Pat Schroeder on Hillary and the Glass Ceiling
When Walter Mondale plucked Geraldine Ferraro from her Queens Congressional district and placed her on the Democratic ticket in 1984, it was hailed as a fundamentally transformative occasion: From that moment on, women seeking national office would be the norm.
It hasn’t quite work out that way.
In the 24 years since, all of the presidential and vice-presidential nominee from the two major parties have been men, and it wasn’t until 2000—16 years after Ferraro’s selection—that a woman, Republican Elizabeth Dole, sought the nomination of a major party. Another woman, Carol Moseley-Braun, campaigned for the 2004 Democratic nomination, but built no discernible organization, raised little money and generated scant interest.
In that sense, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign has already made history: Her New Hampshire victory seven weeks ago marked the first time a woman had ever won a primary or caucus, and the millions of votes she has won and tens of millions of dollars she has raised represent leaps and bounds of progress from the Dole and Moseley-Braun efforts (and Shirley Chisholm, for that matter, who waged a symbolic candidacy for the 1972 Democratic nomination).
But Clinton is on the verge of coming up short. And for all her breakthroughs, it’s fair to wonder if her candidacy will do any more than Ferraro’s to give rise to more female candidacies in subsequent elections.
“I think it will be seen as a setback by female candidates, mainly because in the asset column she had so much,” said Pat Schroeder, the congresswoman who represented a Denver-based district in Colorado from 1973 until 1997, in a phone interview. “She had a lot of things going for her that other female candidates wouldn’t have.”
One of those things is campaign money, the acute need for which Schroeder, who is supporting Clinton this year, is tragically familiar.
Once upon a time, she was going to be the woman who embarked on the full-fledged presidential campaign for which Ferraro had paved the way. That was in 1987, when Schroeder’s fellow Coloradan and political ally, Gary Hart, dropped out of the 1988 Democratic race amid charges of marital infidelity. Schroeder, then 47 and in her eighth term in the House, announced that she’d run—as long as her supporters armed her with a credible bankroll.
“If there is dough, we go,” she proclaimed in June 1987. “If there isn’t, we don’t.”
She spent the summer of ’87 performing all of the perfunctory acts of candidacy—heavy travel, speeches, frantic fund-raising—and was hardly invisible in polling. An early September survey showed her with 6 percent of the Democratic vote in a cluttered and chaotic field. (Eventual nominee Michael Dukakis was at 13 percent.) But when her self-appointed deadline for raising $2 million came at the end of that month, she was painfully short. So she bowed out of a race she never formally entered.
“It was just very clear that it was going to be impossible to raise money,” Schroeder recalled. “People give you money because they think you’re going to win and they want to be the ambassador to the Court of St. James, not because they agree with your positions. And as a woman, there’s no one who looked like me who’d ever won. So they all would say they thought it was a good idea for me to run, but they didn’t want to give any money.”
The money issue also prevented Schroeder from seriously considering runs in later years, particularly 1992, when there was early talk that she might enter the race. And fund-raising similarly bedeviled Dole’s ill-fated 2000 bid; she cited the money gap as her main reason for dropping out in October 1999. At least now, Schroeder pointed out, female candidates can potentially use the Internet to bypass the traditional sources of campaign cash that may be closed to them.
Clinton’s experience this year, according to Schroeder, has reinforced another hurdle she faced when she looked to run 20 years ago: uneven media coverage.
At the press conference in which she announced that she wouldn’t be an ‘88 candidate, Schroeder complained that the press had “driven [her] crazy by questions of should I wear suits, should I wear earrings, how did my hair look when I dressed up.” She also broke into tears twice during that same press conference, which produced a media firestorm not unlike the one that greeted Clinton’s misty-eyed moment on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.
In the case of Clinton, Schroeder said she’s not sure if gender is the reason she’s been falling short, but said that she’s certain that “the tone of the press has been a lot more negative toward her.”
“If you look at this campaign objectively, she did very well at all of the early debates, and most of the pundits said that she proved the most and got the most out of them,” Schroeder said. “And then the minute she lost Iowa, it seemed to be Pile-On 101. It was like, ‘OK, now we can go after her.’ For the last four or eight weeks, this race has been a virtual tie—but no one talks about that.”
She also pointed to the harsh (and often bewildering) insults that MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has tossed Clinton’s way, as well as the way Tim Russert handled the questioning at one particular debate last fall.
“All of the tough questions and the majority of all questions, he fired at her first,” Schroeder said. “I don’t know what drives that. I wish I did.”
Clinton has also had to contend with what Schroeder said is a much subtler form of sexism on the part of the electorate. When she explored a bid, polls showed a considerable chunk of the electorate rejecting the idea of a female president out of hand. That opinion still exists, Schroeder said, just under the surface.
“It was much more overt than what Hillary is going through. But the ‘coverts’ are much harder … because if you (try to confront it), they’re like, ‘There you go again, bringing it up.'”
In the wake of Ferraro’s ‘84 run, Schroeder, an outspoken progressive leader in Congress with a national following, was seen as a logical presidential candidate. If Clinton does come up short this year, she was asked, is there anyone to carry the torch for women in 2012 or 2016?
“I haven’t even begun to think about that,” she replied.
