political campaigns

I’m late to this one, but just read Michiko’s review of Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary. (Thanks, Heather!). Michiko writes, referring to Hillary’s teary moment the other week,

The 24/7 replaying of that moment on cable television…reminds us how relentlessly Mrs. Clinton has been dissected, deconstructed and decoded over the years: by now her marriage, her hair, her pantsuits, her voice and her laugh have been more minutely anatomized than her voting record on Iraq, her (mis-)handling of health care during her husband’s administration or her stands on Iran, Social Security and immigration. This willful focus on the personal is underscored by “Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary,” an intriguing but highly uneven anthology of reflections about Mrs. Clinton by a spectrum of well-known female writers.

Michiko criticizes the book by noting that in these authors’ essays, Hillary’s actual résumé and record are largely shoved to the side. I’m still reading the book, so not yet weighing in on that one, but it’s an interesting point (and one I keep blogging about here). A few of the contributors submitted comments for the Hillary forum I’ve put together for More magazine (going live soon!), and I’m attending a lunch soon in celebration of the book. Very much looking forward. Promise to report on it here.

Check out the Feburary issue of More magazine (on stands this week!) for a look at the women running Hillary’s campaign, by journalist Ann Gerhart. And don’t miss the accompanying forum, called “If Hillary Wins,” compiled by yours truly.

I had an amazing time putting together this forum–and a shout out to everyone who helped (you know who you are)! The assignment was to ask a handful of opinionated women over 40, who themselves have seen plenty of firsts, to muse about how life might change if a woman became the 44th president. I had the chance to commune with incredible women, whose comments appear in the issue, including former potential presidential candidate Pat Schroeder, Jane Swift (former Gov of Mass., now campaigning for John McCain), Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook, comedian Margaret Cho, author and philosopher Linda Hirshman, essayist Daphne Merkin, Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, trade and security expert Seema Gahlaut, and first female White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers. Their cumulative comments are funny, outrageous, poignant, serious, irreverent, and surprising. I hope you’ll check it out, and pass it along to friends, regardless of which candidate you support 🙂

Stay tuned to More‘s newly relaunched website for fuller responses from these women, and many, many more! I’ll post more about that web forum here on GWP very soon….

Three (thousand) cheers for NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert. What he said. Yess.

More excellent follow-up to Steinem’s New York Times op-ed now up over at HuffPo from third waver (and GS goddaughter) Rebecca Walker, titled “The Fence.” As in on the fence. As in the fence often constructed between second-wave and third-wave feminists. Writes Walker,

Young women are not stupid. The idea that young women are too naive to realize the pervasiveness of sexism is an old Second Wave trope used to dismiss and discredit an entire generation, many of whom now support Obama because he doesn’t insult them. As a result, there are a few women lining up behind the “feminist” placard, but many more running in the other direction.

Yes. And it’s so very important that we are talking about this. In my effort to keep us focused and informed, too, on additional issues, check out Paul Krugman’s latest column on the candidates’ stances on economic policy in light of the latest round of bad news. Explains Krugman,

On the Democratic side, John Edwards, although never the front-runner, has been driving his party’s policy agenda. He’s done it again on economic stimulus: last month, before the economic consensus turned as negative as it now has, he proposed a stimulus package including aid to unemployed workers, aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, public investment in alternative energy, and other measures.

Last week Hillary Clinton offered a broadly similar but somewhat larger proposal. (It also includes aid to families having trouble paying heating bills, which seems like a clever way to put cash in the hands of people likely to spend it.) The Edwards and Clinton proposals both contain provisions for bigger stimulus if the economy worsens….

The Obama campaign’s initial response to the latest wave of bad economic news was, I’m sorry to say, disreputable: Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser claimed that the long-term tax-cut plan the candidate announced months ago is just what we need to keep the slump from “morphing into a drastic decline in consumer spending.” Hmm: claiming that the candidate is all-seeing, and that a tax cut originally proposed for other reasons is also a recession-fighting measure — doesn’t that sound familiar?

Anyway, on Sunday Mr. Obama came out with a real stimulus plan. As was the case with his health care plan, which fell short of universal coverage, his stimulus proposal is similar to those of the other Democratic candidates, but tilted to the right.

For example, the Obama plan appears to contain none of the alternative energy initiatives that are in both the Edwards and Clinton proposals, and emphasizes across-the-board tax cuts over both aid to the hardest-hit families and help for state and local governments. I know that Mr. Obama’s supporters hate to hear this, but he really is less progressive than his rivals on matters of domestic policy.

In short, the stimulus debate offers a pretty good portrait of the men and woman who would be president. And I haven’t said a word about their hairstyles.

So here’s my concern: Third-wave feminism is about incorporating into one’s feminism other movements like those focused on the environment, and, of course, class, and progressive economic policies. And it’s complicated. The very fact of a black man and a white woman running for the nation’s top office seems to be forcing women of color into what was once thought the narrow second-wave position of having to choose.

