It doesn’t take much imagination to forecast how the Hillary campaign will deploy a series of predictable tactics (e.g., stitched together appeals to the Obama Coalition block, which is essentially identity-politics for everyone except heterosexual white men; the ‘first woman POTUS’ meme and corresponding ‘War on Women 2.0’ we can surely expect, etc.)
In due time, the MSM will fully circle the wagons around Hillary, focusing on far more salient things like the fact that Marco Rubio got some speeding tickets. (Hillary probably hasn’t driven herself anywhere in 30+ years.)
In Politico, one of the first circling gestures comes from the intolerably ‘feminist’ Gail Sheehy, who swoons at Hillary’s prospects. The first sentence of Sheehy’s piece reads: “Hillary Rodham Clinton has always consciously chosen her identities”, with the rest of Sheehy’s piece arguing that this time is different! This time we’re going to see the real Hillary Rodham-Clinton! Some choice quotes from the piece:
For the first time Hillary seems comfortable in her own skin—not just with her age but also with her gender.
Her newfound confidence was on full display at her campaign kickoff on Roosevelt Island on Saturday, where she turned the age issue on its head, quipping, “I may not be the youngest person running for president. But I will be the youngest woman president.” The crowd erupted.
“And the first grandmother as well.”
She’s comfortable with her gender! And for the first time! What progress! It’s a sign of the times, today still being Mad Men-styled authoritarianism by lecherous white males (Bubba excluded, of course.) Apparently, the irony of this carefully constructed identity of a ‘non-constructed identity’ is lost on Sheehy.
In 2008, Clinton allowed her husband and her bullying, sexist chief strategist, Mark Penn, to run her as an alpha male commander-in-chief.
Sooo… Mark Penn is a ‘sexist’ but Bill Clinton is not? I wonder if Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and Monica Lewisnky (for starters) would agree?
This time, though, Clinton is not running as a made-over man. She is in a new stage of life, having become the kickass grandma with a cackle and a fierce new brand of feminism. Sure, as an older woman she is vulnerable to, well, age—but she’s also more genuinely nurturing than ever, and personally committed to protecting the young from erosion of the American dream. She’s gentler; she’s bolder. The hell with losing weight.
Hmmm. Might we see ‘sizeism’ and the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) as a new component of the Obama Coalition that Hillary will be working with?
She’s passionate about equal rights for women, but at her stage of post-menopausal feminism, she does not threaten or alienate men. Rather, she co-opts them, turning them into allies. This is old-fashioned feminine wiles at its most mature. It is also why two of the most powerful men in America—Bill and Barack—will be among Clinton’s most avid supporters in her second run for president.
‘Feminine wiles’?…. Isn’t that an awful stereotype, which, had it been written by a man, would surely earn the scorn of Ms. Sheehy?
She even engages in some genetic speculation that, again, were it written by a man would likely be castigated leading to reputational ruin ala Lawrence Summers:
[P]ower today is less defined in terms of brute military force and more as the capacity for social influence. We now acknowledge that emotional intelligence is correlated with successful leadership, possibly even more so than IQ. Women, of course, have more than enough of both. But the gender gap is pronounced when it comes to the crucial “look before you leap” factor. Women leaders, on average, score higher in studies on the ability to pause and evaluate both tactical information and the human emotional impact before they make a decision.
These two sentences cracked me up:
The secretary has taken her last fat speaking fee from Wall Street for life (unless she loses). She is free now to “topple” the one percent, as she has said is fair….
Where to even begin with that one?… The absurdity of which gets further compounded with this:
Here’s the delicious irony. Hillary can finally afford to show her kickass side to Wall Street, since she and her husband are now rich enough to belong to the 1 percent. With a net worth estimated to be between $100 and $200 million, the couple begins to approach Mitt Romney’s memorable net worth of $250 million. It is almost comical to see rich Republicans turn the old Obama attack meme on Hillary as “out of touch with most Americans.”
I’m literally dumbfounded at the above paragraph. Literally. Dumbfounded. It is so full of cognitive dissonance that one simply doesn’t know where to begin.
Get ready for a screeching, tiresome, Suffragette City 2.0 throughout 2016!
Ah, don’t lean on me man,
‘Cause you can’t afford the ticket
I’m back from Suffragette City
Oh, don’t lean on me man
‘Cause you ain’t got time to check it
You know my Suffragette City
Is outta sight…
She’s all right…
