Sure, there are racists out there. There are voters who won't vote for Obama because of his skin color, sure as there are those who will vote for him because of it. I figure that's a wash. The fact that Obama's got us looking at the candidate Barack Obama instead of as the black candidate Barack Obama is an accomplishment, and I'd look at what he's done as a success, even if he'd lost the nomination contest.
The "Iron my shirt" thing always struck me as fishy, and as too perfect for a Clinton event, particularly considering how they managed to get past security with such a large sign and right into the front row at the event. Candidates' handlers are too media savvy to let things like this happen.
Regardless, Clinton's soaring feminist rhetoric probably turned a lot of voters off. I think voters are ready to vote for a female president, just as they're voting for female governors, senators and congresswomen. But having observed the successful campaigns of Claire McCaskill, Amy Klobuchar, Jodi Rell, Christine Gregoire, Kathleen Sebelius, Christine Todd Whitman and others, I have to say I don't recall any of those candidates telling voters, "It's about time we got a woman in this office!" Voters don't want to hear it. If a candidate identifies too strongly with a particular group, it's going to turn off voters who are not members of that group. Announcing that "It's about time we put a woman in this office" isn't going to sway the voters out there who are uncomfortable with having a woman in this office. Similarly, a black candidate could run into the same snarl, which is why Barack Obama was able to knock out the establishment candidate and overcome her, even though she had the party elders and colossal name recognition on her side.
Frankly, when it comes to equal rights for the sexes, I feel that Hillary Clinton has failed the cause, which I believe in, myself. I think the voters are ready to vote for a woman, just as they're ready to vote for a black. They just don't like being told that they should be. Overcoming sexism and racism has to be done by showing, not telling, because no one's going to feel that they're past their old attitudes unless they feel they've rejected sexism and racism on their own. Black and female presidential candidates show that members of these genders can do the job, which is what the voters want to know. They know that it's a hard job, and they want more than just a symbol running the country for the next four to eight years. Hillary Clinton declared that she is such a symbol every time she talked about how it's time to put a woman in the White House. She needed to make this about policy and ideas, and she didn't—until it was too late. Barack Obama didn't run as "the first black president," and God bless him for it: that's how we get our first black president. Saying you're running to be "the first black president" sends off an alarm in a lot of people's brains that says, "You're being excluded! Better get another white guy in office!" which is why Hillary Clinton frequently brought up Obama's race during the debates: she knew that talking about race would lower his stock. "I want to make history" is an arrogant, self-indulgent claim to make; "I want to be a decent president" is modest enough, and is all we've ever wanted to hear from our candidates, even when they were all just white guys.
Maybe I'm being a little too harsh on Clinton by saying she failed the cause of equal rights. Maybe it's more accutate to say I don't think she served it as well as she could have. She might have done better if she'd not made such a big deal about being the first woman president, but the fact that we had a woman out there so prominently on the campaign trail has no doubt helped to pave the way for the next woman who runs. Plus she had the bad luck to be tied to a White House that represents the past at a time when voters are yearning for a new direction—a new frontier, if you will.
It's ironic that the 2008 election is occurring at a time when Americans are decidedly worn out by identity politics, even though the two most successful Democratic candidates are a black man and a white woman. The Obama campaign has been successful for many reasons, but avoiding identity politics has been key, and will probably be used as a model for future minority (and female) candidates.
It's also the first presidential election since 1988 where there hasn't been a Baby Boomer as the presidential candidate. (Yes, you can argue that Obama, born in 1961, was part of the birth-rate surge that was called the Baby Boom, but culturally, is part of the generation that followed it. Really, how many eight-year-olds were at Woodstock, anyway?) I think the Boomers would resent any ticket without one of theirs on it, so I suspect that both candidates' running mates are going to be Boomers. Of course, many of politicians these days were born between 1946 and 1960, anyway, so that doesn't seem to be much of a stretch, but I think it's probably essential to both campaigns if they want to do reasonably well this year.
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