Is it because she’s a woman?
Eight years ago yesterday, nearly three months before the Democratic Convention (it took place in late August that year), Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. All of the major media outlets reported the news:
- “Obama Clinches Dem Nomination” — CBS
- “Obama Clinches Democratic Nomination” — ABC
- “Obama Claims Democratic Nomination” — NBC
- “Obama Clinches Nomination” — New York Times
- “Obama Claims Nomination” — Washington Post
Ironically, the delegates that pushed him over the threshold were from a state he actually lost that day, South Dakota. He had reached the winning threshold of 2,118 delegates, and the delegate totals reported in all of the coverage included hundreds of superdelegates.
Senator Obama gave a speech about clinching the nomination that evening, preceded by a celebratory fist bump with Michelle. The joyful audience in Saint Paul cheered ecstatically for this line early in the speech:
“Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America.”
Nobody said on that day, or in the days that followed, that it was wrong to say that he had clinched the nomination. I found the above-mentioned headlines (and many others) with a simple web search, but can’t find any press articles from 2008 saying that it was inappropriate to say he had clinched the nomination on June 3.
His opponent, Hillary Clinton, vowed to stay in the race but didn’t dispute the fact that he had clinched the nomination. On that day she said “It has been an honor to contest the primaries with him, just as it is an honor to call him my friend.”
I suspect that next Tuesday there will be people who have a quite different reaction to Clinton clinching the nomination than they did to the same situation in 2008. Why? Is it because they just started paying attention to politics this year? Is it because they are so consumed with bitter hatred for Hillary that they quietly approved of her opponent “clinching” the nomination in this manner in 2008, but feel a need to complain when the tables are turned?
Is it because she’s a woman?
