Building off the post from last night about Obama being a surprise, I'm interested in this idea that Hillary was the "perfect storm" for a president. From my--very male--perspective, she was anything but. Furthermore there seems to be a whole slew of women in govenorships and in the Senate who could eventually contend. Plus--as someone pointed out yesterday--women actually are a majority of the electorate. Why the sense of doom?
I agree 100%! I never understood the argument that "if Hillary can't get elected, then no woman will ever get there"...
... and in fact, I would suggest that her biggest mistake was that she ran as a Clinton and not as a woman first! Being a man myself, I would have no problem whatsoever if she had played the so-called gender card up front, especially if she had distanced herself upfront from some aspects of policy during the Clinton administration (NAFTA, etc... and it could have been done sincerely and convincingly... at least in retrospect).
She needed more than anything else to undermine the dynastic/entitlement argument... more because of Bush I and II than because of Bill - but still, out of sight and mind as much as possible.
A lot of people with very female persepctives see it exactly the same way you. What you have in common is an age perspective.
Look at the demographics of the Clinton bitter-enders. They are women of a certain age, specifically the age-group, and ethnicity, that presumes to represent all women while ignoring anyone younger than 45, non-white, working class - pampered, sheltered, priveleged entitlement princesses who will stop at no distortion of the facts to argue their case.
This bitterness has a real and valid source - younger women are saying they are not feminists but enjoying the results of feminst's struggles. What I never see or hear is any discussion of why younger women are so reluctant to call themselves feminists. In the 70's every woman was a feminist; now they seem to be confined to campuses, and mostly in Women's Studies hothouses.
One woman told that this situation is so hard to take because it brings back all those memories of women working at a job for years and then being told to train their younger male replacement, when the valid analogy would be the boss's wife trying to muscle into a job.
Mnay feminists point to all the misogyny aimed at Hillary and cite all the attention paid to her looks, as if anyone but women would notice, think to comment, or bother to read or listen to anything on that subject, and then somehow magically neglect to discuss how this (very real) misogyny is the doing of other women.
Interesting thoughts, Jim. I think a lot of why younger women aren't willing to say they are feminists is ironically because feminism has been so successful that most of it has been coopted into general conceptions of fairness. Pretty much no one today would argue that women should be paid less for the same work, that women shouldn't be able to become doctors or lawyers, etc. So, a lot of people now associate "feminism" with more the more radical tenets of feminism (e.g., not wearing makeup). I think it is literally just a question of words - if you instead said something like "girl power", I'm sure a lot more women would sign up.
I think her supporters were convinced that she'd be able to get through the minefield of supposed shortcomings women would normally face. National security/foreign policy experience?- she'd been everywhere, met everyone, and voted for wars to prove she was tough enough to press the button (or whatever). Only a legislator, not an executive?- she freakin' lived in the White House, so who's to say she doesn't know the job? a national-scale fundraising & policy operation?- got it, albeit mostly from her husband.
I happen to have opposed her at least in part on feminist grounds, based on the premise that her success-- piggybacking on her husband's status-- would not be of any real use to women in the future, aside from the image of a woman standing behind the podium with the seal (which many seemed to think was all that was really needed to break the proverbial glass ceiling, all history to the contrary). But I will say that while there's always some nattering about male Democratic hopefuls (governors don't know foreign policy, legislators don't know how to govern as executives, etc.), I don't think those issues are considered as insurmountable as they are for women... at least in part because no one can fulfill all those expectations, and women never seem to be allowed not to fulfill someone's expectations without being an utter failure.
But I did think that during the VP discussions it was pretty telling that Kathleen Sebelius-- by all accounts high enough on the list for the Obama campaign to have made the same transportation & security plans as they did for Biden, Kaine, and Bayh-- was not only often omitted in MSM reporting on the process, but also frequently sneered at as some sort of nobody in the blogs. 'She brings nothing to the table,' 'no one knows who she is,' blah blah blah... when she had at least as much credibility as one self-indulgent Bubba from Arkansas with a well-documented zipper problem did, and he was president, not veep, for eight years. While I'm not an advocate of grievance feminism, I'd have been very surprised if a Dem governor of, say, Nebraska, had to face the same criticism given similar accomplishments in both governance and party building.
latts - I understand the Sebelius frustration, but I think a lot of it was, oddly, created by former Clinton voters. There were literally people saying that Obama could not pick a female VP other than Clinton, as it would be a "slap in the face" to all of Clinton's supporters. I still have no idea how that works out, but they basically got the media to go along with the storyline, and thus the media ignored the fact that Sebelius was a two-term governor with strong ties to Ohio. She was, in many ways, the obvious VP choice, but Clintonites effectively vetoed it by ensuring the media would have eviscerated Obama for it.
