Saturday, April 15, 2017

Why Did Women Hate Hillary?

During the presidential campaign I heard the same thing. New York women, the kind who would normally have voted Democratic without hesitation, many of whom did vote for Hillary, expressed a profound hatred for her. Some of them hated Trump. None of them liked Trump. But a goodly number simply hated Hillary.

Thomas Frank saw the same thing while touring what he called Trumpland. One recalls that Frank became famous for writing a book explaining that he knew what was best for Kansas better than the people of Kansas did. He became a prominent intellectual and Kansas kept voting in ways that Frank did not understand.

Frank does not seem to know it, but I posted about this topic during the presidential campaign. With apologies to those who find this redundant… but apparently my first post went unnoticed in certain quarters.

Anyway, interviewed in the Nation, Frank makes a startling observation:

You want to know the biggest lesson I learned touring Trumpland? People hated Hillary Clinton. To a degree that even I, with my cynicism, did not understand. I did not hate Hillary Clinton. I voted for her, and I agreed with Obama that she was very qualified. She deserved to be president. I didn’t think she’d be a great president, but I thought she’d be OK—certainly better than Donald Trump. I knew how to hate Donald Trump. That’s easy. He boasts about groping women. He says these evil things about Mexicans, and mocks the handicapped. It’s unbelievable the stuff this guy did and said. Hating him was easy. What I did not understand was the degree to which people really hated Hillary Clinton. And that’s ultimately what this election was about: Which one do you hate more?

But why did they hate Hillary?

Frank agreed that she was very qualified. Could it be that women understood that for all her fancy job titles she had not accomplished much of anything? Did they understand that she was not qualified at all? Were they tired of being lied to… by men like Barack Obama and Thomas Frank?

Frank continues in a paean to Hillary:

She doesn’t say rude things. She tries so hard to not offend people. I think it’s the very things that you and I like about Hillary that were the problem: She is so professional, she is so polished, and she’s such a wonderful lawyer. She went to Yale law school, and was so brilliant, and was the best in her class. People hate this. They hate what she represents, this kind of scolding liberalism that’s better than you.

According to deep thinker Frank, women hate her because she is so wonderful, so great, so splendid. That is, no matter what these women feel about Hillary nothing can shake Frank's prejudice. Since when did women come to despise a successful brilliant woman, especially one who was so brilliant that she flunked the D. C. bar test? A woman who owed her career—whether in Little Rock or in Washington—to her husband?

Did the average woman know something that Thomas Frank didn’t? Namely that Hillary Clinton was basically an ill-tempered fraud, a woman who had been the chief enabler of a predatory male, who had sold herself and her intimacy for her career? Did the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and sexual predations and rape consider Hillary a polished professional who tries not to offend people? Perhaps they understood that it was all a show. 

Perhaps women understood it better than men did. Perhaps women understood that Hillary Clinton was making them look bad. Perhaps they understood that she was a scheming, conniving witch who used people to get what she wanted. Perhaps they were right to hate her.

7 comments:

Sam L. said...

Mr. Frank thinks he knows what he knows, but he's wrong. He doesn't know what's in someone else's best interest; he just thinks he does. It's not that people hate Hillary; it's that some despise her and the rest either do not trust her or have deep reservations about her.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Hillary Clinton is the walking embodiment of every negative female stereotype there is. That's why people hate her.

In terms of Frank's condescension about Kansas, the citizenry just elected a Republican to the House this past week in a special election. Clearly these people do not know what's best for them.

Ares Olympus said...

Stuart: Perhaps women understood it better than men did. Perhaps women understood that Hillary Clinton was making them look bad. Perhaps they understood that she was a scheming, conniving witch who used people to get what she wanted. Perhaps they were right to hate her.

Wow, that's real mouthful of something. Hate is a strong word, one I think is best reserved for personal experience rather than people you've never met.

I recall how much Bill Clinton was hated on the right, and most of all they hated him because he seemed to be able to slither himself out of everything. And finally they almost caught him in trying to lawyer the definition of the word "is" to avoid self-incrimination, but still came up short.

And Bill Clinton lucked out on the economy and left office with 66% approval, higher than even Reagan's 63%, and higher than Obama's 59%.

And Hillary even had a 69% approval rating when she left Secretary of State, higher than Obama. So what's up with that?

