Op-Ed: The Clintons Talk Race and Gender

Hillary Clinton makes the case that race is more socially limiting than gender: If she thought her gender would hurt her, she'd stop bringing it up. If she though Barack's race would help him, she'd stop bringing it up.

Hillary Clinton campaigned to the song “9 to 5,” music that "speaks" to women about feminine oppression and women sticking together. She bonded with women, and wept, just before men chanted, "iron our shirts," and she pronounced "sexism alive and well," just in time for the New Hampshire vote, that turned her campaign around. Hillary’s supporters, at the New York chapter of NOW, wrote a letter in which they called Ted Kennedy a traitor for endorsing Barack, instead of Hillary. Can we presume a race traitor? Hillary's surrogates go on television and elsewhere, talking up the idea that women should vote for Hillary. She goes to her alma mater, Wellesley, and decries what it means to be a gal slugging it out with the guys. She tells women that she's not just a candidate for the presidency, she's out there lifting that one last glass ceiling, for them. She points out that women have not been elected to statewide office in New Hampshire and Mississippi, on her way to asking New Hampshire to vote for her. In a word, Hillary has shamelessly laid bare her gender "saying" take it any way that it persuades you to vote for me. Meanwhile Barack Obama never mentions his race beyond saying that he is the product of a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya. So Hillary does it for him. Hillary's surrogates have highlighted Barack’s race in every way they know how because they have an agenda: To get women to vote for Hillary, because of her gender; and to get whites to vote for Hillary, because of her race. The gender solidarity strategy is already in place, thanks to the many tricks and antics that convinced some women that Hillary is not recognizable by her character and achievements, but rather by her feminine suffering. The gender theme of Hillary’s campaign is primarily that she’s a woman in a man’s world, and it is so hard, but she’s doing it for women, and the least women can do is to vote for her. By contrast, the race strategy is still getting tweaked. Racial solidarity, across sexual lines, is a strategy which the Clintons seem to be attempting by defining the candidates as the same. If the distinctions between the candidates is reduced to their physical characteristics, white women, who have a greater personal connection to white men as endeared mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters, will win. However, in the event that the quality of Barack Obama's candidacy, pierces the consciousness of the voters, despite the sameness seduction, the Clintons have injected resentment and a sense of entitlement through their surrogates, who have spoken these words: What America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign; In this country, where we're at today in our thinking, it's going to be harder to elect a woman than to elect a black man; Sexism is a bigger problem, It's O.K. in this country to be sexist. It's certainly not O.K. To be racist; Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life; If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position -- These words, interspersed with media questions about white men voting for Barack, and feminist calling white men who support Barack traitors, provide the mantra that the media, repeatedly "whispers" in our collective ear, namely that a Democratic nomination, won by Barack Obama, is a national betrayal of white women. Besides challenging white men to prove their loyalty to white women, the Clinton race strategy is also designed to associate Barack with all things negative, while generating concern among white Americans, that black Americans are voting for Barack, because of his race. The theory seems to be that by convincing white voters that Barack is receiving racially inspired votes, some white voters will be persuaded to cast a racially inspired vote for Hillary. In a word, the Clintons have unleashed what may be the most aggressive divide and conquer campaign in American history. To accomplish this, the Clintons must convince the American people that African-Americans are voting for Barack Obama for racial reasons, without saying so. Bill Clinton introduced the first model for the race strategy when he announced to the public that African-Americans were voting for Barack Obama because of pride. Translation: the blacks are voting for a black candidate because he’s black. Conjecture: Whites should also vote for Hillary for racial reasons. What he left out of the equation is the fact that a majority of African-Americans favored Hillary over Barack until the Clintons began talking race in South Carolina. I guess he thought the symbols and double talk would go over their heads, but he was wrong. South Carolina was the first time that Barack Obama received overwhelming support from the African-American community. In a nut shell, African-Americans interpreted the Clintons’ use of race against Barack Obama as a betrayal, and they responded by rejecting Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Never letting a little thing like truth interfere with anything, the Clintons are back with a new race strategy model. Geraldine Ferraro was the advance guard, laying the racially divisive foundation, by symbolically blackening up Barack Obama, by announcing that the achievements of his candidacy, are not his work product, but rather, the product of his race. “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.” Once again the person, Barack Obama, is waylaid by the specter of race, courtesy of the Clintons. But when Barack called them on it, they claimed that he was the one harping on race. As a matter of fact, Geraldine Ferraro said that she was being picked on “because (she’s) white.” But she kept on talking about race, even while she was being criticized, because that was the point, to keep on talking about race, so that Barack’s identity gets lost in it. Before Barack could accomplish anything, the media changed the subject. Not from race, but from the Clintons' racism against Barack, to something, someone who Barack knows, said. So race is still on the table, courtesy of the Clintons and their surrogates, but before Barack can deal with it, there’s a shift that puts him on the defensive. Consequently, he lost his identity as the victim of Geraldine Ferraro’s attacks, and he became a "perpetrator" by proxy, required to answer for somebody else's behavior. While Barack was down for the count, Bill Clinton entered with revised language for the next race strategy. This time instead of calling the voting pattern of African-Americans the product of “pride,” he described it as a response to a black candidate, who can win. And he used the recent overwhelming support for Barack Obama, by African-Americans, to "prove" it. "Once African-Americans understood that they had a candidate with a serious chance to win the nomination and perhaps the presidency, then it was going to be a question of somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent were going to support him.” That distorts the fact that African-Americans have declined to vote for white and black candidates, who they prefer, but who they don’t believe can win. It’s not exclusive to black candidates, remember Ralph Nader? African-Americans have never been inclined to vote for anyone, of any race, simply because they can win. African-Americans are voting for Barack Obama for the same reason that white Americans are voting for him -- because they believe that he is the best candidate. Bill Clinton has introduced the concept of African-Americans voting for Barack because he can win, to every media source, camera and print outlet, in the U.S. I don’t think there is anyone naive enough to think that Bill Clinton is publicizing an interpretation of the voting pattern of African-Americans, leading up to a do-or-die contest in Pennsylvania, for no reason. Indeed, it is a carefully crafted talking point, and he has not left it out of any of his discussions with the multitude of media with whom he has spoken in the last few days. This is the new racial strategy; African-Americans are voting in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama, because he can win. Translation: African-Americans are voting for Barack Obama, based on race. Conjecture: White Americans should also vote for Hillary, for racial reasons. Quite frankly, the Clintons have given up on the African-American vote, and their strategy is to increase their support from white women and white men, by racially dividing the vote. Once again they're getting out the message by characterizing Barack racially, and “telling” white voters that the vote has turned racial, on the part of African-Americans, and white Americans should vote racially too.