Be Honest, You’re Never Going to Vote for a Woman for President
Presidential elections are one of the ways in which Americans get to work out who we are as a country, and what is it exactly we value. The Democratic and Republican primaries are a particularly helpful part of this process, as a wider array of issues and concerns get to rise to the surface than do in non-election years. Of particular interest, and frustration, to me is the conversation that the Democrats are having around sexism and the role of women in politics vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
As someone who grew up in the state of Vermont, and under the age of 40, it is fair to say that a majority of my friends are enthusiastically supporting Senator Sanders. And while there are very many things to like about Sanders (who I voted for for US House of Representatives multiple times when I lived in Vermont), some of the arguments being made for him, while well intentioned, are arguments that effectively ban any woman from being President.
The most infuriating of the claims for Sanders is that we need a revolution, and that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for a cynical, doomed politics, and a vote for lower ambition. Outside of the fact that both candidates are largely promising to work for the same goals (both want Universal Healthcare, both want to curb climate change, both advocate for diplomacy over military intervention, both want improved economic mobility and further restraints on Wall Street), and that it’s odd to call Clinton the cynic and pessimistic when she believes that progress is possible and Sanders thinks the whole system is irredeemably broken, this particular call, for revolution, is a call for excluding women from leadership.
As Rebecca Traister and Governor Madeline Kunin so effectively outline, it is not possible for women to be seen as revolutionary and still be seen as effective leaders. When Bernie Sanders shouts (basically whenever he talks), it’s called authentic and passion. When Hillary Clinton raises her voice, she’s called shrill and off putting. In Arkansas she was criticized for not taking Bill Clinton’s last name, and her outspoken nature was seen as part of the reason he lost re-election for Governor. She had to change her last name, her image, become less radical, for her husband to succeed. As First Lady, she continued to be criticized for being too radical, too liberal, too feminist. She had to bake cookies in the 1992 election to prove she didn’t hate homemakers.
In our system, women are not allowed to be revolutionary. Sure, they can help the revolution. Their support, labor, organizing is vital and encouraged, they just never get to be the face of the movement. To step outside of the system requires the privilege that being male gives you, to still be taken seriously. So when you say that you’ll only support a revolutionary politician, you’re saying that you’ll only support a man for President. That doesn’t mean that you’re sexist, it means that you’re supporting the continuation of a sexist system. (Remember there’s a difference between personal malice and systematic oppression).
Similarly, when you cite Hillary Clinton’s likeability or authenticity as reasons not to support her, you’re really saying you don’t want a female leader. A favorite line of defense for Bernie Sanders supporters is to say that they totally would vote for Senator Elizabeth Warren if she had run for President, but since she isn’t, Bernie is the next best thing. Besides being a convenient hypothetical situation that is in no-way testable, it’s very well documented that women are much better liked when they’re doing a job than when they’re campaigning for it.
When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she was immensely popular, leaving the post with a 69% approval rating. While she was Secretary of State she was seen as cool, and became a meme with Texts from Hillary. Once she started running for President, her approval ratings went down and she was seen as uncool and trying too hard. This isn’t a new thing, the same thing happened to Hillary the last time she ran for President in 2008. Now let’s take the hypothetical Elizabeth Warren campaign. When she ran for the Senate from Massachusetts in 2012, she was accused of being uninspiring, lecturing, school marmish, and insufficiently feminine. But now that she’s in the US Senate, once again she’s a liberal darling and Sanders supporters want her as his VP nominee. There will always be some other, hypothetically acceptable woman who isn’t running to prove that the voter is not sexist, but whenever there is actually a woman to vote for, there’s some problem for her that disqualifies her.
As Sady Doyle clearly illustrated, Hillary Clinton has been attacked for being herself, probably more than any other figure in public life, for over 25 years. When she is herself, people don’t like her, and have been vicious in criticizing her. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, doesn’t fix (or brush?) his hair, wears unstylish clothes, is generally a scold, and people love him. It’s great that he can be himself, but if Hillary Clinton did these things she’d be laughed off stage. Remember in 2007 when the cut of her shirt made national news? Hillary Clinton is criticized as too cautious, and therefore calculating, but almost anything she does has been criticized. She can’t be “authentic” and effective at the same time. The system prohibits Hillary Clinton from being anything other than extremely careful about everything she does and says (and wears).
