The Role of Sexism in the 2008 Democratic Primary

Brief Note: I have been truant the last couple of days for a few reasons. Thursday, I was unmotivated to post anything on the blog, Friday, we had a power outage in downtown D.C. so there was no work and I was home "studying" for the VA Bar Exam and watching the U.S. Open Golf tournament. And today, I am posting late because for most of the day, my internet connection at work has been down and when it came back up, I was mostly focused on the playoff in the U.S. Open. But I am back, and will shortly have a post up about my hero Tim Russert. My first post however, is about sexism. Enjoy.

Over the last week, since Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, there has been a lot of talk about the role of sexism in Hillary's losing campaign. Initially, I downplayed the role of sexism, due to my belief that Hillary is not a great "test balloon" for the proposition of whether a woman can win a major party nomination and the presidency.

I am still of the belief that, notwithstanding sexism, Hillary would not have won the nomination and would not have won the presidency in this election for a myriad of reason. First amongst these reasons, and perhaps the only one that really matters is that on the most fundamentally important issue of our day and age- the Iraq war- she was on the wrong side of history. This is not a slam against Hillary, it is merely stating a fact.

Would Obama have voted against giving the President authorization to invade Iraq had he been in the Senate? My guess is no, but that is entirely beside the point. He was on the record as being against the war or authorization for the war at the time that it mattered and therefore it matters very little that he was not in the U.S. Senate and did not have a vote. Perhaps he would have voted against it. But my guess is that things appear quite differently when one is sitting in those hallowed Senate chambers and that the difference makes it easier to stand on the outside and be against the authorization of the war. It requires far less courage to make that stand outside of the Senate than it does within and Obama has seldom shown that kind of courage. No one can really point to an example of him standing up and voting for or against something extremely popular. This is not a slam on Obama either, it is merely my attempt to put it in some perspective. My overall point being--Hillary was on the wrong side of history and had more of a record to run against (the reason why, until this year, no Senator had won the presidency since Kennedy in 1960). I think this explains Hillary's loss better than "sexism."

Yet, the issue of sexism is the topic of two excellent articles from two writers I respect, taking very different views. I would encourage you to check them out.

Here is Nicholas Kristoff"s article in the NYTIMES from last Thursday.

And, here is Christopher Hitchens' article on Slate.com from today.

I am interested to hear your opinion on the issue. I think that it is too complicated to simply jump to one conclusion or the other, and I think there is a strong critique to be made of both of these articles. Ultimately, I think Kristoff has the better of the arguments, although his fails to hammer home the difference between a subtle bias and outright sexism. I do believe there is a meaningful difference. But Hitchens does well to raise the substantive critique of the uniqueness of Hillary Clinton as a woman candidate for president.

It is a worthwhile discussion, to which there is no easy answer. It is an issue that we will likely continue to grapple with until there is a woman president. Even then, this may not decisively end the issue, but lets hope we can meet back soon to discuss THAT question.