New Hampshire did not go the way that the polls predicted nor did the spewing of the punditry influence a vast ‘Obama-wing conspiracy’ to take hold against the Clinton machine. Big woop. We are marginalizing what has turned out to be the longest election of all time into a 2-week period centered upon the relatively inconsequential, albeit momentum building, tiny delegacies of IA and NH. There is great potential for a movement that builds excitement, continues large voter turn out and more importantly a greater constituency of people who feel that the government and its leaders really matter and are willing to converse about it, rather than a large constituency who feels that politics is a joke that doesn’t relate to everyone and everything…which it does…
We have an election that finally focuses on issues rather than brush-clearing abilities, engaging rather than polarizing Americans. The political cynic in me, of course fears the worse.
Americans are more complex than the insider/outsider view that the Bushies have propagated upon us throughout his disastrous administration. We can think far more deeply than: ‘Voters are either with us or against freedom/democracy/love/puppies/insert any positive concept that we would all like to be for’. Complex decisions and individuals have been simplified into five word catch phrases; foreign policy decisions are summed up into ‘clear’ good guys vs. bad guys scenario where our culpability is excused in all major decisions and the perilous state of the economy is classified as neither a result of the tax cuts for the rich nor the egregious deficit spending on the war. Yet, at the end of the day, we don’t want a leader who is simple, who can be classified as an either/or or policies that are neither/nor. We want someone who is as complex as we are, individually, but can address global and national complexities without making us feel unnecessary fear or helplessness.
The HRC emotional breakdown has the potential of evolving into a simplified version of her and her campaign; one that classifies her, an incredibly complex individual, as human v. inhuman. I have to admit, I was moved when I saw Hillary well-up. I believed what she was saying, if only for the fact that her resuscitated, folksy-Chicago accent was conspicuously absent for a precious few seconds. Her campaign’s careful calculations are in fact what has turned me off from her and I think that a brief un-programmed moment proved more about her leadership capacity than the tears themselves.
Yet, how will this play out in the general election? In a world where you tube clips can bring anyone too their knees and are limited to only 8 minutes of what is, of course, a much larger story, what will be the attack the republicans choose to take against Hillary? Democrats need to remember that regardless of momentum and graceful speeches, the republican attack machine is effective, brilliant and nasty. As a woman she faces the oft-noted gender double standard but she also has to combat the simplification standard. She is not either as vile and untouchable or soft and connectable; in the same way she is not either towing the liberal line or pandering to the moderate republicans. If simplified, she can be swallowed by the republican machine; if complex she can be a force among Americans. Even if she doesn’t get elected or the nomination nod, she is at least inspiring conversation and thought among even the most politically disengaged sections of America- conversations about the silent but deadly preconceptions about women and politics in general.
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