Women Who Stand with Hillary
09 March 2008 10:00 am by Taylor Marsh
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| Hillary Clinton in ‘08 |
You haven’t seen anything yet. Tina
Brown cracks the surface:
… .. Much has been written about how boomer women have rallied to Hillary’s
cause (she won an impressive 67 percent of the white women voting in Ohio;
they were 44 percent of the total). It’s fashionable to write off this core
element of her base as rabid paleo-feminists fighting the tired old gender
wars of the past. But Hillary’s appeal to the boomer gals is wider and deeper
than that. Cynthia Ruccia, a grass-roots political organizer in Columbus,
told me that in these last beleaguered weeks, women started showing up in
waves at Clinton headquarters—women who told her they had never volunteered
in a campaign before. “There was just an outpouring about the way she
was being treated by the media,” Ruccia said. “It was something
we hadn’t seen in a long time. We all felt, as women, we had made a lot of
progress, and we saw this as an attack of misogyny that was trying to beat
her down.”It’s a revolt that has been overdue for a while and has now found its focus
in Clinton’s candidacy. In 1952, Ralph Ellison’s revelatory novel, “Invisible
Man,” nailed the experience of being black in America. In the relentless
youth culture of the early 21st century, if you are 50 and female, the novel
that’s being written on your forehead every day is “Invisible Woman.”
All over the country there are vigorous, independent, self-liberated boomer
women—women who possess all the management skills that come from raising
families while holding down demanding jobs, women who have experience, enterprise
and, among the empty nesters, a little financial independence, yet still find
themselves steadfastly dissed and ignored. Advertisers don’t want them. TV
networks dump their older anchorwomen off the air. Hollywood studios refuse
to write parts for them. … ..
Everyone has been underestimating the power behind Clinton’s female vote. Progressive men refuse to cover it seriously. We’ve
seen some of it, but nothing compared to what could be unleashed in the general
election. I don’t need anyone to tell me that the female vote is a secret weapon
for Hillary if she’s the Democratic nominee. Put that together with Hispanics
and lunch bucket Democrats, including blue collar men like my husband, and no one can beat her. Besides, I even think quite
a few Republican women will crossover for the chance to vote for the first female
president in United States history. There’s nothing comparable to what she brings. The primaries are just the beginning.