Jim, are you claiming that only women were focusing on Clinton's appearance during the campaign? Because that's just not the case. It took me about five seconds of Googling to find Chris Matthews gushing about her pearls, for instance.
I have such mixed feelings about the whole thing; I'm an independent woman, I call myself a feminist, and I supported Obama because I didn't see Hillary as a good manager (see: healthcare debacle of '94), and I thought she had too much baggage to win a general election.
But.
No woman has even gotten close to the kind of support and backing she had, even with all the sexist crap in the media coverage. And before Hillary, what other woman was there whose campaign looked like it had the proverbial snowball's chance? Shirley Chisholm? Pat Schroeder? Geraldine Ferraro? Not really.
I think Hillary has been seen as the only realistic woman candidate because she WAS the most realistic woman candidate, in terms of getting backing from power brokers. No one else even comes close.
It would be nice to think that another viable woman candidate is right around the corner. But I doubt it.
Well, I'll modestly suggest that Janet Napolitano has real potential if she can lead the way to a win Arizona for Obama (or make it close).. and by virtue of that pressure, help him win some combination of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana... and in the background win a few extra Congressional districts, etc.
Now, I'm not saying this because she is a woman or even because I'm aligned with her political views (I'm in a different zipcode quadrant of the Democratic Party, to be frank); no, I'm really inclined to offer her as an example because I have family in Arizona who are staunch Republicans, though originally from the East Coast, and who think she is just fine even though they did not vote for her (or at least would not admit it... though they admit they are considering Obama seriously).
There are others (Mary Caldwell, in particular) who have bright futures before them... but the one thing that I think is now clear is that no woman will ever have to run again as the first serious female candidate with a real chance of being elected (and I say that with tremendous respect for those who preceded Hillary - Shirley Chisolm, in particular).
That may be Hillary's greatest legacy in this matter...
Anna K nails it. Hillary Clinton had lined up the power brokers, pretty much the democratic establishment (such as it is, which of course is nothing compared to the Borg-like Republican establishment).
In that sense - given her 16 year exposure to the national media, her lining up of power brokers, the fascination - good and bad - with the Clintons, as well as her formidable intellect, work habits, and her intimate association with the most successful Democratic administration of the last 50 years.
"And another thing," bellowed Anna K. the middle-aged feminist, as the white wine took its deadly effect, "feminism ain't post-feminism until 50% of all legislatures, governorships and Fortune 500 CEOs are women."
Bet we'd see some changes in wage equity, national child care policies and work/family issues THEN.
Might even pass that silly little Equal Rights Amendment.
Well, Anna K., it's not as obvious as you may think...
On the one hand, it was a woman in Illinois, Phyllis Schlafly, who led the assault on ERA in the 70'... and it still hits me in the gut to think of it because I was working near Chicago when the big fight occurred in Springfield.
But on the other hand, Senator Obama is a cosponsor, I believe, of the legislation to relaunch ERA anew...
I would be very happy if he had a surprise for us all on Thursday night, but I doubt it... Still, one can hope for the audacious at times (and it sure wouldn't hurt if McCain let loose and tapped Kay Bailey H. or her ilk for VP...).
There were literally people saying that Obama could not pick a female VP other than Clinton, as it would be a "slap in the face" to all of Clinton's supporters.
Charles, I agree that it worked wrt the media, and especially with the sort of spreadsheet-jockey ('X home-state electoral votes plus Y military/security credentials plus Z in the charisma department, minus anything vaguely wussy as long as it's not too bad, equals a winner') contingent we often see in Left Blogistan. But I ramble all over the intertubes and saw the Sebelius contempt in a lot of places, and from a lot of commenters, that surprised me. These weren't people I thought would be made nervous by the Clinton dead-enders, but for some reason they were really dismissive. Anyway, it made me rethink a bit.
