"Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman"
by digby
TI has now apologized for making this remark:
“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman,” he said. “Just because, every other position that exists, I think a woman could do well. But the president? It’s kinda like, I just know that women make rash decisions emotionally – they make very permanent, cemented decisions – and then later, it’s kind of like it didn’t happen, or they didn’t mean for it to happen. And I sure would hate to just set off a nuke. [Other leaders] will not be able to negotiate the right kinds of foreign policy; the world ain’t ready yet. I think you might be able to the Lochness Monster elected before you could [get a woman].”
But really, should he apologize for saying out loud what many men believe? He's a little unusual in that he's African American and they tend to like Hillary Clinton a lot more than white men do. But still, it's not something we don't hear all the time. For instance, look at this article from National JOurnal which points out that Clinton has a huge problem with men that she's going to have to overcome if she wants to win. White men really don't like her at all:
When Hillary Clinton entered the presidential race, she expected to win overwhelming support among women in her bid to become the first female president. Instead, she’s finding out that an unprecedented level of resistance to her candidacy among men is undermining the conventional wisdom that she’d be the strongest Democratic nominee in the general election.
Put another way: Clinton is now nearly as unpopular with men as Donald Trump is with women.
That’s saying something.
The latest round of polling for Clinton is brutal. This week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist survey in Iowa shows her favorability rating with men at a mere 27 percent, while two-thirds view her unfavorably. Her minus-39 net favorability with men is 28 points worse than Vice President Joe Biden and 27 points behind Sen. Bernie Sanders. The story is the same in New Hampshire, where the NBC/WSJ/Marist poll found both Sanders and Biden with net-positive ratings, while Clinton’s approval is deeply underwater, stuck at 30 percent.
The swing-state polling is a mirror image of her national numbers. Last week, Quinnipiac found Clinton’s negative ratings with white men at a stunning 72 percent—significantly worse than the Democratic Party’s already-serious struggles with that demographic group.
It's possible that this discrepancy is because of her positions on foreign policy where they are much more dovish than she is. Or maybe it's about her positions on the TPP. Or maybe it's mostly what TI said, it's impossible to know.
But I am also skeptical that she can win because of this phenomenon. If enough women went the other way she might be able to, but there are a whole lot of Republican women who will vote for the Republican (just as Democratic women would vote for the Democratic male if a GOP woman was on the ticket.) This is about Democratic men. One assumes they would vote for her against a Republican. But it's a gamble. After all, we don't have a lot of data to go on. No woman has ever been a presidential nominee of one of the two major parties.
I had to chuckle at this article though. It doesn't even bother with an aside about the gender gap possibly being about gender except to the extent that Clinton has made a huge error is trying to appeal to women --- as if their votes don't count.
It’s awfully ironic that some of the Democratic Party’s sharpest strategists, who once saw Clinton as uniquely capable of mobilizing the Democratic base because of her groundbreaking biography, are now hedging their bets—by looking at the 72-year-old Biden as a more-credible candidate capable of stopping the party’s problems with men.
Ironic isn't the word I'd choose. Predictable is more like it. White men are getting sick of all this nonsense. The smart money is with that macho dude Wayne LaPierre on this one:
“I have to tell you, eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.”
It seems there are a lot of men who think it's time to get back to normal.
None of that should b construed as a slam on Biden. I don't believe that's his calculation. He's the VP who has a chance to be president and that could be true no matter who was running. Neither is it wrong for any individual, male or female, to prefer Sanders on ideological grounds. That's what primaries are all about. But there are plenty of people in the Village and in the country, like this reporter, who simply don't even consider that there might be an underlying phenomenon that's worth questioning as anything but a failure on the part of women to overcome sexism.
The Democratic men who see it this way might want to look at this through the lens of the Obama administration being held responsible for failing to force Republicans to stop being congressional anarchists. I think any knowledgeable liberal can see what a useless, biased analysis that is.
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