Hillary Clinton’s gender problem: Playing the victim is a desperate way to win

Hillary Clinton has a women problem. Usually when candidates have issues with a certain voter demographic, it comes down to their inability to connect with historically marginalised groups. But Clinton’s problem is different.

 

Although a September Washington Post-ABC News poll found she has lost support with left-leaning women – by a massive 29 percentage points – there is no compelling reason to believe, at this point in the race, that she will struggle to attract female voters next November – especially next to an almost inevitably male Republican candidate.

 

Clinton’s women problem is much worse. She has deluded herself into thinking that the woman card alone can win her the Oval Office. Clinton has been using feminine and feminist rhetoric for years to propel her campaigns. She has never shied away from using pay gap stats (both legitimate and debunked) to promote feminist policies and, most recently, her “grandmother glow” became one of her most repeated catchphrases for book tour talks and stump speeches.

 

 

But since the launch of her presidential bid, Clinton has been playing up the woman card outrageously, emphasising gender over policy and claiming victimhood status to demote her opponents. Her gender-baiting tactics were most noticeable during the first Democratic debate. When asked how her first term would look different from an Obama third term, she answered that it would be different because she is a woman.

 

That was it. What followed went from embarrassing to despicable. During the debate, her opponent senator Bernie Sanders declared that Clinton’s proposals for more gun control didn’t go far enough, and added that those who simply “shout” about gun control but don’t see it through are failing to counter gun violence.

 

Clinton could have addressed this criticism head-on. Instead, her campaign came out against Sanders for his “sexist” remarks, declaring that his comments confused a strong female stance for a shrill female stance. They spammed every media platform and integrated these attacks into stump speeches. Even the next day, during an interview in New Hampshire, Clinton declined to set the record straight and say that Sanders was not sexist.

 

 

Why is she playing this game? Surely a lawyer turned twice-elected senator, turned secretary of state is above gender-baiting and discrediting fellow opponents on such questionable grounds. There are two possibilities. The first is that the Clinton camp believes that a narrow focus on women’s issues is the key to electoral success. But given that social matters fail to even graze the top issues voters are most concerned about, this seems unlikely. And when MSNBC – the most left-leaning broadcast outlet in the country – is mocking your cries of victimhood on their breakfast programme, you know you’ve hit the wrong note. 

 

No – Clinton does not want to be campaigning on women’s issues. She has been forced into a corner because all of her other accomplishments have been tainted with scandal and backlash. On paper, her CV makes her the most accomplished candidate across both parties. In reality, her shaky voting record in the Senate, e-mail scandal as secretary of state, and the shady donations to the Clinton Foundation make her time spent as an elective representative far more easily attacked than praised.

 

With not much left in her bag of tricks, Clinton has resigned herself to campaigning on the one issue she believes makes her untouchable. And she may even be successful in frightening off Sanders with her threats and victim status. But it is not obvious how this is strategically – or ethically – a winning path to the White House.