Sexism and the Race for the White House

Like some sort of mysterious, occulted creature, there were signs and reports of a strange beast in the race for the White House. From far flung corners of the country came snippets of evidence. Eye-witness accounts. Critics dismissed the claims, of course, as critics often do, so discussion of this strange treasure of cryptozoology remained confined to a muted conversation along the fringes of the electorate.

Until today.

Like some incarnation of Teddy Roosevelt - the Great Hunter come again - Geraldine Ferraro has bagged the beast and officially dragged her trophy into the light of day. Scientists have gathered and given it a name.

Sexism.

Ms. Ferraro’s sad odyssey began after she was quoted as chalking up Obama’s success to his sex and his race. If he were white or a woman, she claimed, he would not have gotten as far as he had. Understandably, this caused a strong backlash against Ms. Ferraro, who was forced to step down from her role in the Clinton campaign.

To Ms. Ferraro’s credit, being thrown to the wolves did not dampen her zeal. On the contrary, she took advantage of her new found freedom to really speak her mind. In effect, the disconnection from the campaign loosened her tongue so that the point that she had couched in nuance and political innuendo she was now able to make with a directness and a sarcasm afforded only those politicians who are on the back end of their elected life.

In an editorial to the Boston Globe, Ms. Ferraro justifies her original comments and solidifies her role as the victim. More, she solidifies Clinton’s role as the victim, this time of sexism.

Couching her attack in the launch pad of “tens of thousands of women” who have watched how Clinton was treated and are not happy, Ms. Ferraro begins with a simple assumption: that all of these women are unhappy and perceive a thing to be so, it must have been there. It must have been important; it must have made a difference. That she never even attempts to justify this assumption likely owes more to her steadfast belief that it has been the background of the election than in some attempt to gloss over the assumption (by stating it as fact and moving on), but the end of either road is the same. The reader is left to wonder (1) did the sexism take place, and (2) did it affect the campaign?

Because really, for all that Ms. Ferraro now colors her position more softly - “That sexism impacted Clinton’s campaign, I have no doubt. Did she lose a close election because of sexism? I don’t know.” - the truth of her earlier statements and of this editorial is that she is claiming that very thing: it has made a difference. Obama would not be in the position he finds himself if he were a woman, she says. In other words, sexism is so prevalent that it isn’t only the knuckle-dragging pundit or inbred misogynist uncle who are spiking their conversation or analysis with sexist barbs. No, that Obama made it as far as he did speaks to a widespread culture of sexism.

Surely Some Revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at Hand
Surely this is the reason that Clinton has performed so poorly! Surely this is the cause of her struggles, this culture of sexism! She is a woman.

The insult of Ferraro’s argument is that in never questioning her basic assumption (that sexism ruined Clinton’s chances at the polls), she automatically discounts all of the other problems, mistakes, blunders, errors, and cornball decisions that marked Clinton’s “inevitable” coronation.

Was sexism at work when she made the decision to not compete hard in Iowa? Was it sexism that prevented her from having a post Super Tuesday strategy? Was it sexism that failed to have a ground game in the 11 contests immediately after Super Tuesday? Or maybe the decision to run as the incumbent in a country so desperately hungry for change?

Was sexism at work in any of the self-destructive decisions the Clinton campaign has made?

And yet, Ms. Ferraro would have us believe, it’s out there, just waiting to snatch what would have been Clinton’s thin victory away from her. It is the constant background noise, the latent undertone. It is the filter through which the rest of the campaign must be viewed.

Was there sexism? Sure. There will always be the person short on intelligence and long on wind - always a dangerous combination. But did those people impact the race? Did they rise to the Ferraro level of omnipresent white noise, or were they the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear? Did they have the ear of the electorate, or only of those few who, for reasons of their own phallic fixations, never would have considered Clinton in the first place?

All moot questions at this point. Having painted any flaw in the Clinton campaign, any resistance to Clinton herself, and any criticism of the candidate or her campaign as all rooting in sexism, Ms. Ferraro has planted, in the mind of the country, the metaphorical suggestion of the pink elephant. You can’t help but think of it. More importantly, you cannot be a male and be against Clinton without being an integral cog in this sexist movement. Never mind that one of the consequences of equality, perhaps the toughest to accept, is that the level of competition is just as heavy, the punches just as hard, as for any opponent. Never mind that equality means that just as much is expected of you in losing as would be any of your opponents - no whining, no scape-goating. No, after Ms. Ferraro’s reckless blame-casting and blind projection, there is no question that there is a great deal of sexism in this primary campaign.

It just happens to be aimed at the other sex. You see, Ms. Ferraro has introduced it herself.