Over and over again we hear variations on this theme: because more people voted for Obama than Hillary, and because he won and she lost, we are further along with respect to resolving racism than sexism in the United States, at least with respect to politics.
Sometimes this is stated as: it is easier to get elected as a black man than as a white woman.
I suppose with the very small set of two, and only with respect to the presidency, this makes sense to people.
But there are a whole host of assumptions connected with this that I do not see anyone else discussing.
First of all, it completely ignores BHO’s vastly superior skills as a political organizer. He was a relative political neophyte who had never even worked on a national campaign before, much less run as a national candidate before himself. But he told us to judge his executive skills by how he ran his campaign, and then he managed to run a campaign with no major staff shakeups, scandals, or internal squabbles aired in the press. Credit Plouffe and Axelrod more than Obama if you want; it still matters that BHO surrounded himself with people who knew how to get the job done.
Second, it overlooks BHO’s personal skills as a campaigner and an orator, and the intangibles of his compelling personal story and magnetic personality. He may be the most charismatic politician the country has ever seen (yes, WJC, I said it), able to appeal to the educated and the uneducated, people in urban communities and rural towns, voters in the working class and the donor class.
Third, it does not consider the unique roadblocks thrown in HRC’s way: *decades* of the VRWC lobbing targeted attacks specifically on her trustworthiness and competency. GOPropaganda spent thirty years pasting negative branding labels on HRC as an individual, not on all female politicians.
It is laughably easy to prove this by looking beyond the presidency, which again only has a very small sample to choose from.
How many white women (of both parties) have been elected to the House of Representatives since the late 1980s (when the fire of GOP hatred was first turned on Hillary) as compared to the number of black men?
How many white women (of both parties) have been elected to the Senate since the late 80s as compared to the number of black men? (How many black people of either gender have been in the Senate since its inception?)
How many white women (of both parties) have been elected as governors since the late 80s as compared to the number of black men? (How many black people of either gender have ever been governors?)
And of course we are keeping this to politics rather than getting into other obvious statistics such as comparing how many unarmed white women have been shot by police since the late 80s as compared to the number of black men. Or even as compared to the number of black women.
I am not doing this to defend Obama specifically even though I claim the title O-bot without shame.
I’m not doing it to start a flame war although I expect a lot of flames to come my way.
I am saying that it is unfair to make any judgments about racism and sexism in politics in general by comparing Hillary and Obama as individuals. There were a LOT of other variables in addition to racism and sexism that explain the win in 2008 (and 2012) and the loss in 2016, and that seems obvious to me.
We have just seen again with the N word painted at LeBron James’s house that there is no amount of money or social status or fame that can adequately shield you from racism.
And while the hierarchy of oppression sweepstakes is a lose-lose game to all who play it, I do not think there are too many white female politicians out there thinking “damn, if I were a black man I’d have a much better chance of winning my election.”
They might be thinking if I were a *man* i’d have a better chance at winning my election, and they might be right about that, since I would NEVER deny the reality of sexism in politics and everywhere else in this country.
But the suggestion that somehow we have made more progress with respect to racism than sexism in politics just because BHO’s presidential campaigns were successful and HRC’s were not? That just makes no sense.
How many times since the late 1980s has a local legislature or elected official proposed a law specifically designed to make it harder for white women to vote?
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