Hillary Clinton: Are her opponents sexist bullies?

Remember when being a woman was considered a liability in a presidential candidate? said Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune. Following last week’s bare-knuckles Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton proved that her gender can be a major asset on the road to the White House. By Clinton’s own admission, this was her worst debate performance to date. She came across as evasive and calculating, most obviously when asked if illegal immigrants should be issued driver’s licenses. Giving illegals licenses makes a lot of sense, she said, adding a minute later, I did not say that it should be done. Her main rivals, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards, pounced, pointing out that Hillary couldn’t seem to take a clear stand on anything, whether it was how to reform Social Security, respond to Iran, or whether she’d ask the Clinton presidential library to release communications between her and her husband. But in a clever act of political jujitsu,’’ Clinton’s campaign played the gender card after the debate, accusing moderator Tim Russert of meanness and her all-male opponents of playing the politics of pile-on.

You’ve got to hand it to the woman, said Michael Graham in the Boston Herald. She flip-flops on live TV, but acts outraged when her opponents call her on it. She may not be a man, but she’s definitely got, er, cojones.’’ Her victim act, though, was a setback for women everywhere, said Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post. Obama and Edwards had to go after her because she holds a double-digit advantage in the polls. What else are they going to do? Hillary’s a strong woman, not a helpless damsel, and for the sake of the women watching her candidacy with pride, she should be woman enough to take these attacks like a man. By playing the whining victim, said Scott Lehigh in The Boston Globe, Clinton only undermined her viability as a candidate. Up to now, she’s been selling herself as a battle-tested veteran ready for anything the Republicans can throw at her.

This was clearly not Hillary at her best, said Linda Hirshman in The New Republic, but there really was a whiff of sexist bullying that surrounded the debate. The mostly male media rushed with patent delight to declare the Clinton campaign in crisis following her humbling by her male rivals. The polls, however, suggested otherwise. Despite her supposedly disastrous performance, she maintains about a 20-point lead on Obama and 30 points on Edwards. Why? Her millions of female supporters know what it’s like to be bullied by sneering men, and they’re quietly excited about the prospect of a first female president.

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Hillary does have a serious problem, though, that the debate revealed, said Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel. She’s not as artful as her husband was in avoiding a firm position that might alienate someone somewhere. Voters will eventually grow weary of this compulsive prevaricator, and that’s something she won’t be able to blame on sexism. The truth is that Hillary can handle the men just fine. What’s giving her problems is Hillary.

Certainly that’s the conventional wisdom, said John Podhoretz in Commentary Online, but consider how the Clinton campaign defused her chronic equivocation during the debate. The big story should have been her slipperiness, but her handlers were pretty successful in changing the subject to the extent to which it’s fair to criticize her. With their tender gender sensibilities, said James Pinkerton in Newsday, Democrats may be susceptible to such transparent manipulations. But come the general election, Clinton won’t get away with saying she was for the Iraq war until she was against it, or that she favors issuing licenses to illegals, sort of. Republicans, in fact, are already sniffing political blood.