Hillary and the Female Factor

One of Hillary Clinton's core constituencies is women. Like it or not, her gender and the prospect of the first female president being elected are persuasive to many American women.

Yet, feminists have always seen tremendous inconsistencies with Hillary Clinton. Consider the following editorial in the Washington Post from 1999:

the nationally televised moment, late in the president's January [1999] State of the Union address, when Bill Clinton paused to "honor" the first lady, taking advantage of the resulting applause to mouth the words "I love you." Surely there is something wrong with this picture: Here is Hillary Rodham Clinton, facing the two entities responsible for her greatest public humiliations – Congress, which rejected her health care plan, and her husband, who had betrayed their marriage not once but serially – and here they are, Bill Clinton and Congress, madly clapping.
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How do we reconcile Hillary the strong-willed feminist leader with Hillary the mistreated wife?

However, when push comes to shove, there is a persuasiveness for women about electing one of their own. This can be seen in the strong showing Hillary has had amongst white women throughout the primary season (although it weakened some in the potomac primaries).

Interviews with voters leaving the polls showed Obama split the white vote with Clinton in Virginia, though she won it by 10 percentage points in Maryland. She won a majority of white women in both states, though by less than she is accustomed to. He won among white men in Virginia, and they split that vote in Maryland. (from MSNBC)

In addition, the persuasiveness of Hillary's gender to women can be seen in the uproar that occurred when Ted Kennedy rejected Clinton and endorsed Obama. For example, the National Organization of Women put out the following blistering (and I mean blistering) statement.

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). ‘They’ are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

However, Ted Kennedy did not endorse Obama as an attack to Mrs. Clinton's femininity as the above suggests. Rather, Kennedy was sick of Bill Clinton's campaigning style. Consider the following article from the New York Times:

Mr. Kennedy had become increasingly disenchanted with the tone of the Clinton campaign, aides said. He and former President Bill Clinton had a heated telephone exchange earlier this month over what Mr. Kennedy considered misleading statements by Mr. Clinton about Mr. Obama, as well as his injection of race into the campaign.
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The endorsement appears to support assertions that Mr. Clinton’s campaigning on behalf of his wife in South Carolina has in some ways hurt her candidacy.

Campaign officials, without acknowledging any faults on Mr. Clinton’s part, have said they will change tactics and try to shift Mr. Clinton back into the role he played before her loss in the Iowa caucuses, emphasizing her record and experience.