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  Will We Ever Get Tired of Talking About Hillary?

  Posted Monday, November 05, 2007 5:11 PM | By Rachael Larimore
  I guess not.  But I had the same question as you did, Meghan, regarding to what extent Hillary Clinton's camp had actually played the gender card. The best I could figure was that the press release ended by calling Sen. Clinton "One strong woman," and one of her strategists told supporters in a conference call that he was "detecting some backlash" toward Obama and Edwards among female voters. It's not much, but that bit about the backlash had subtle hints that the boys were being meanies and the girls didn't like it.

  I agree that there were no gender politics at play in the video, but I did find it quite ineffectual. The other candidates are shown, over and over, addressing or referring to "Senator Clinton ... Senator Clinton ... Senator Clinton." Without context, it's hard to know if they were critiquing a policy statement or complimenting her pantsuit. But last week's debate spawned another YouTube video that I feel is far more damning to Sen. Clinton, and that's the clip put out by the John Edwards camp of Hillary contradicting herself on Iraq, Social Security, and those infamous driver's licenses for illegal immigrants in New York. If, as a few of us seem to agree, Hillary's biggest problem is not her gender but her phoniness, I think it probably helped her to let the storm over her playing the gender card swirl for as long as it could. It served to distract people from her debate performance.  

  Filed under: Hillary Clinton, debates, '08 election

About Rachael Larimore

• Rachael Larimore is Slate's copy chief.

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