Responding to “Feminism, Hell and Hillary Clinton” by Frank Bruni

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This week Op-Ed columnist Frank Bruni authored an insightful piece for the New York Times addressing Secretary Clinton and her heavy-handed attempts to draw the support of women — particularly young women that may drift towards the Sanders camp — and the “weird strain of thought swirling around Clinton’s campaign: that we should vote for her because she’s a woman.”
 
The piece is personal and poignant. He calls this assumption of gender-motivated voting “bad logic…[and] even worse strategy.” What I want to do here is continue his logic for a moment, specifically questioning the assertion that gender is only one of the candidate’s attributes to consider when deciding for whom to cast your vote. Beyond that, I pose a question: Do folks ever vote against their own best interests, and if so, why?
 
If we’re complex creatures in daily life, then we’re multifaceted amorphous creatures when it comes to politics. Take the Trump supporters that vehemently believe in the outsider candidate who claims wages for American workers are too high, while arguing his protectionist stance on immigration will create a resurgence in jobs within American borders. Strategies for stimulating the job market are intricate and technical. Trump thinks it’s as simple as a game of Connect Four. Fine. But for a person working a wage labor job, how could he or she possibly believe in a candidate, a billionaire no less, that claims to care about creating work for Americans while arguing that wages are too high? A person that is more concerned about immigration than income. How about back in 2004, when George W. Bush garnered 44 percent of the Latino vote? How could a person of Latino descent in the United States vote for a GOP candidate given the party’s regressive stance on immigration? This is disputed, but one standing theory is that religion was a significant factor.
 
How about Obama? Has America’s first black president served to bridge the racial gap in the country, helped to eliminate racial inequality, or put an end to discriminatory practices in employment, education, and the like? No, he hasn’t done these things. 
 
What he did do was create a significant shift in the institution of the Presidency, and in the American political establishment. By electing a black president the nation made an historic step forward. But Obama is more than a black man, more than a black president, and does nothing in particular to serve the needs of the black community, nor did he claim that to be among his intentions as president. He has, however, certainly created policies that help the black community, such as decreasing a disproportionate rate of joblessness.

President Barack Obama is a moderate Democrat with a neoliberal economic team that failed to overcome a number of social and economic challenges (his failure to push for campaign finance reform, failure to protect the single payer healthcare option, insufficient action to correct a culture of violence and corruption within America’s policing system disproportionately affecting black men, etc.). Yet, none of these shortcomings diminish from the significance of his presidency. This step forward — electing a black president — does not mean that he isn’t an establishment politician (which he is) nor does it mean he particularly serves the black community (which he does not).
 
Likewise, a vote for Clinton is not a vote for women, women’s interests, or feminism. It is a vote for an established politician that holds centrist political opinions (Clinton supports military interventionism, the death penalty, and a neoliberal economic agenda). A vote for Clinton is not a vote for an actor outside of the establishment willing to change the status quo of politics. Though, public perception of her “liberalism” is in flux. This doesn’t mean that she hasn’t struggled disproportionately to get where she is today. She has, as do all women in our country.
 
But if history proves anything, it’s that how you got somewhere doesn’t dictate where you will go. Isn’t that the American Dream, isn’t that the point of the whole goddam thing? It’s most important now to consider what a presidential candidate will do for our country, based on who they’ve demonstrated themselves to be, not how they appear, or to whom they appeal. We’re complex beings, so let’s stop looking for simple answers. Voting for a woman won’t help women. Voting for a lifetime progressive, like Bernie Sanders, just might.

Image:

Brixton, London
Nikkormat FT