Similarly, on trustworthiness, Hillary Clinton is criticized in a way that Sanders is not. Hillary Clinton is criticized for voting for the authorization of military force in 2002 that the Bush administration then used to go to war against Iraq. Was this a great choice? Definitely not. However, in 2002, just a year after 9/11, and less than 2 years into the new Bush Administration, it’s a bit more understandable that someone might yet not have known that the President’s administration was actively lying to the country and the world, and that they were not going to let the weapons inspectors do their jobs. So this decision, which Hillary Clinton (and basically everyone whose last name isn’t Bush or Cheney) has admitted was a mistake, is hung around her neck as if it defines everything she has done or will ever do. Never mind that as Secretary of State, Clinton actually has a record of diplomacy that we can examine. Pay no attention to the fact that she helped negotiate a cease fire between Israel and Gaza in 2012. Ignore how she laid the ground work that lead to the Iran nuclear agreement, helping to avoid another war in the Middle East despite the best efforts of conservatives in the US and Israel. Nope, none of that matters, we don’t want a politician who learns from their mistakes and grows with the times, we want a politician who was always perfect on all the issues.
Like Bernie Sanders, who has always been perfect on LGBT rights, economic issues, and issues of justice for people of color. Except Bernie hasn’t always been right on these issues. In 1996, Sanders voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which was a brave and excellent thing to do. Except he didn’t defend the basic humanity of LBGT people to get married and have equal rights, he justified it on the grounds of states rights. The same kind of arguments made to justify racial segregation and Jim Crow. In 2006, when running for the US Senate, after a long career in the House of Representatives, Sanders came out against marriage equality for Vermonters, saying he was “comfortable” with Civil Unions, and that marriage equality would be too divisive. Not exactly the phrasing of a revolutionary progressive.
Senator Sanders, like Secretary Clinton, has spoken out against the ways the criminal justice system treats African Americans, and promised to make reforms. While Clinton has been criticized for giving vocal support to her Husband’s bill at the time, Senator Sanders actually voted for it as part of the House of Representatives. Sanders has talked about making sweeping political changes to bring prosperity and equality to Americans, but then out-of-hand dismisses the idea of reparations to Black Americans for the long injustices the country has inflicted on them, from Slavery to Jim Crow to modern day plundering of poor communities by the Police. He talks about his great respect for the achievements of President Obama, but two of his biggest supporters from the African American Community are Cornel West, and Killer Mike, who called Obama a “House Slave.” Sanders himself has said that Obama failed as a leader to close the gap between Congress and the American people.
Even without considering Sanders’ many votes against gun control over the years, or taking money indirectly from Wall Street after claiming that any money from them meant you were corrupt, it is a fair assessment to say that at times he has changed his political views to meet the times or his political needs. That doesn’t mean you can’t support Senator Sanders, or that him changing his mind is a bad thing, I would argue it’s a good thing. It does, however, raise the question why it is seemingly only Secretary Clinton that is considered untrustworthy.
It is a common, and misogynistic, trope that women are untrustworthy. This is woven into the fabric of our society, starting with Eve and the apple, and so it is not unexpected that through confirmation bias, people would be primed to view a powerful woman as deceptive or untrustworthy. The narrative around men isn’t the same, and so it is easier to ignore or explain away examples of men doing the same thing without viewing them as untrustworthy. Late Addition: Proving this point, a recent study out of Norway had people watch political speeches and rate the candidates on their trustworthiness, knowledge, and how convincing a politician they were. Male and female actors were taped giving the same speeches, in the same manner, so that only the gender of the presenter varied. The male politicians, giving the same speeches in the same manner, were rated as more trustworthy, knowledgeable, and capable.
The point of all of this isn’t to say that you are obligated to vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman. It isn’t to say that there aren’t good reasons to vote Bernie Sanders. The point is that if your specific reasons for voting for Senator Sanders are because you believe we need a political revolution, you will never vote for a woman for President, because the most revolutionary candidate will always be a man. Similarly, if the issue is trustworthiness, likeability, or authenticity, you’re always going to vote for the man, because our society, and especially the media, have set double standards that no woman could ever live up to. Vote for which ever candidate you think best matches your values, but at least have the courage and honesty to admit that some of those values may be shaped by sexist systems, and may work to perpetuate that sexist system.