That said, HRC kicked ass in moving to end the roll call & nominate Obama by acclamation. I have yet to wrestle, from a feminist perspective, with why she's more likable when she's down, but I suspect that it's an unfortunate perception related to her role as Bill's wife, with all that entails.
After the DNC meeting in Washington, when they refused to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, I saw weeping women on TV saying there would never be an opportunity to elect a woman in their lifetimes. Unless they were planning to go out and jump off the Key Bridge that day, it was a patently ridiculous thing to say.
It was then that I decided the Hillary people were just like England after Princess Di was killed. The entire country lost its mind for a little while. Thankfully, it passed.
latts - I take your point, though I wouldn't necessarily take the rantings of internet commenters as indicative of the country at large. I've seen people post completely ridiculous stuff that they couldn't possibly believe. Message boards really do seem to draw out the crazies (I say as I post to a message board...).
I still have hopes for Sebelius, though. She will probably run for Senate in Kansas in 2010 and will likely win. From the Senate, she might get more media play. So I wouldn't write her off just yet. Same for Napolitano, esp. if McCain decides to retire at some point.
My issue with the Hillary-as-feminist-candidate was always that it is undeniable that despite her many talents, the way she found herself in the position to run for the nomination was that she was Bill's wife. This is not to say that Hillary couldn't have done it on her own, merely that the path she chose to take took her first through the White House as first lady. While she may have fought long and hard for women's rights, she's about as much of a women's candidate as Megawati Sukarnoputri, which is to say, not too much of one. I think if she had risen to her place solely on her own merits - which she may have been capable of, had she not tied herself to Bill - then it would be much easier to analyze her candidacy through the lens of feminism. As is, she was running as the feminist's candidate while simultaneously - and fairly - being painted as the nepotistic candidate through her husband.
"So, a lot of people now associate "feminism" with more the more radical tenets of feminism (e.g., not wearing makeup)."
Not wearing makeup is *radical*? And here I thought I was going about my life in a quiet, mild-mannered way. And the whole time I was making you shudder.... Had no idea I was making waves. Deepest apologies.
I hated HRC's tactics during the primaries, and was just disgusted morally with the way she tried to "other" Obama. I completely turned my back on her.
I feel that if she had embraced the more "traditional" feminine traits, such as openness, negotiation, communication, etc., she would have been a stronger candidate, because people were looking for that after 8 years living with the consequences of Bush's "toughness". But I also understand as a woman, she was in a difficult situation because she couldn't appear weak, so I'm not criticizing her for that particular choice, it's just an observation. I think Obama taking on those "feminine" traits is what people like about him.
But I will say this for Clinton, she showed that women are not weak, that women can kick some ass and punch you to the ground and then keep on kicking you in the face. She definitely shattered some stereotypes there, and as much as I hated how she just degraded the entire discourse and set race relations back singlehandedly, everyone knew that Clinton was the toughest of the 3 candidates, and that's quite an amazing feat for her. She displayed a different role for women to take on, and so maybe the next female presidential candidate won't have to try so hard to show that they are just as tough as the guys.
"Anna K nails it. Hillary Clinton had lined up the power brokers, pretty much the democratic establishment (such as it is, which of course is nothing compared to the Borg-like Republican establishment)."
In some ways though, this collapses in on itself a bit with Obama's nomination. We live in a country with weak parties, in part because of the presidential candidate nomination process and the fact we don't have a parliamentary system. Back when we had strong parties, JFK ran in WV to show the party bosses he could get the votes of white people different from him. This past election, Clinton ran in WV to get their delegates based on people's votes. Obama showed how one doesn't necessarily be the establishment's initial choice to get the nomination, especially when there is no VP running for the presidency. The real chokepoint for a female candidate is at the nominating process for more localized elections (House of Reps, the Senate, governorships, mayorships), which an active electorate can help correct. Once we get a viable female candidate who lacks the baggage in the style of DLC-centrism unpopular among the base, foreign policy hawkishness and dynasty dynamics that all plagued Clinton, we get a female nominee.
Thanks for the encouragement, Charles-- although I'm really not that attached to Sebelius (and she's 60 now, so I don't imagine she'll do more than maybe a Senate term or two anyway) except as a nice complement to Obama philosophically & wrt style.
