Blog @ MoreWhat.com

Every now and then an article appears that begs for commentary. Not by the author but what the author writes. This one comes from WaPo and focuses on an old label, the glass ceiling, and electing a woman president.

This post avoids or ignores the introduction which focuses on trash talking during the 2008 presidential primary. For good reason, it should be avoided and ignored always even when it first appears.

Here’s an excerpt that seems to miss its own point.

Clinton erred strategically early on, ceding college campuses — including college women — to Obama. She also struggled with whether to portray her campaign as “historic,” debating the idea of a speech on gender for months. Focused on proving her toughness, she missed out on key endorsements from women, including Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy. Only when women began to see her as under siege during the New Hampshire primary campaign did Clinton begin to pick up steam among the constituency that would rally to her side for the rest of the primaries. But it was too late.

Let’s see. Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘missed out on key endorsements from women, including Oprah Winfrey and Caroline Kennedy’ as the result of trying to prove her toughness? How about the obvious choice for O-prah’s vote was O-bama? The Dems elite would anoint the Messiah as they did Kerry/Edwards the previous election. And Caroline would not endorse HRC on a ‘toughness’ issue? Uh huh. Right. Sure. NOT!

In a primary election one needs to convince the electorate and a major party one can WIN. This is after all politics. And if you believe gender is the sole reason a woman has not yet been elected president think again. Any time a candidate must overcome a serious obstacle to the public’s evaluation of their electability other attributes must render that negative meaningless.

Is gender an obstacle to winning elections? Sure. Can it be overcome? Sure, Golda Meir in 1969, Indira Ghandi in 1966, Margaret Thatcher in 1979 all beat the gender issue and one could say under considerably more challenging venues than in the USA. The list goes on and a link listing such things is available here

If women do not vote for women how is that a gender issue? But certainly the question is raised if a man does not vote for a female candidate. Hey, I’m a man. I voted for Sarah Palin even in light of her major obstacle, John McCain.

So drop the glass ceiling argument.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2009 at 7:18 am and is filed under Public Affairs, wordpress, Politics, campaign, election, Clinton, disclosure, ethics, hillary, Opinion, Gov Sarah Palin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.