To be sure, Hillary's campaign was plagued by self-inflicted wounds. The private email server. Defensiveness on Benghazi. The recklessness of the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch. But none of these deficits, individually or in total, add up to Donald Trump's.
Hillary lost among uneducated, threatened white male voters from the Rust Belt, but she lost among white, educated women too. Hillary Clinton lost because she was a powerful woman.
In the U.S., it is not fair to say that Hillary was the "wrong" woman or through relentless vilification, women voters were persuaded Hillary was a woman they couldn't trust.
By many metrics, Hillary was the most qualified candidate we've ever had to be president of the United States. Instead, Americans elected the least qualified and one of the least respectful towards women.
The question has to be asked: what is it about American culture that caused women to abandon Hillary?
The answer has something to do with a primitive response to threats as a matter of sex and the protection, in return, offered by men. We are living in an extraordinary moment of history, where American exceptionalism and the middle class is under massive threat: from global trade, to global terrorism, to global warming.
Voters in 2016 felt these threats -- pumped up by the right-wing message machine -- and the extraordinary ability of Donald Trump to tap into the fear: "Make America Great Again!"
The primitive, pre-historic reaction to threat seemed to propel many educated, white women voters into the arms of their husbands or fathers, who voted for Trump. It didn't matter that Hillary Clinton had all the experience in the world. "I will protect you" and restore the glory of America is the deal Donald Trump offered.
In Europe, the patriarchy is not so strong. The bonds of sexual roles for women are no so fixed. Up to this point in time, the reaction to threats has not been a retreat toward right-wing, illiberal fundamentalism or opposition to women on top. On the continent and in Great Britain, women are regularly elected to top political positions.
With Trump, the rigidity of autocratic tendencies stands in marked contrast to engage women sexually as though it is a right. The prosperity doctrine, embodied by Norman Vincent Peale, meets religious opportunism: as a man you can be a paragon of religious virtue, a public official, have sex with women whenever you want. Divorce. Re-marry and never be subject to scrutiny. "That's just what boys do." But in the U.S., God forbid a woman to act the same.
It is going to be a long, four years.
4 comments:
I'm not so sure I agree with this. Hillary only got two percent fewer votes than Obama, an African-American. Hillary lost in the Rust Belt. And while some of this is due to her ignoring the Rust Belt in her campaign, more of it is to do with her ignoring the Rust Belt's generations-long issue--globalization. Globalization has two elements, the movement of capital to cheap labor, outsourcing, and the movement of cheap labor to capital, immigration. Hillary ignored both. Sanders addressed outsourcing only (although he has voted against H1B visas for tech workers). Trump addressed both.
What kind of dressing do you take with your word salad. To surmise that Hillary lost because of her gender is an incredibly sexist and mysandric thing to say. You started the article well by listing the actual things that cost her the election and then proceeded into she lost cause patriarchy. Seriously you should be ashamed to asset conjectures at this level.
The most puzzling thing for me was that other women did not vote for her. There are significantly more women registered voters than men registered voters. Not only are there more of them, but they have higher turnout rates. Collectively together they control America. Divide and conquer is the tactic used to reduce the power of their vote. And they went for it hook line and sinker. Many women have very low self-concepts of themselves and their gender. They don't believe it is possible for a woman to lead the free world. In order to reach out and accomplish something great, you must FIRST believe.
It reminds me of the children of Isarel going into the promise land. Performing miracles everyday, GOD had took them to the gateway of the promised land, a place called Kadesh Barnea. He told them to go and occupy the land, and that He would run the existing inhabitants out with a plague of hornets as he had done with various plagues in Egypt when he delivered them from bondage. Instead of them obeying Him, they wanted to send spies. When the spies came back, all except two had bad reports. The majority reported it was a land of milk and honey, but the people were giants and they were like grasshoppers compared to them. So instead of believing GOD and occupying the land, they disobeyed Him. Because of that, He let them wander around in the wilderness 40 years until that generation died out (He wouldn't let them into the promised land), and the two people who made it into the promised land were the two spies who came back with a good report.
Just as Moses had got them to the gateway to the promise land, so did Hillary get us to the gateway of the Presidency. All we had to do was vote (walk in). But because of unbelief, we did not walk in. This generation of women may have to die out before we get a woman President.
This post is worth everyone's attention. How can I
find out more?
Post a Comment