So I'm rather on Hillary's view, that there's still a wider prejudice against women as leader than black men. I does seem easier call a woman scheming and conniving than a man. Somehow ambition in men is admired, but in women it is more easily despised.

And worse, even a secretly Muslim black men can get a majority of the vote! Women are simply easier to demonize. Hillary didn't have to campaign for SOS, and she did get a 94-2 vote in the Senate for her confirmation.

And if that secret Muslim black man had not run for president in 2008, with the disasterous GWB's presidency ending in economic chaos, surely Clinton would have won a popular vote for president over McCain, and we'd be having some very different conversations now. But maybe not?

I don't even know if Hillary's failings in actual history can be reduced to Bill's sexual escapades, and her "stand by her man" for political ambition stance.

I suppose if we compare her lose to that of my state's Walter Mondale in 1984, with the first woman VP candidate. Did Ferraro help him lose 49 states, or was it his promise to raise taxes? Certain Democrats have been terrified since then to run honest candidates.

But at least Hillary has the popular vote on her side, if only she could have convinced those illegals in California to move and vote illegally in other states, she could have been president.

I don't even know if Clinton was such a weak candidate, nor whether Cruz could have beat her like Trump did. Trump ran as the "I can fix everything" candidate, and that's easy to say when you don't expect to win, and just want respect.

Anyway now Trump still has to get out of this gig alive. If his amateur status fails badly enough will people finally "get it" that experience matters?

And Trump hasn't stopped boasting, like this one, promising not only all problems will be fixed for America, but the entire world. I hope no one realizes that the best way to solve problems is to eliminate the people causing the problems, and we have a lot of nuclear weapons ready.

The only thing to fear is fear itself, and hucksters who tell you sweet lullabies.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/12/trump_there_won_t_be_fear_once_i_fix_the_problems.html

Trump: Well, I want to just start by saying hopefully they're going to have to fear nothing, ultimately. Right now there is a fear and there are problems, certainly problems, but ultimately I hope there won't be a fear and won't be problems and the world can get along. That would be the ideal situation. It's crazy what's going on, whether it's the Middle East or you look at no matter where, the Ukraine, you look at -- whatever you look at, it's got problems. So many problems. And ultimately, I believe that we are going to get rid of most of those problems and there won't be fear of anybody. That's the way it should be.

trigger warning said...

On the Left, even the mildest disagreement is "hate". The Proglodytes have completely destroyed any useful valence to the word "hate". Asking a fellow student with a Spanish surname where they are from is "hate".

My wife, a woman (who is cis-female, by the way :-D), former C-suite exeutive, with a similar academic background and was employed out of law school by a far more prestigious law firm than the gaggle of hicks at Rose, would never have voted for Hillary Clinton. She doesn't "hate" Hillary. She simply observes that Clinton is a pathological, paranoid, liar who, as you note, SS, acquired a series of political titles by virtue of her husband's political influence. I might add that my wife passed the Bar on the first try, and was never accused of unethical and dishonest legal practice, never ran a real estate scam, never "lost" legal billing records, and never miraculously made y-o-y 1000% profits in cattle futures. In her legal opinion (she now has a criminal defense solo practice), Hillary Clinton is likely a serial felon.

But that's not "hate". In fact, my spouse rarely or never thinks of Hillary unless there's some news item or social political discussion. And even then, it's to marvel at a system that put Martha Stewart in prison and allows Hillary Clinton to wander around the local forest preserve like a demented, walleyed version of Bigfoot.

In my opinion, Hillary and her Hate Club should heed the advice of Olin Miller: “You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”

Sam L. said...

I don't hate Hillary, but as my friend Daffy says, she's deththththPICable. Also, untrustworthy.

Anonymous said...

Ares Olympus writes a lot.

Coffeequeen8 said...

What has Frank been smoking? Hillary is contemptible. Insiders,whether in the secret service or in her own campaign describe a haughty, sarcastic,intemperate person who has reportedly thrown objects and ridiculed others when angered. She failed miserably in her campaign and was the quintessential non-rolemodel for women when she was unable to do what any male losing candidate would do, and give her own concession speech on the hight that she lost. Imagine Romney or McCain averring until the following morning and sending out a lackey. This is supposedly the strong woman that we females,young and old, should emulate? Many women recognized Hillary for th long-resumed, short-on-accomplishments phony that she is, even if Mr. Frank can't