As Hillary Clinton ends her campaign, I can't help but note that she came so incredibly close to being the first woman to be nominated by the Democratic Party, and the first woman President.
Hillary started as the frontrunner because of her fame, her dramatic personal story, her powerful organization and fundraising machine, her very popular husband, and her powerful charisma. So what happened?
As a candidate, she had just a few weaknesses: the Hillary-hate industry, her vote in favor of the Iraq War, and plain old-fashioned sexism.
The Hillary Haters were a powerful force on rightwing TV, radio, and blogs. They got started during the 1992 campaign, and they never went away. They published endless books and spread endless lies. I thought they would be a factor in the Democratic campaign, but I was wrong - they never made a serious dent.
But Hillary's pro-war vote hurt her far more than the pundits are willing to acknowledge. The millions of activists who protested the war before it began are the "base" of the Democratic Party. Hillary could have won our votes, but she made a decision early on to ignore us - and that proved to be a very bad and possibly fatal decision.
I was in Washington DC at the "Take Back America" conference in 2006 when all the candidates gave their first major speeches to progressive voters. It was early in the campaign and no one was in a rush to make up their minds, especially since there was several excellent candidates. So we listened carefully to what each candidate had to say.
Hillary gave a good speech touching on the full list of progressive issues. But when it came to Iraq, she blew it. Unlike John Edwards, who also voted for the war in 2003, she refused to apologize for her vote. Unlike the other candidates, she refused to call for a deadline for bringing our troops home. And finally, she tried to blame Iraq for its problems, which outraged the audience and elicited angry boos. At that precise moment, Hillary lost the anti-war vote forever.
The anti-war vote never coalesced around any other candidate; it split between Kucinich, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, and Obama. Still, it was a powerful enough force to keep Hillary from winning Iowa, where she came in third. And while she bounced back with a big win in New Hampshire, she lost the "inevitability" factor and GHWB's "Big Mo," momentum. It's safe to say that if Hillary had won Iowa, where anti-war activism was particularly strong, she would have been our nominee.
Finally, there was raw, old-fashioned sexism all over TV (collected video here). That TV sexism forced Hillary to avoid any mention of the actual problem of sexism in society (she was viciously attacked for her Wellesley speech) or show her femininity in any way (she was viciously attacked for a hint of cleavage). TV sexism managed to turn her strongest political asset - being the first viable woman candidate in history, in a country where women are the majority - into a liability.
As her campaign ends, her supporters find the sexism hardest to deal with. I wasn't a Clinton supporter, but I do too. As always, Digby says it better than I ever could:
Clinton's campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn't realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.
So I will do what I can to make sure Hillary and all of her supporters get treated with the respect they deserve - and have earned the old-fashioned way, through the hard work of campaigning and winning.
Update 1: Hunter makes a number of good points about Clinton's strategic error of running a safe race as the frontrunner.
I think her early anointing by the media did her campaign a disservice. She campaigned as the frontrunner from the outset, and as a Democratic frontrunner at that, and the age-old Democratic mandate for running campaigns has been one of excruciating timidity. The goal of most recent high-profile elections, the Kerry campaign included, the Gore campaign included, and several dozen other campaigns besides, has not been to win, but to simply avoid losing.
Towards that end, no large issues are addressed with too much passion, and no stances are taken with too much vigor, and for the love of God nobody is made to feel the slightest bit uncomfortable. It is playing to the middle writ large, and in crayon, and with big block letters. The goal is to assemble the broadest coalition possible -- by saying nothing that could possibly offend anyone. The premise is to appeal to "independents", and "centrists", and most of all the "undecided", that group of people so uninterested in politics that they cannot fathom the difference between the parties, but who allegedly can be mobilized into action if only you do absolutely nothing that will get them the slightest bit worked up. It is a cynical, wretched excuse for leadership, but more to the point it provides absolutely no room for error: it is an all-defensive strategy. If your opponent is a block of wood, incapable of making any positive plays on their own, you may pull it off; but if your opponent scores any point, you are left unable to answer it.
