Remember, let’s not make this about gender but let’s totally make this about gender.
Asked directly whether the recent failure of a woman to become the mayor of New York meant that the US was not ready for a female president, she sighed in answer.
“You know… I really don’t know. I think it’s gotten better,” she said. “But I think there still is a very deep set of concerns that people have, which very often they’re not even aware of or they couldn’t articulate.”
After winning the Iowa caucus only narrowly, falling a distant second to Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire primary, and watching her lead crumble in Nevada – which votes this weekend – her confident campaign looks vulnerable to an insurgent candidate just like it was in 2008, when she was overhauled by Barack Obama.
“People are very convinced they want to vote for the right person. And then … you know, you get little hints that maybe they’re not as comfortable with a woman being in an executive position,” she continued.
Just spit-balling here, but maybe the American people are completely ready for a female president and just haven’t found one they want to vote for yet. That’s the kind of gray area that Democrats never really operate in. Instead of sighing and whining, she might have pointed out the the interviewer that six (three from each party!) women currently serve as governors in the United States, which made the question about the mayor’s race rather silly. The reason she didn’t is because she only has the gender card to play and has to do so whenever a complicit interviewer gives her the chance.
Hillary was banking on the Democrats’ identity politics to carry her through this primary and general election without having to do too much work. They’d line up and dutifully vote for another “historic” candidate because that’s what good Democrats do.
Regular Democrats will still probably do that in November should the rigged superdelegates system get her through to the general. What probably isn’t a given is whether the demographic most infatuated with Bernie Sanders–younger Democrats–will march in lock-step like the older crowd does. The young female Democrats already don’t like her, and it is always difficult to get younger voters to the polls anyway. If their hero Bernie isn’t on the ballot, they’ll probably just stay home.
Not because Hillary Clinton is a woman, but because she’s almost impossible for a rational person to like.
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