The pushback... well, I'm pretty accustomed to the usual gang of blowhards & demagogues, so it's not like the tone shocked me so much as the fact that it often came from posters with whom I was somewhat familiar. Then again, I was temperamentally on the side of those who bashed HRC this year, so I guess some of that came back to bite me on the ass.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I agree 100%! I never understood the argument that "if Hillary can't get elected, then no woman will ever get there"...
... and in fact, I would suggest that her biggest mistake was that she ran as a Clinton and not as a woman first! Being a man myself, I would have no problem whatsoever if she had played the so-called gender card up front, especially if she had distanced herself upfront from some aspects of policy during the Clinton administration (NAFTA, etc... and it could have been done sincerely and convincingly... at least in retrospect).
She needed more than anything else to undermine the dynastic/entitlement argument... more because of Bush I and II than because of Bill - but still, out of sight and mind as much as possible.
"From my--very male--perspective...."
A lot of people with very female persepctives see it exactly the same way you. What you have in common is an age perspective.
Look at the demographics of the Clinton bitter-enders. They are women of a certain age, specifically the age-group, and ethnicity, that presumes to represent all women while ignoring anyone younger than 45, non-white, working class - pampered, sheltered, priveleged entitlement princesses who will stop at no distortion of the facts to argue their case.
This bitterness has a real and valid source - younger women are saying they are not feminists but enjoying the results of feminst's struggles. What I never see or hear is any discussion of why younger women are so reluctant to call themselves feminists. In the 70's every woman was a feminist; now they seem to be confined to campuses, and mostly in Women's Studies hothouses.
One woman told that this situation is so hard to take because it brings back all those memories of women working at a job for years and then being told to train their younger male replacement, when the valid analogy would be the boss's wife trying to muscle into a job.
Mnay feminists point to all the misogyny aimed at Hillary and cite all the attention paid to her looks, as if anyone but women would notice, think to comment, or bother to read or listen to anything on that subject, and then somehow magically neglect to discuss how this (very real) misogyny is the doing of other women.
Interesting thoughts, Jim. I think a lot of why younger women aren't willing to say they are feminists is ironically because feminism has been so successful that most of it has been coopted into general conceptions of fairness. Pretty much no one today would argue that women should be paid less for the same work, that women shouldn't be able to become doctors or lawyers, etc. So, a lot of people now associate "feminism" with more the more radical tenets of feminism (e.g., not wearing makeup). I think it is literally just a question of words - if you instead said something like "girl power", I'm sure a lot more women would sign up.
I think her supporters were convinced that she'd be able to get through the minefield of supposed shortcomings women would normally face. National security/foreign policy experience?- she'd been everywhere, met everyone, and voted for wars to prove she was tough enough to press the button (or whatever). Only a legislator, not an executive?- she freakin' lived in the White House, so who's to say she doesn't know the job? a national-scale fundraising & policy operation?- got it, albeit mostly from her husband.
I happen to have opposed her at least in part on feminist grounds, based on the premise that her success-- piggybacking on her husband's status-- would not be of any real use to women in the future, aside from the image of a woman standing behind the podium with the seal (which many seemed to think was all that was really needed to break the proverbial glass ceiling, all history to the contrary). But I will say that while there's always some nattering about male Democratic hopefuls (governors don't know foreign policy, legislators don't know how to govern as executives, etc.), I don't think those issues are considered as insurmountable as they are for women... at least in part because no one can fulfill all those expectations, and women never seem to be allowed not to fulfill someone's expectations without being an utter failure.
But I did think that during the VP discussions it was pretty telling that Kathleen Sebelius-- by all accounts high enough on the list for the Obama campaign to have made the same transportation & security plans as they did for Biden, Kaine, and Bayh-- was not only often omitted in MSM reporting on the process, but also frequently sneered at as some sort of nobody in the blogs. 'She brings nothing to the table,' 'no one knows who she is,' blah blah blah... when she had at least as much credibility as one self-indulgent Bubba from Arkansas with a well-documented zipper problem did, and he was president, not veep, for eight years. While I'm not an advocate of grievance feminism, I'd have been very surprised if a Dem governor of, say, Nebraska, had to face the same criticism given similar accomplishments in both governance and party building.
latts - I understand the Sebelius frustration, but I think a lot of it was, oddly, created by former Clinton voters. There were literally people saying that Obama could not pick a female VP other than Clinton, as it would be a "slap in the face" to all of Clinton's supporters. I still have no idea how that works out, but they basically got the media to go along with the storyline, and thus the media ignored the fact that Sebelius was a two-term governor with strong ties to Ohio. She was, in many ways, the obvious VP choice, but Clintonites effectively vetoed it by ensuring the media would have eviscerated Obama for it.
