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I saw this in a concert a few weeks ago where Sir Elton John endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency. His right, of course, (although given that he's A: English, B: gay and C: married to his partner, one has to wonder how that will play in Peoria) but his comments that Hillary was behind due to "sexism" bothered me. And he's not the only one, quite a few pundits of various degrees of respectability (and Taylor Marsh who's neither a pundit nor respectable but a partisan hack) have claimed that Hillary is behind due to the inherant sexism of the American electorate. Now, granted, the American electorate is, to some extent, inherently sexist (as is most of the Western world). Granted also, that the media coverage of Senator Clinton's campaign has often been tainted with subtle (and occasionlly, unsubtle) sexism. However, the fact remains that if you declare that Hillary Clinton is behind due to sexism, you are firstly declaring that to be the only reason she's behind and secondly, you are proclaiming that the struggles Senator Clinton has had as a woman are more extreme than the struggles Senator Obama has had as a black man. This is, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit.
To declare that the only reason Senator Clinton is losing the campaign is due to sexism is to ignore the possibility that others could have legitimate reasons for voting against her: Her vote for the Iraq War Resolution perhaps, her exagerations of her own record and competency, the plain fact that she rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That would be a stupid reason but it would still be a reason. The reasoning at work here is that of the Inquisitions; the attitude that no sane person would reject mother church so anyone who did was, by definition, either not sane or in league with devils. In the same way, fanatical Clinton supporters declare that no reasonable person could reject Hillary so anyone who does is, by definition, unreasonable. This is not only wrong, it is insulting to the rich variety of human reasoning and experiance. It shows a "my way or the highway" arrogance that the electorate, after seven years of it's embodiment, are entirely sick of.
As for the second allegation, this is both insulting and absurd. Let's deal with the insulting first: When did this become a contest of which group has suffered more? The repression of women does not discount the repression of African-Americans and vice versa. This is not a zero-sum program, it is not an either/or contest, when we say that black people have been repressed far more than women in the USA, we are not discounting the fact that women were (and in some cases, still are) repressed. With that said, the allegation is still absurd and laughable on it's face. Women in the USA gained the universal vote in 1920, black people not until 1965. Women in the USA make, on average, three-quarters of what men do. Yes, that's a bad thing but black men make, on average, only 70%. For black women, it's 63% (Hispanic women, BTW, are 52%). The average life expectancy for a white woman in the USA is roughly 79 years. For a black man, it's around 69; for black women, it's 74 (and no, that doesn't give any boost to the arguement that black people get less from social security because it's an average caused mainly by high mortality levels in early life. For black people who make it to retirement, their average age on death will be roughly the same as whites). Incarceration rates are 134 per 100,000 for women; 2,468 per 100,000 for black males (for comparison, Hispanics are 1,038). To make the point on prisons even more clear, South Africa under apartheid in 1993, locked up 851 per 100,000 black people. Granted, some prejudice is not quantifiable, not measurable in any concrete way and I'll say again, we are not discounting the repression of women in the past or present but on the numbers that can be measured, women in the United States are doing better than men.
Of course, in the end, these comparison's are or should be meaingless anyway because a competition for high office should not be decided by who has had it harder. Anti-instinctual as it may be, it should not be about who has worked harder to get there. If that were the case, George W. Bush, the silver spoon son of a career politician, would never have got anywhere (and there was some rejoicing at that thought) but it is not the case. The contest for election is not or should not, be about who can spin the better hard luck story, or charm the most donors or befriend the most people. The contest for the presidency should be decided by who is likely to be better at the job, who is brighter (to hell with "elitism", I want someone with brains in office), who has the better plans for what to do when they get there. Some may say that person is Hillary Clinton or even, shudder, John McCain, that's their right but no-one ever has the right to say "vote against them because they're black" and no-one ever has the right to say "vote for her because of her genitals". The cry of "sexism" whenever someone publically disagrees with or even fails to agree with Senator Clinton devalues the worth of protesting actual sexism. It's as wilfully blind as the Bush supporters who invented Bush Derangement Syndrome to explain why some people didn't believe W was the greatest politician in history: The refusal to believe that sensible people could have their reasons and so, their resistence must be down to simple prejudice.
It is, in short, as insulting and morally worthless as, well, bringing up Chappaquiddick.
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