Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Late in the campaign, when it became painfully obvious that she was headed to defeat, Clinton began to embrace feminism as more than just voting for her. She talked about sexism in the international arena and how women’s rights and autonomy are probably the linchpin for achieving any sort of laudable global goal like reducing disease or eliminating poverty. But it was too little too late. For most the campaign, when Clinton and many of her close supporters and surrogates talked about feminism, it was very inward focused, as Haley Swenson put it (on a super secret blog) “her talk of campaign sexism and “we’ve come a long way, baby” were really the extent of any talk of feminism or revolution she offered. Her feminism was a self-centered feminism.” And I don’t want to minimize the importance of talking about sexism in the media or sexist portrayal’s of women in leadership or political roles, but she never offered a compelling larger narrative for what her candidacy meant outside of simply breaking the last class ceiling.

Obama, on the other hand, was able to put his own historical candidacy in a larger context than simply breaking a barrier for African Americans, but also talking about how he could be a unifying figure for more than just different racial groups, but also ideologically and globally. His race was certainly the basis for his change and history message, but it wasn’t the entirety of it. It also didn’t help that Clinton’s surrogates were so quick to belittle the historic nature of Obama’s candidacy, as opposed to offereing up some sort of counter-narrative. When Bill compared Obama to Jesse Jackson and when Geraldine Ferraro found her inner George Wallace, the historic or transcendent aspect of the candidacy was even further diminished. Add on her Washington experience, her history of triangulation, voting for the War, being more hawkish and an allergy to appearing to being seen as too far to the left, and it was just very hard to make an argument for the larger meaning of her campaign outside of her fufilling the aspirations of mostly older women.

And that’s horribly sad, because even though sexism is not the uniquely American sin that racism towards African Americans is, it’s still a huge, systemic and horrible problem. And if Clinton could have tied her being the first female president to a larger discussion not only about the systemic gender inequalities that afflict American women, but also talk about the horrible inequalities faced by all women and, if she was really daring, talk about a less masculine model of the presidency. But she rarely took her historic message outward, and as Meghan O’Rourke devastatingly notes, she even played up her own masculine traits and even tried to imply that Obama was too weak, wimpy and conciliatory to be president.

This failure to historicize, radicalize or open up her campaign was probably a safe political one – if America demands that their first black presidential candidate to be a “post-racial” rorschach, then they clearly don’t want their first woman to be a reconciliatory, dovish type – but it also means that her campaign won’t be remembered for starting to chip away at the last glass ceiling, but instead as a banal, failed project.