Jim, are you claiming that only women were focusing on Clinton's appearance during the campaign? Because that's just not the case. It took me about five seconds of Googling to find Chris Matthews gushing about her pearls, for instance.
I have such mixed feelings about the whole thing; I'm an independent woman, I call myself a feminist, and I supported Obama because I didn't see Hillary as a good manager (see: healthcare debacle of '94), and I thought she had too much baggage to win a general election.
But.
No woman has even gotten close to the kind of support and backing she had, even with all the sexist crap in the media coverage. And before Hillary, what other woman was there whose campaign looked like it had the proverbial snowball's chance? Shirley Chisholm? Pat Schroeder? Geraldine Ferraro? Not really.
I think Hillary has been seen as the only realistic woman candidate because she WAS the most realistic woman candidate, in terms of getting backing from power brokers. No one else even comes close.
It would be nice to think that another viable woman candidate is right around the corner. But I doubt it.
Well, I'll modestly suggest that Janet Napolitano has real potential if she can lead the way to a win Arizona for Obama (or make it close).. and by virtue of that pressure, help him win some combination of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana... and in the background win a few extra Congressional districts, etc.
Now, I'm not saying this because she is a woman or even because I'm aligned with her political views (I'm in a different zipcode quadrant of the Democratic Party, to be frank); no, I'm really inclined to offer her as an example because I have family in Arizona who are staunch Republicans, though originally from the East Coast, and who think she is just fine even though they did not vote for her (or at least would not admit it... though they admit they are considering Obama seriously).
There are others (Mary Caldwell, in particular) who have bright futures before them... but the one thing that I think is now clear is that no woman will ever have to run again as the first serious female candidate with a real chance of being elected (and I say that with tremendous respect for those who preceded Hillary - Shirley Chisolm, in particular).
That may be Hillary's greatest legacy in this matter...
Anna K nails it. Hillary Clinton had lined up the power brokers, pretty much the democratic establishment (such as it is, which of course is nothing compared to the Borg-like Republican establishment).
In that sense - given her 16 year exposure to the national media, her lining up of power brokers, the fascination - good and bad - with the Clintons, as well as her formidable intellect, work habits, and her intimate association with the most successful Democratic administration of the last 50 years.
"And another thing," bellowed Anna K. the middle-aged feminist, as the white wine took its deadly effect, "feminism ain't post-feminism until 50% of all legislatures, governorships and Fortune 500 CEOs are women."
Bet we'd see some changes in wage equity, national child care policies and work/family issues THEN.
Might even pass that silly little Equal Rights Amendment.
*hic*
A girl can dream . . .
Well, Anna K., it's not as obvious as you may think...
On the one hand, it was a woman in Illinois, Phyllis Schlafly, who led the assault on ERA in the 70'... and it still hits me in the gut to think of it because I was working near Chicago when the big fight occurred in Springfield.
But on the other hand, Senator Obama is a cosponsor, I believe, of the legislation to relaunch ERA anew...
I would be very happy if he had a surprise for us all on Thursday night, but I doubt it... Still, one can hope for the audacious at times (and it sure wouldn't hurt if McCain let loose and tapped Kay Bailey H. or her ilk for VP...).
There were literally people saying that Obama could not pick a female VP other than Clinton, as it would be a "slap in the face" to all of Clinton's supporters.
Charles, I agree that it worked wrt the media, and especially with the sort of spreadsheet-jockey ('X home-state electoral votes plus Y military/security credentials plus Z in the charisma department, minus anything vaguely wussy as long as it's not too bad, equals a winner') contingent we often see in Left Blogistan. But I ramble all over the intertubes and saw the Sebelius contempt in a lot of places, and from a lot of commenters, that surprised me. These weren't people I thought would be made nervous by the Clinton dead-enders, but for some reason they were really dismissive. Anyway, it made me rethink a bit.
That said, HRC kicked ass in moving to end the roll call & nominate Obama by acclamation. I have yet to wrestle, from a feminist perspective, with why she's more likable when she's down, but I suspect that it's an unfortunate perception related to her role as Bill's wife, with all that entails.
