How Would Clinton Fit on the Vice-Presidential Ticket?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Barack Obama has finally bested Hillary Clinton for the nomination of the Democratic Party. But no sooner had he won than her supporters began a campaign, on the internet, in newspapers, and on television, to force her onto the ticket as the vice-presidential nominee.

Right to the end, Clinton maintained that she, not Obama, deserved to win – she claimed she had more of the popular vote and had won most of the primaries in major states, including California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

Indeed, earlier in the campaign, she had suggested that Obama become her running mate.

So why, despite the animosity between the two rivals during the long, drawn-out primary campaign, might Clinton accept the second spot?

Because it’s a win-win situation.

Obama, by allowing the party bosses to place her on the ticket, would show himself to be a weak person amenable to pressure.

If he managed to win the election, due in large part because of Clinton’s support from women, blue-collar whites, and others -- people who would otherwise not vote for Obama -- then she, not to mention former president Bill Clinton, would be in the driver’s seat.

The Clintons would be dictating policy from the vice-presidential mansion, much as Dick Cheney did with George W. Bush. And Bill Clinton’s rather questionable business dealings since 2001 would erode Obama’s squeaky-clean image and slogan of change.

It would become untenable. As commentator Chris Matthews observed on MSNBC, you can’t have three presidents in the White House.

If Obama lost, it would be because the millions of people who thought he represented change would sit home or even, to prevent a “third Clinton term,” cast their ballot for John McCain. So much of Obama’s vote would actually come from Hillary’s base.

She’d be able to say to the party, “had you reversed this, and selected me as the nominee, we would have won.” Obama, having lost the election, would disappear from the scene, the party would again be in the hands of the Clintons and their entourage – insiders like Harold Ickes and Terry McAuliffe -- and Hillary Clinton would make another run for the nomination in 2012.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have decided to portray Obama’s spouse Michelle as an angry and unpatriotic black woman. She has been referred to as Barack Obama’s “baby mama,” a colloquial term for an unwed mother (which of course she is not).

The Democrats seem to be retaliating by painting Cindy McCain as a woman with a troubled past, including drug use.

With the U.S. still mired in a war in Iraq and the economy in a terrible state, is this really what the election will be about? I hope all those who were so dedicated to Hillary Clinton, and angry at any instances of sexism against her, will come to the defence of these two women as well.

Will gender rivalries impact institution of marriage?

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune

Given the “gender nationalism” that was unleashed by Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency of the United States, is the battle between the sexes becoming literal?

Women’s groups such as Emily’s List, the National Organization for Women, and the Women Count Political Action Committee(WCPAC) provided unconditional and uncritical support for Clinton, held rallies on her behalf, reviled women who supported other candidates as “traitors,” and considered any criticism of Clinton as being motivated by misogyny and sexism.

From Chaviva Hosek, Michele Landsberg and Judy Rebick in Canada, and Betty Friedan, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Gloria Steinem in the US, Jewish women have had a very high profile in the modern women’s movement, as theoreticians and activists. Clinton was supported by political strategists such as Ann Lewis, her senior campaign advisor.

Clearly, feminism, which has now become a political movement in America and Canada, has produced a paradigm shift in our society. Has the primary conflict become that of gender, as opposed to class, ethnicity, religion, or any other division?

I used to think there would be a “self-correcting mechanism” that would not allow animosities between men and women to go beyond a certain point. True, relations between the sexes have always been problematic and fraught with a kind of danger: After all, romance and love may involve rejection and humiliation of a particularly intimate and psychologically damaging sort, which oftentimes has resulted in negative feelings towards the opposite sex. This has been the stuff of novels and poems from time immemorial.

Still, most men and women have always somehow managed to accommodate and show concern for each other. After all, racial, ethnic or even religious groups can live in physically segregated and homogenous territories, up to and including sovereign states, should it prove necessary, but most men and women inhabit households that usually include partners of the other sex, may have both male and female children, and have parents and other relatives of both genders.

This, I thought, made it impossible to carry gender hostility to the levels we have seen among rival ethnicities, nationalities or religions throughout history.

To belabour the obvious, Gentiles don’t have to care about the fate of Jews, Serbs about Croats, Hindus about Muslims, or whites about Blacks. Callousness and indifference do not have an immediate and personal impact. Those who harbour particularly deep prejudices and hostilities can avoid, if they wish, most personal ties with the objects of their hatred or bigotry. But such separatism has been almost “biologically” impossible between men and women.

Nowadays all that seems to be changing, and a lot of male-female relations are beginning to feel like religious or ethnic intermarriage, in which larger group divisions can overwhelm what might otherwise be a harmonious alliance between two individuals.

