Women are the
Victors of Hillary's Presidential Race
"Hillary Clinton had a real
chance to be the first Democratic candidate for the White House, since even
with her campaign errors, 18 million people voted for her in an extremely
participatory process. By getting so far in the race for the most powerful
political office in the world, she served to reinforce the legitimacy of women."
Hillary Clinton
has acknowledged that she cannot win the primaries and become the first
Democratic woman candidate for President of the United States.
In her last
speech in Washington, D.C. before hundreds of supporters, she said: “…when I
was asked what it means to be a woman running for President, I always gave the
same answer: that I was proud to be running as a woman but I was running
because I thought I’d be the best President. But I am a woman, and like
millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often
unconscious. I want to build an America that respects and embraces the
potential of every last one of us .”
ELECTION FUN: RED STATE UPDATE
ON HILLARY
This is in fact
the outstanding question. After thousands of miles covered, more than twenty
debates between the candidates for the Democratic Party nomination, dozens of
primary elections and millions of votes - in short, the end of a highly
stressful and competitive campaign: to what extent did the fact that Hillary is
a woman contribute decisively to her defeat? How much did discrimination
against female political leaders influence the outcome and what is the power of
the often invisible barriers that exist to hinder the progress of women in
their careers?
There is, in
spite of everything that's happened, no obvious reason for Hillary to think so.
In the first place, the fact that she's a woman and married to former President
Bill Clinton gave her a good portion of her political résumé. Secondly, if we
systematically consider the social groups that supported Obama; the more
educated, young people and independents, these groups are, in general, already
inclined to accept a woman as President. The reality that such citizens didn't
join Hillary Clinton’s campaign has much more to do with their ideological and
political positions than the fact that she's a woman.
Given the strong
and consistent way that various social groups aligned themselves with one of
the two candidates throughout the primaries and from state to state, U.S. media
believe that Clinton’s defeat, albeit by a very small margin, was due to errors
in the campaign: she didn't invest heavily enough in the smaller states and
didn't plan a campaign that went beyond "Super Tuesday" in March.
In that
super-primary, team Clinton thought they could seal the nomination with the
delegates from large states like California and Texas. Obama campaigned with
great intensity in every primary state - large and small. In retrospect, this
consistency was crucial. Moreover, there was another important and symbolic
detail: while Clinton used the Internet essentially as a channel of information
about herself and her program, Barack Obama - assisted by one of the creators
of Facebook - managed to transform his Web site into
a platform of political mobilization throughout the country and use it as a
sustainable source of funding for a long and expensive campaign.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Hillary Clinton
therefore had a real chance to be the first Democratic candidate for the White
House, since even with these errors, 18 million people voted for her in an
extremely participatory process. Although her attempt failed, this wouldn’t
have happened because she's a woman. But by getting so far in the race for the
most powerful political office in the world, she served to reinforce the
legitimacy of women in the race for the White House. On this side of the
Atlantic, there is comparatively much to be desired. Government leaders
recently discussed who in the near future would occupy the highest positions in
the European Union, notable the European Council President and the President of
the European Commission. Among the names being discussed in the press, there 's
not a single woman.
*Marina Costa
Lobo is a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences in Portugal, and
is also co-editor of the Journal South European Society and Politics