"Why the sense of doom?"
After the DNC meeting in Washington, when they refused to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations, I saw weeping women on TV saying there would never be an opportunity to elect a woman in their lifetimes. Unless they were planning to go out and jump off the Key Bridge that day, it was a patently ridiculous thing to say.
It was then that I decided the Hillary people were just like England after Princess Di was killed. The entire country lost its mind for a little while. Thankfully, it passed.
latts - I take your point, though I wouldn't necessarily take the rantings of internet commenters as indicative of the country at large. I've seen people post completely ridiculous stuff that they couldn't possibly believe. Message boards really do seem to draw out the crazies (I say as I post to a message board...).
I still have hopes for Sebelius, though. She will probably run for Senate in Kansas in 2010 and will likely win. From the Senate, she might get more media play. So I wouldn't write her off just yet. Same for Napolitano, esp. if McCain decides to retire at some point.
My issue with the Hillary-as-feminist-candidate was always that it is undeniable that despite her many talents, the way she found herself in the position to run for the nomination was that she was Bill's wife. This is not to say that Hillary couldn't have done it on her own, merely that the path she chose to take took her first through the White House as first lady. While she may have fought long and hard for women's rights, she's about as much of a women's candidate as Megawati Sukarnoputri, which is to say, not too much of one. I think if she had risen to her place solely on her own merits - which she may have been capable of, had she not tied herself to Bill - then it would be much easier to analyze her candidacy through the lens of feminism. As is, she was running as the feminist's candidate while simultaneously - and fairly - being painted as the nepotistic candidate through her husband.
"So, a lot of people now associate "feminism" with more the more radical tenets of feminism (e.g., not wearing makeup)."
Not wearing makeup is *radical*? And here I thought I was going about my life in a quiet, mild-mannered way. And the whole time I was making you shudder.... Had no idea I was making waves. Deepest apologies.
I hated HRC's tactics during the primaries, and was just disgusted morally with the way she tried to "other" Obama. I completely turned my back on her.
I feel that if she had embraced the more "traditional" feminine traits, such as openness, negotiation, communication, etc., she would have been a stronger candidate, because people were looking for that after 8 years living with the consequences of Bush's "toughness". But I also understand as a woman, she was in a difficult situation because she couldn't appear weak, so I'm not criticizing her for that particular choice, it's just an observation. I think Obama taking on those "feminine" traits is what people like about him.
But I will say this for Clinton, she showed that women are not weak, that women can kick some ass and punch you to the ground and then keep on kicking you in the face. She definitely shattered some stereotypes there, and as much as I hated how she just degraded the entire discourse and set race relations back singlehandedly, everyone knew that Clinton was the toughest of the 3 candidates, and that's quite an amazing feat for her. She displayed a different role for women to take on, and so maybe the next female presidential candidate won't have to try so hard to show that they are just as tough as the guys.
"Anna K nails it. Hillary Clinton had lined up the power brokers, pretty much the democratic establishment (such as it is, which of course is nothing compared to the Borg-like Republican establishment)."
In some ways though, this collapses in on itself a bit with Obama's nomination. We live in a country with weak parties, in part because of the presidential candidate nomination process and the fact we don't have a parliamentary system. Back when we had strong parties, JFK ran in WV to show the party bosses he could get the votes of white people different from him. This past election, Clinton ran in WV to get their delegates based on people's votes. Obama showed how one doesn't necessarily be the establishment's initial choice to get the nomination, especially when there is no VP running for the presidency. The real chokepoint for a female candidate is at the nominating process for more localized elections (House of Reps, the Senate, governorships, mayorships), which an active electorate can help correct. Once we get a viable female candidate who lacks the baggage in the style of DLC-centrism unpopular among the base, foreign policy hawkishness and dynasty dynamics that all plagued Clinton, we get a female nominee.
Thanks for the encouragement, Charles-- although I'm really not that attached to Sebelius (and she's 60 now, so I don't imagine she'll do more than maybe a Senate term or two anyway) except as a nice complement to Obama philosophically & wrt style.
The pushback... well, I'm pretty accustomed to the usual gang of blowhards & demagogues, so it's not like the tone shocked me so much as the fact that it often came from posters with whom I was somewhat familiar. Then again, I was temperamentally on the side of those who bashed HRC this year, so I guess some of that came back to bite me on the ass.