Wednesday, November 14, 2007 - Posts
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It seems like much longer than three years ago that Howard Dean was hailed as the great hope for Web political organizing. Now, Ron Paul has replaced him as the no-chance-in-hell candidate to best harness the misdirected money and idealism of the Internet masses.
But apparently Dean’s feeling nostalgic for the Internet, because he recently talked about one thing sure to stir up bloggers: who gets to go to heaven. During a speech Sunday to Jewish leaders, according to the Politico, Dean said that “there are no bars to heaven for anybody.” (The article headline—“Dean says Jews can go to heaven”—is a little odd: It seems to suggest that Dean granted Jews access to heaven.)
That assertion surely won’t sit well with conservative evangelical Christians who think that there actually is a bar to heaven, and a rather high one at that. But though the Democrats have apparently been trying to woo evangelical voters suspicious of potential GOP nominees Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, it’s not likely to happen. Could Dean instead be trying to stop the trend of Jewish Republicans? There have been periodic trend reports this year about Jews in ‘08, including some wondering if Jews might be more inclined to vote for Giuliani than they were to vote for Bush and how they might respond to Obama. Exit polling from the 2006 midterm elections found that young Jews (and Orthodox Jews) were more likely to vote for the GOP than their older counterparts. Is this actually something Dean and the Democrats need to worry about? Or was he just trying to please the audience in the crowd that day?
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We interrupt our regularly scheduled blogging to let you know that Emily Bazelon and Melinda Henneberger will be chatting live on washingtonpost.com Thursday at 11 a.m. Check out Emily's writings on Hillary Clinton, breast-feeding, Sandra Day O'Connor and more, and Melinda's take on Hillary, Rudy Giuliani, and abortion and birth control, then submit your questions for the chat.
UPDATE, Nov. 15: Read what Emily and Melinda had to say.
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I'm with Emily. Despite my irrational and - until now, at least -- enduring soft spot for John McCain, laughing one's senatorial socks off when a colleague is called the B word is no less objectionable than if he had indulged a (theoretical) Obama hater in using the N word. This was not so much a gaffe as a window into the candidate's character, just as Hillary Clinton's planted question was. Which is why these off-script (or on-, in her case) moments can be so instructive. Don't we all wish we had paid more attention to Bush's cocky asides in 2000, and less to his moderate stump speeches?
The fact that our current president's cowboy ways have been so thoroughly discredited is still another reason I can't see Clinton's biggest obstacle as her womanly lack of a little more snap in the old towel. Wouldn't the stereotypically female virtue of prudence, and maybe even a little well-placed aversion to risk, be a welcome relief right about now? Even in full riled-up feminist mode, I can't see that when she has her first bad week of the campaign, it's because some would-be supporters just woke up and smelled the Black Orchid. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made plenty of people crazy with hatred, too. And I guess the bottom line for me is the many women I meet who genuinely seem to feel guilty about not liking Hillary better; does sisterhood require that we support the woman in the race? Or put another way, are those who say they'd like a woman - just not this woman -- necessarily bitchy phonies?
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Usually, Meghan, I'd agree with you entirely that gaffes get more attention than they deserve, at the expense of the substance that should matter more. But I hope this McCain embarassment gets it due in this news cycle, because of the link I drew earlier to his Chelsea Clinton joke. John Dickerson (Slate's political correspondent, if he needs an introduction) is always saying that the gaffes that matter are the ones that confirm our preexisting suspicions about a candidate's weakness. We thought George Allen was a boob; then we knew he was a boob. Laughing at someone else calling Hillary a bitch is evidence of McCain's coarseness, which we've already seen, and which in my mind doesn't bode well for the kind of people he'd want to run the EEOC, say. So maybe I shouldn't care much, but I do.
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I agree with Dahlia and Emily that gender is a big part of it for many of the Hillary hatas out there. A while back I mentioned a study that suggests we see "manly women" as "pretenders," which does seem to suggest that lots of us murkily associate not toeing-the-gender script with phoniness. Meanwhile, I don't think the media's new focus on "gender" is working out that well for Hillary; it seems like she polled better when we weren't contantly being reminded that she is a... woman and her competitors are.... men. A new CBS/New York Times poll of "likely Iowa voters" shows Obama and Edwards closing on her, with 25 percent saying they'd vote for Hillary, 23 percent going to Edwards, and 22 percent for Obama. (Statistically insignificant margin, but it's intriguing that Edwards is equal with Obama.) Even so, I'm not sure this poll tells us anything substantial.
As for John McCain, Dahlia: Sure, he should have said, "Let's not use that word" before he went on to answer the woman's question. But I can't get too worked up about his response; what's really at stake in this campaign has nothing to do with whether McCain tolerated the word "bitch." I'm increasingly finding it tedious to watch politicians being taken to task for small gaffes while weighty issues go largely unexamined.
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Thank you, Madam; the potty-mouth McCain supporter (or was she another plant?) who called Hillary the B word just handed Clinton five points minimum -- and the kind of gender-based martyrdom she so benefited from when Rick Lazio looked like he was zooming in to throttle her during their 2000 senatorial race. Brava! Even I don't like it, and I think the Senator can more than take care of herself.
I'm still not convinced, though, Dahlia and Emily, that the complaint that she's a phony has much to do with her gender; have we forgotten the Slick Willy years? Bill Clinton is just a more talented politician than his wife - and every other living practitioner.
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Dahlia, here's why I think you're right that Hillary hatred is tied up with gender: People who froth at the mouth about her are often neutral to postive about Bill. Even when the substantive reasons they give for hating Hillary are easily and equally reason to hate both of them. In my family, Hillary gets bashed for the role she played in the health care debacle. Because she screwed it up, but more because they think it was nepotistic of her to have assumed a leading role in the first place. Who gave her that role? Bill. Similarly, the charge that Hillary is a phony triangulator applies as much or more to Bill. And yet the phony part seems to stick to her, and not to him. For sure, this is a matter of personality, and they certainly have different ones. But it's also about how Hillary's personality, and persona, meshes with being a woman.
So will John McCain's lapse hurt him? It reminds me of that incredibly awful joke he told about Chelsea.
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Courtesy of Talking Points Memo, a clip of John McCain warmly responding to the apparently self-evident campaign question, "How do we beat the bitch?" with laughter, hearty affirmation ("excellent question") and the polling numbers about his lead over Hillary. All rather sick-making but it's worth pointing out—as several bloggers have not—that his questioner here was a woman.
This raises a good point that Melinda flicked at last week: MAN do people hate Hillary Clinton. You mentioned in your post her "high, deep and not-going-anywhere negatives," and I agree. Folks who think this way are not gonna wake up come election day and say "Hey, I was wrong, I have been out-of-my-mind-demented-crazy-ass-insane with loathing for this woman for 15 years but today I changed my mind!" I think I part company with you, though, over the notion that all this loathing has "zero" to do with her gender. You can't separate the claim that she's a "phony" from the contention that she's a "bitch." That's she's somehow an unnatural woman has always been at the core of Hillary Dementia, hasn't it? It was at the core of Eleanor Roosevelt Psychopathy as well.
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