For those of us left pondering the extent to which women of color are being left out of conversations on race and gender around the 2008 elections, Carol Jenkin’s article “Invisible Woman,” is this week’s must-read from the Women’s Media Center. Writes Jenkins,

[W]hile a white woman and a black man now run for the most powerful position in world, that fact doesn’t yet translate into possibilities for a woman of color. Her disadvantage—money, connections—is too deep. Read more.

For more WMC coverage on the women’s vote and the 2008 election, check out:

-The NH Vote—How Did Hillary Pull It Off? By Peggy Simpson, 1/9/08
-New Hampshire Women Voters Struggle to Make Up Their Minds by Michele Filgate, 1/7/08
-Iowa Voters Reject Front Runners by Peggy Simpson, 1/4/07
-Many Tests Are Posed by the Iowa Caucuses by Peggy Simpson, 1/2/07
-Oprah & Hillary—No Last Names Necessary by Carol Jenkins, 21/10/07
-WMC Reprint: Words Matter—McCain and Politics ’08 by Sara K. Gould, 11/20/07
-Hillary Clinton’s Masculine Communication Style Just Might Win the Prize by Nichola D. Gutgold, 11/13/07
-In Boy Versus Girl, It’s Hillary 1, Media 0 by Carol Jenkins, 11/5/07
-Hillary Evens the Score on the Sunday Morning Circuit by Carol Jenkins, 9/24/07
-Hillary’s Rove Factor by Peggy Simpson, 96/07
-Hillary Gets Down by Kristal Brent Zook, 8/22/07
-Right Candidates, Wrong Question by Gloria Steinem, 3/21/07
-Black Enough? Obama’s Dilemma and Mine by Kristal Brent Zook, 3/8/07

In case you missed it here, Virginia Rutter’s guest post, “Who Voted Their Gender in Iowa?” (hint: it wasn’t women) is now up over at AlterNet. Please feel free to go there and comment away!

And while we’re on the topic of images (see post below), this just in, from feministing’s Hillary Sexism Watch. Very original, dudes.

Some levity for ya’ll this morning, in the midst of all the seriosity. My friend Steve Doppelt had a great piece in the Chicago Tribune the other week, urging us to vote for the candidate we’d prefer to sit down with at lunch in the high school cafeteria. Read it, and get your funny on.

(For the record, Steve and I went to high school together. He was the Artsy Shy Guy. I was the Folksy Pom Pom Girl. Don’t ask!)

Having written a book on feminism and the age gap, it’s ENDLESSLY interesting to me the way younger women’s votes are being taken as a barometer of the state of feminism. To wit, Michael Barone begins his U.S. News article, “Young Women, Feminism, and Hillary Clinton,” like so:

“It’s interesting that in Iowa, Hillary Clinton lost to Barack Obama by a wide margin among younger women. The idea of a first woman president evidently is not of great appeal to them. I think this is part of a larger story about the decline, or perhaps the maturation, of American feminism.”

As Ann over at feministing notes, the reasons one chooses one’s candidate are often much more complicated than that.

Regardless, anyone seen the breakdown of women voters by age in New Hampshire yet? Just curious. I know I gotta write more about this somewhere…so many things to write, so little time! Alas.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the February issue of More for a forum I coordinated in which women in the public eye weigh in with their thoughts on Hillary. Their responses may surprise you.

Back in September, I posted on those Gallup polls that found younger women supporting Hillary in greater numbers than older women. Remember those polls? Dana Goldstein at The American Prospect did a nice report on younger women’s Hillary enthusiasm a while ago too. In Iowa, things went the other way. Whether this trend play out nationally remains to be seen. But folks are already talking that way. Writes Gloria Steinem in today’s NYTimes op-ed:

“What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.”

That older women are more radical argument–I just don’t want to believe it! And today, this young(ish) woman is coming out with an announcement: I’m supporting Hillary. I join Veronica–see comments in post below. Yesterday’s “iron my shirt” assholes being one–but just one–of the things that pushed me over the edge. (Addendum: And if you think those hecklers were isolates, see comments, below.)

Gloria is supporting Hillary too. Says she:

“I’m supporting Senator Clinton because like Senator Obama she has community organizing experience, but she also has more years in the Senate, an unprecedented eight years of on-the-job training in the White House, no masculinity to prove, the potential to tap a huge reservoir of this country’s talent by her example, and now even the courage to break the no-tears rule. I’m not opposing Mr. Obama; if he’s the nominee, I’ll volunteer. Indeed, if you look at votes during their two-year overlap in the Senate, they were the same more than 90 percent of the time. Besides, to clean up the mess left by President Bush, we may need two terms of President Clinton and two of President Obama.”

Here’s to two terms for Hillary, two for Obama. And hell, if Edwards is man enough to take back his real-politicians-don’t-cry comment, two for him then too.