Guest post by Grey
It continues. A new report filed by Lois Romano for the Washington Post looks at the tremendous depth of Sen. Clinton’s support and the passion she inspires “not merely because she is a woman or because her campaign is breaking historic ground, but because she speaks to them about their real problems and they are furious at the way she has been treated.”
For the first time, according to Romano, Sen. Clinton addressed what many have been discussing for months:
“It’s been deeply offensive to millions of women,” Clinton said. “I believe this campaign has been a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. But it certainly has been challenging given some of the attitudes in the press, and I regret that, because I think it’s been really not worthy of the seriousness of the campaign and the historical nature of the two candidacies we have here.” “The manifestation of some of the sexism that has gone on in this campaign is somehow more respectable, or at least more accepted, and . . . there should be equal rejection of the sexism and the racism when it raises its ugly head,” she said. “It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists.”
The sexism has been pervasive and blatant, though rarely taken seriously, a great miscalculation on the part of the Obama campaign. Should he become the nominee, there won’t be enough good will left for him to even begin to repair the rift, and he should not operate under the illusion that women, as well as many of their male allies, will “get over it” and fall in line. The repeated, insistent calls for Sen. Clinton to abandon the race aren’t helping and are, in fact, rankling her supporters:
“I’m real tired of the pundits telling me the race is over — telling America what it should think,” said Dorinda Perkins, 63, a lab technician. “I do not want her to quit.” “I love her because she’s a helluva fighter. She’s tenacious and I like that,” said Pat Parker, a night-shift worker at Hardee’s in Bowling Green. “She cares for everybody, for people like me. . . . I’ll tell you, she’s been treated pretty shabby.”
Most of the pundits do seem to agree on one thing: Sen. Clinton is a very different candidate today, and a far better one since the early days in Iowa. Post mortems, should it come to that, might dwell on whether she made a mistake when, at the beginning of the campaign, she focused on her experience more than on her convictions: that, I think, would be a spectacular mistake. As the first viable female candidate for the presidency, Sen. Clinton had to make her case early in order to erase another invisible disadvantage; the fact that very few now question whether a woman, or this woman in particular, has what it takes to be the Commander-In-Chief of this great nation is a testament to her success, not to her missteps.
“The irony is that candidates often find their voices once the pressure is off,” said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster and strategist. They are comfortable with “who they are and what they are. It comes at a point in the campaign when the candidate says this is what I want to say and this is who I am. For Hillary Clinton, as you stripped away all the varnish, the core person is the most attractive of all.”
The truth is that almost no one has ever had one iota of interest in who the “core person” was; rather, they’ve all been too busy painting a distorted, grotesque picture, and selling that picture, to care. Even with all that, Sen. Clinton has earned more votes than any other candidate during the primary season, ever. That isn’t just a victory, but a triumph. And the story isn’t over yet.
UPDATE: You can listen to the interview here.
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