It was an unseasonably warm night in Chicago. On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, nearly a quarter of a million people—young and old, men and women of almost every racial and ethnic background—streamed into Grant Park. The crowd was peaceful and somewhat subdued, filled with a jittery anticipation about how the night would likely unfold. Shortly after 10 P.M. Central Standard Time, television networks announced that Barack Obama had been elected the forty-fourth President of the United States. For a few seconds, the crowd stood still, in a stunned silence. Then, the crowd let out a collective and euphoric scream. There was joy, relief, and disbelief. Tears flowed freely, strangers hugged for several minutes, others knelt and prayed. Senator John McCain’s concession speech put Obama’s election into its historic context by reminding Americans that just a century ago President Theodore Roosevelt had been vilified for inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House. Obama’s victory speech took the high-spirited crowd even higher: “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” I called my cousin, who was too filled with emotion and too mystified to complete her thought: “This country . . . This country . . . This country . . . ” she said quietly, as her voice trailed off.
If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and the national election, can we expect the same gathering of crowds and the same emotional outpouring? Would the historic election of the first woman President evoke a similar thrill and sense of wonderment at the leaps that this country is capable of making?
Probably not. But why not? Is the election of a black man more revolutionary than the election of a white woman? Of course, one cannot compare the moment of an election victory of one candidate to a moment during another candidate’s campaign, a year before the election. And much of the excitement about Obama derived from the dissatisfaction with the President he was replacing. But the question remains: what’s behind the shortfall of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton?
There are myriad reasons, and Clinton, of course, is not remotely as inspiring a speaker or campaigner as Obama. But another obvious explanation is the persistent problem of gender bias in American culture. Perhaps the sexism—in both overtly hostile and less visible but still insidious ways—has helped stoke the fires of animosity towards Clinton while, at the same time, creating an almost impossible standard for her. Unlike her male opponents, Clinton has to be far more careful and measured in what she says and does. To be free from a strict choreography of words and actions is a form of male privilege that Hillary Clinton cannot access.
Authenticity has been a keyword during this election season. And our culture, suffused with sexism, plays the role of the arbiter of a candidate’s authenticity. Clinton must tread lightly: she cannot appear too strong without risking her likability ratings; she cannot appear too vulnerable without her credibility suffering. Herein lies Clinton’s dilemma. The Clinton campaign declared recently that Hillary would show more of what the New York Times called “humor and heart,” so she learned a popular dance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and appeared on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” Clinton may “play the Granny card” to appear less ambitious and more friendly and family-focussed. It is hard to imagine that a man would have to do the same.
On a more visceral level, some Americans still wince at the idea of a woman in the Oval Office. When it comes to sexism in American culture, very little has changed since the 2008 election. Indeed, things may have gotten worse. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump has continued to thrive after making unseemly comments about Fox News host Megyn Kelly and his opponent Carly Fiorina. The conservative political blog RedState maligned Clinton as proof that “even a homely woman can sleep her way into power.” Bill Maher’s suggestions for infusing some spirit into Clinton’s “joyless” campaign were not as vicious, but they were belittling nonetheless: “See if Taylor Swift has room in her girl gang for you. . . . Lick a donut with Ariana Grande. . . . Start a Twitter war with Katy Perry and then delete your tweets.” Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s opponent, summed it up: “I don’t know that a man would be treated the same way that Hillary is.” He added, “Some of it is sexist.”
Clinton, who is regularly ribbed for her signature pants suits, has tried to defuse another issue that hounds her—her age. Recall that in 2007, when Hillary had just turned sixty, Matt Drudge printed an A.P. photo of Clinton looking fatigued, and Rush Limbaugh asked his audience, “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?” On Tuesday, RedState ran a piece titled simply, “Hillary: sick, elderly crook.” Degrading comments about Clinton’s age represent the most unadulterated form of sexism levelled against her. In a culture obsessed with youth, fresh-faced femininity is valued while “older” women (who may be as young as fifty) are made to feel invisible. Tira Harpaz, writing for the blog Feministing, quipped that women “have a sell by date and after that we’re pretty disposable.” In an attempt to get out ahead of the age issue, Hillary joked that she will not go gray in office as most male Presidents do, since she has been coloring her hair for years. Male candidates need not worry about coloring their hair or “growing old gracefully.”(Jeffrey Frank wrote about this today, in the context of Dwight Eisenhower’s reëlection.)
Some of the concerns about Clinton are very personal, but even these have an element of sexism in them. Many Americans, for example, feel a pointed disaffection for her. She faces what pundits call a likability problem. Voters perceive her as competent and hardworking, but not warm. A recent series of psychology studies by Princeton professor Susan Fiske showed that women who present traditionally feminine traits (stay-at-home moms, for example) are viewed as warm, but not competent, and are treated dismissively. Women considered less traditionally feminine (including lesbians, athletes, feminists, and working women) are not thought of as warm, but are perceived to be competent, and face a more antagonistic form of sexism. Women, unlike men, are rarely perceived as warm and competent, which, as Fiske explains, puts them in a “catch-22 situation.”
So what should Hillary do? This Sunday, on “Face the Nation,” she was asked to offer three words describing herself. She responded, “I mean, look, I am a real person with all the pluses and minuses that go along with being that. And I’ve been in the public eye for so long that I think, you know, it’s like the feature that you see in some magazines sometimes, ‘Real people actually go shopping,’ you know?” She was mocked, but maybe she shouldn’t have been. Perhaps the “real” Hillary Clinton is the woman who said, in a “60 Minutes” interview in 1992, when Gennifer Flowers alleged that she had had a romantic relationship with Bill Clinton, “I’m not sitting here like some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.” Perhaps the “authentic” Hillary Clinton is also the woman who famously snapped, “I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession.” And maybe the “real” Hillary Clinton also tears up when she talks about her mother’s difficult childhood, her grief over her mother’s death, and her longing to have her mother by her side now. Why can’t she be all those things?
And why can’t we be inspired by her? Clinton famously declared “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” when she spoke at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing, in 1995. In 1997, as First Lady, she worked with Republicans and Democrats to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health care to more than eight million children and has reduced the number of uninsured children by half. After September 11th, as a New York senator, Clinton helped to secure funding to track the health of first responders, and she has worked to expand health benefits for members of the National Guard, the Reserves, and their families. As Secretary of State, she helped open the United States’ relations with Cuba and negotiate sanctions against Iran. She also oversaw the diplomatic response to the Arab Spring. Clinton has championed children’s causes since she was the First Lady of Arkansas, and she has a long history with the Children’s Defense Fund.
Our culture is stubborn; it changes at a glacial pace. If we look at Hillary Clinton from another angle, the enthusiasm gap is less remarkable than we thought. Perhaps it is the expected response to a complex woman who has a long and tangled history in politics. Perhaps the ambivalence toward Hillary Clinton is evidence that we still have a long way to go before we openly accept a woman who spills over the strict parameters and rigid boundaries that our culture constructs. If Hillary Clinton wins, she will become the first woman President, and her victory will be a transformative moment in our nation’s history. There will be tears, hugs, and prayers.
