundits alike lavish praise on Bernie Sanders for his bold, revolutionary message, and scorn Hillary for being a part of the establishment.