Even for identity-obsessed progressives, Hillary Clinton’s gender was never enough. Maybe it was the fact that the former first lady has spent a quarter-century in the public eye. Perhaps it was the lack of novelty associated with the prospect of a woman in a national leadership role, something with which much of the world is well acquainted. Of course, there is an outside chance that Bernie Sanders-backing progressives, who are clearly disenchanted with Barack Obama, came to the conclusion shattering glass ceilings doesn’t automatically yield preferable reforms. Whatever the cause, Clinton’s gender-centric appeal to the Democratic electorate has failed to convince a sizable number of progressive voters to embrace her candidacy. As the election shifts from the primary to the general, however, the tone of the coverage of the campaign has shifted. Suddenly, Clinton’s gender matters.
“What do you say to women who say that you staying in the race is sexist because you’re standing in the way of what could be the first female president,” New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor asked Bernie Sanders on the eve of the California and New Jersey primaries, which will likely see Clinton win the delegates she needs to become her party’s presumptive nominee.
“Is that a serious question?” Sanders asked. “Your question implies that any woman – that any person – any woman running for president is, by definition, the best candidate.”
The Vermont senator deserves plaudits for refusing to take this reporter’s premise seriously. By pushing back on the question, he compelled her to rephrase the query as one based not on the propriety of running against a woman but on Clinton’s insurmountable delegate lead. If Sanders were to remain in the race after he had lost the nomination by virtue of votes and pledged delegates, it would certainly be sad and deluded but sexist?
This wasn’t the first time Sanders had been asked this question. In February, Democratic debate co-moderator and PBS anchor Gwen Ifill asked Sanders if he thought his own presidential campaign could be characterized as an “instrument of thwarting history.” The question appeared even to make Clinton squirm. “I am not asking people to support me because I’m a woman,” she clarified.
Sanders is also owed credit for declining to make a bigger issue of this type of question and its discriminatory premise. On both occasions, he could easily have postured as the victim of media bias, and he would have a valid claim to make. When Barack Obama first launched his campaign for the presidency and faced steep odds against Hillary Clinton in 2008, political reporters dared not suggest that the young African-American senator should have waited his turn. Obama might have been accused of spoiling a political landscape that was, at the time, seen as favorable toward a Democrat, who might have been first woman president. When Clinton stumbled and it was clear that Barack Obama would secure the delegates necessary to be the Democrats’ 2008 presidential nominee, Clinton was never asked if she could live with herself knowing she was standing athwart history and the prospect of America’s first black president. The question would have been absurd, but there was as much reason to ask it of Clinton then as there is of Sanders now.
Tuesday, June 7 marks the unofficial end of the Democratic primary (whether Mr. Sanders acknowledges it or not). For Clinton and her Democratic allies, job number one is to heal as many lingering wounds from the bitter primary race as quickly as possible, and the fastest way to achieve that is to focus Democrats on the chief threat to Barack Obama’s legacy: the Republicans and Donald Trump. The prospect of a meager handful of Sanders-backing dissidents may titillate the political press, but the vast majority of partisan Democrats will come around to Clinton. Banging the worn drums of identity politics and tribal affiliation will only accelerate the process.
Clinton should send flowers to the Times. Though unaffiliated supporters and surrogates, the Clinton campaign can imply that recalcitrant Sanders supporters are desperately trying to un-bend the arc of the moral universe. That’s an ugly and unfair characterization of pro-Sanders progressives, who for the most part genuinely believe that Clinton is too willing to compromise with Republicans. At least now, everyone knows that the fun and games are over. The press has truly shifted gears. The primary is over; the general election has begun.
