Who would you rather have running the country? The most qualified presidential candidate ever to run for office who happens to be a woman… or (check all that apply):
__ a racist.
__ a bigot.
__ a misogynist.
__ a tax dodger.
__ a billionaire who’s declared bankruptcy multiple times.
__ a man who has never held public office.
__a man who makes fun of disabled people.
__ a man who “grabs women by the pussy.”
__ a man who might not be able to read.
__ all of the above.
Anyone but a fucking woman, said America. Anyone. Literally anyone.
Of course, racism has as much to do with the outcome of this election as sexism. But many women were proxies for misogyny directed at Hillary Clinton. They encountered it firsthand—lectured by mansplaining “friends” on Facebook about what a bitch she was, told what a liar she was despite the fact that her e-mail scandal amounted to nothing. Women listened patiently to false equivalencies: “They are both terrible,” family members would say, not grasping that equating a liar, a con man, a bigot, a racist, a tax dodger with a woman who had a private e-mail server was the result of centuries of baked-in sexism and misogyny.
No wonder women felt so harassed that they joined one of the many secret Hillary Clinton Facebook groups to find a safe space to talk about the election.
When you are a member of a marginalized class of people experiencing homophobia, sexism, or misogyny, trying to explain to people who are not a member of that class of people—or even worse, who are but who don’t understand it—that it is already happening is like being the only person who can see a ghost in the room. It’s there, it’s talking to you, it’s plain as day, but reasonable people insist that you must be crazy—or worse, just wrong.
You can listen to Michael Moore speak at length about how the Democratic Party didn’t connect to its base of working-class blue-collar men in the rust belt—or how Clinton didn’t campaign enough (or at all) in Wisconsin and Ohio and Pennsylvania. You can agree that perhaps Clinton didn’t do enough to connect with Joe the Plumber, and Joe the vice president would have done better there.
But you are missing the key point: Clinton can’t connect because men like that are predisposed to not like women like her. Women from those parts of the country don’t like women like her. Clinton represents everything we have been taught women should not be: strong, smart, powerful, independent, loud. That is sexism.
For many women, it’s still so painful to know what we came so close to achieving and how far away we still are. It’s so painful to know that the Bernie bros have only been vindicated by her loss, able to huff, “I told you so,” even though they themselves have absorbed 20-plus years of conspiracy theories rooted in sexism and fear of female power. When the next female presidential candidate is introduced, hopefully sooner rather than later, all of us—men and women—need to listen to Clinton, who urged her supporters in her concession speech to stop hiding “in secret, private Facebook sites… I want everybody coming out from behind that and make sure your voices are heard going forward.”
Oh grow up. Hilary didn’t lose because she’s a woman; sure it affected the opinions of a few million people who weren’t going to vote for her anyway, but that’s all. Just because sexism still exists doesn’t mean you can keep using it as an excuse. She lost because she is the embodiment of the political establishment that has failed so many people (especially in the rust belt states), and T***p conned people into thinking that a billionaire is somehow “outside the establishment”. Both the DNC and the RNC got stung this year because they live in their bubble in DC, and didn’t keep their fingers on the pulse of the rest of the country. She was the right candidate at exactly the wrong time.
Stu- people will be dissecting this election for a long, long, time. This is one perspective. Not yours, for sure, but one that is as valid as you claiming to know the reasons the rust belt people chose the candidate they did. Telling someone to grow up because they felt marginalized by the election outcome and want to express an opinion about it is in itself childish. Go write your own analysis if you have one to put out there besides in a trolling comment…
I have no problem with expressing an opinion, so long as it is grounded in reality. And this post isn’t. It is not valid to accuse everyone who voted for Trump of being sexist (especially when that includes the majority of white women in this country). It is childish to throw accusations like sexism against tens of millions of people who all had different reasons for voting the way they did, especially when none of the decent exit polls back it up as being a major reason. There is a pervasive narrative on the left right now that the election was all about which chromosomes you happen to have, and an unwillingness to address the substantial and substantive reasons why the vast majority of Trump voters decided to do so. And that’s why posts like this one need to be fought back against; because when those on the left keep reducing it to oversimplifications and name-calling against the other side, it will condemn us to eight years of Trump and Pence instead of four.
Answer this: If sexism is such a big deal, then why did Clinton win the popular vote?
52/48… That’s how.
I remember laughing at Republicans after Romney lost, how they embarrassed themselves by talking about the only reason Obama won was because he “gave away stuff to the 47%” and other bullshit.
Now it’s apparently Hillary supporters turn to embarrass themselves with articles like this.
Like Stu said it wasn’t sexism that cost Hillary the election and it wasn’t sexism when she lost in ‘08 too. It definitely wasn’t sexism to why she couldn’t connect with the working class communities in the Midwest as Tricia smugly suggests. In that area of the country people have seen their livelihoods destroyed by declining union membership and globalization. This was caused by politicians from both parties passing neoliberal trade deals that vacated factories and who then followed up by gutting the social safety net that should have protected those workers when their jobs left. These working class men and women can’t connect with Hillary not because they are taught “strong, smart, powerful, independent, loud” women are bad (projection much?) but because she is part of a political system that has abandoned them. A lof of these same working class people who you condescendingly called sexist and racist voted for Obama! He spoke of hope and actually made an effort to campaign in the Midwest, not just write it off to his opponent like Hillary did.
Articles like this remind me that if all Democrats take from this election is that Hillary was perfect and the only reason she lost is because everyone is sexist and “Bernie Bros”, those of us on the Left are fucked.