Social scientists tell us that our identities are socially constructed – even if they do sometimes build upon physical traits such as skin colour or sex. Religions, ethnicities and cultures are the products of human development, not “natural” phenomena. And they only too often acquire significance when they become markers by which people segregate themselves into competing groups.

For example, Catholics married to Protestants do not face personal dilemmas if they live in a society where religion is not a salient political issue – say, in secular and liberal countries such as Canada or the United States – or where both their respective faiths are marginal – Hindu India or Muslim Iran, for instance.

But their religious background would remain a constant problem and have an immense impact on their lives in Northern Ireland, where members of their two faiths form antagonistic communities and vie for political power.

In the same way, a Jew and an Arab would have an easier time of it as a married couple in Arizona than in either Israel or Iraq, and a Black married to a white might prefer Indonesia to Zimbabwe. All of this is surely self-evident.

But gender is now forming an ideological and political fault line and is becoming a socially significant means of differentiating between people; it is thus assuming a role not that dissimilar to those historically occupied by ethnicity, language, culture and religion.
If men and women will indeed come to see each other primarily in terms of conflict, as contenders for jobs, power, position and status in society, then, with increasing frequency, heterosexual relationships may in the future face strains similar to those that used to be confined to unions that crossed ethnic or racial or religious lines.

And a very large percentage of marriages may become subject to the types of stresses previously confined to intermarriage. (Statistics Canada tells us that almost 40 per cent of marriages in this country now end in divorce.)

Perhaps there’s a material basis for this change in society. Men and women in our society simply don’t need each other as much as they once did. Women can work, and they don’t need men to provide for them. And advanced technology makes even the most basic reason for male-female cohabitation – reproduction – unnecessary.

Most members of historically antagonistic ethnic groups have always understood that it is prudent to avoid intimate relations with people from the opposing camp. That way lies grief. Are men and women now moving in the same direction? This will not be good for anyone, including Jews.

Discourse and the end of the Clinton campaign

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Hillary Clinton has finally left the building — and, though her loyal followers would disagree, none too soon.

Only now can the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, begin challenging John McCain for the presidency.

Clinton’s campaign hit so many low points it’s hard to remember them all.

For the past 30 years, academics have led the way in changing the very way we talk. They have taught us that words have consequences, that our very discourse can insult and marginalize people.

This is why we now speak of ‘flight attendants’ rather than ‘stewardesses’, and ‘police officers’ instead of ‘policemen’. We are careful not to use terminology that reinforces sexism, racism, and homophobia.

So why, pray tell, did the Clinton campaign get a free pass when derogatory language rarely heard outside back rooms was used publicly by her surrogates in this election?

Clinton operative James Carville called New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson a “Judas” back in March, on Good Friday no less, for switching his support from Clinton to Barack Obama. As the man who, according to the Gospels, betrayed Jesus Christ to the Romans, Judas has been vilified for centuries by those propagating anti-Semitism and religious Judaeophobia.

In late April, Governor Mike Easley of North Carolina, during that state’s primary campaign, said Hillary Clinton “makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy.” This is a nasty epithet often hurled by homophobes at gays.

Paul Gipson, president of a steelworkers local in Indiana, admired her “testicular fortitude” (as opposed to Barack Obama’s) as that campaign heated up during the same period.

Male chauvinists have made use of this and similar terms in their representations of women as being ‘weak’ and therefore ‘unfit’ for the serious, tough work of running companies — or countries. Was Clinton trying to show she was really ‘one of the guys’?

In none of these cases did the Clinton campaign apologize for such statements.

Hillary Clinton began this race with a political machine that was unequalled by any of her competitors. “She had virtually exclusive access to the chequebooks in the Democratic fundraising pool,” noted Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson.

“Her web of connections, oaths of fealty and debts owed spread throughout the Democratic Party, which she viewed as an extended family.”

In various national polls, Clinton was running ahead of Obama by at least 20 to 35 per cent as late as the fall of 2007.

As well, women’s groups such as Emily’s List, the National Organization for Women, and the Women Count Political Action Committee (WCPAC) provided unconditional and uncritical support for Clinton, held rallies on her behalf, reviled women who supported other candidates as “traitors,” and considered any criticism of Clinton as being motivated by misogyny and chauvinism.

Such ‘gender nationalism’ also provided her with advantages over Obama.

Women make up more than half the American population, blacks about 13.5 per cent.

Yet not only was Hillary Clinton not ready to be president on “day one,” it turned out that, despite her immense early lead over Obama in name recognition, money, and support from the party establishment, she wasn’t even ready to beat a rookie senator whom she initially dismissed as just another bump on the road to victory.

She now blames sexism for her loss. No doubt it was a factor, but it’s mainly hubris that did her in.