OK, I'll bite...
So did Hillary Clinton play the gender card? And if so does it matter? I've got to agree with Ezra that anyone who claims she "played the gender card," with all that that phrase connotes, during her appearance at Wellesley College yesterday doth protest a bit too much.
Clinton, speaking to her alma mater, said, "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics." That's the only invocation of gender since the debate. And to me, it sounds like nothing more interesting than alumni puffery. She didn't say the "boys" were beating up on her for being a woman. She didn't say the questions were unfair or the attacks sexist. She just said that her alma mater helped prepare her to enter this world. That's not making this about gender. It's mentioning gender, and pumping up her college.And as far as calling the election an "all-boys club" goes, that seems unambiguously true. In a nation that's more than 50 percent female, where women made up 54 percent of the electorate in 2004, exactly one out of the 17 candidates currently vying for the presidency is female. But what we're upset about is that Hillary Clinton mentioned that fact? The men doth protest too much, methinks...
But that's not to say that she hasn't played it at all. Look at the "Politics of Pile On" fund-raising ask the Clinton campaign sent out yesterday.
On that stage in Philadelphia, we saw six against one. Candidates who had pledged the politics of hope practiced the politics of pile on instead. Her opponents tried a whole host of attacks on Hillary.She is one strong woman. She came through it well. But Hillary's going to need your help.
Between this e-mail and the video that they released to go with it, there does seem to be a definite effort to use the debate and the imagery of 6 men going after one woman in order to evoke sympathy for Clinton among women. As Carla Marinucci said on Hardball last night:
That is smart, because every woman listening and watching that debate, by the way, has seen this movie before. Whether it`s in the board room, the news room, the class room, or sitting around the dining room table with your brothers, a woman against a whole team of guys.Look, this doesn`t mean she gets a pass just because she`s wearing a skirt. She`s got to be a strong candidate on every level. But I think that this is a smart strategy for her.
Of course, it's a risky strategy too, as it casts men as the villain and risks alienating male voters. But as Chris Cillizza pointed out on Hardball, that's a risk they're willing to take because using this to increase support among women is a winner in the Democratic primary in which 60% of voters are women. If they need to win some men back, they'll cross that general election bridge when they come to it.
But Cillizza made another good point last night, which was that the very fact that we're talking about the whole gender card issue is an indication of the extent to which the Clinton camp has actually won the post-debate PR war. They wanted to change the topic away from her double talk and away from drivers licenses for illegal immigrants. Mission accomplished.
John Edwards, for his part, is doing his darnedest to change it back.
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