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 46.6
- 44.0
- Obama +2.6
- Candidate
- Favorable
- Unfavorable
- Spread
- Obama
- 56.4
- 35.2
- +21.2
- McCain
- 54.4
- 37.0
- +17.4
Some of this may be true, however Barack Obama also has inherent challenges he has had to MANAGE -- and has successfully done so w/out playing the VICTIM or RACE cards. He has not taken voters for granted and planned a strategy for the long haul. Hillary Clinton thought she had it made in the shade and the mismanagement of her Campaign apparatus shows it. All of the VICTIM discussion ignores the fact she is a flawed candidate who mismanaged her Campaign. Then, after Iowa, she began to plan in mid-air. The media, like voters, reacts and responds favorably to a superior candidate who has managed and strategically planned his Campaign, well. They also react to dysfunction, clear lack of planning, a former President being SENT OUT by a candidate to publicly attack another candidate, mocking minstrel shows by CEOs such as Bob Johnson, MOCKERY of fellow candidates and voters who choose him. This is an unattractive vision for America and how we see ourselves. HOW you win is as important as winning, in 2008. Mr. Obama understood the American people. Mrs. Clingon and her (two-fer) husband, did not. Playing the VICTIM doesn't do justice to professional women everywhere, who play by the rules of engagement despite the inherent challenges. Barack has demonstrated it can be done, effectively. I am telling my daughter and nieces to watch how HE and Michelle Obama have navigated their Campaign. THIS is the model for them. Not, Hillary (and her husband). Our young people intuitively KNOW this already. Turn the page.
P-L-E-A-S-E ...Pat Schroeder is just dragging up the past! She and Geraldine Ferraro are two big mistakes the Clinton campaign has made. Pat Schroeder is a whining has-been. She represents the worst of the OLD DEMOCRATS; a REMINDER of the PAST. May she RIP.
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Jesus...where did you dig up that old crone. A woman can be elected, it just has to be the right woman. Hillary was a non-starter to begin with. TOO MUCH BAGGAGE. Too many negatives, whether fair or not. Just because that harridan was repudiated, by a man who's half black no less(delicious irony,) doesn't mean it sets back the cause of women. There are plenty of level headed Dem and Republican women in Congress, and the state level, who would make decent chief executives...someday. Just not a former first lady who alienated half the electorate for eight years.
When you consider Hillary can't win HALF the delegates in her own party, and is despised by HALF the electorate from the start, this means, at best, she had 25% of the voters in her pocket. She was a nonentity and no one wanted to admit it. Nobody but the Clintons want to return to the Clinton years. These despicable people should disappear forever. Hopefully, they will.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=fb3465cf-bf86-4750-a7fa-6cb02a...
The New Republic
CAP Trade
by Michelle Cottle
How Hillary's think tank went for Obama.
Post Date Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Is it any wonder that Hillary Clinton can't help but occasionally burst into tears? This was supposed to be her year, gosh darn it. She had the money machine, the big-gun advisers, the support of the party establishment, and, of course, the carefully cultivated aura of inevitability. But then along came Barack Obama, and, suddenly, everywhere Hill turns, there's Mr. Audacity of Hope, flashing that goofy grin and siphoning off the love--or at least the tribute--that was rightfully hers. Obama has wooed away white-collar progressives. And independents. And young people. And the black community (the original Clinton firewall, for crying out loud). Now he's whipping Hillary in the money race and winning the endorsements of some of the party's most venerable figures. There's even talk that superdelegates who had previously pledged their troth to the Clintons are contemplating a change of allegiance. (Witness civil rights icon John Lewis's recent wavering.)
And, just when you thought the abandonment couldn't cut any deeper, it turns out that Obama--this upstart, this freshman, this guy no one in Washington had even heard of five years ago--has captured the affections of a Beltway institution widely seen as an unofficial outpost of Team Hillary: the Center for American Progress....
The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=907272c4-54db-4fba-9149-e95b72...
Post-racial
by Michael Crowley
Even white supremacists don't hate Obama.
Post Date Wednesday, March 12, 2008
I think it is a mistake to give to much credit to the glass ceiling theory in this instance-- just the fact that HRC has been treated as roughly as she has been means that she has been taken seriously, as does the fact that she was able to raise a ton of dough. She has handled herself well, and demonstrated that she is a serious candidate who is capable of winning the nomination and doing the job. She has even mostly managed to overcome quite a bit of the irrational Clinton hatred which was thought likely to doom her prospects. If she falls short, it'll be because of her vote on the Iraq war, and because she was out-flanked in the "making history" category. Is there another woman out there who will be able to make a run at it? Sure, although I don't know who it might be. Is there another African-American? Absolutely, but I couldn't identify that person today either. A lot has changed since Pat Schroeder gave it a go, and among the chief differences between the 80s and the 21st century is that for a substantial portion of the population race and sex are no longer as defining. Post boomers are used to going to school in racially mixed classes. They are past sexism. That's why Hillary Clinton could cry and Pat Schroeder couldn't; and it is why Barrak Obama doesn't have to come on like Jessie Jackson.
So now SNL is part of the Clinton Campaign strategy and messaging/communications? Bill Clinton calls Tina Fey to thank her for her skit that Hillary used during the debate??? THIS from a former President and future President??? SNL is now integrated INTO the Campaign? NBCU should be apalled to be leveraged in this manner. But then, the Clintons leveraging anyone and anything for any purpose. Creepy on the part of the Clintons...and SNL. Ridiculous. Turn the page.
There is no such thing as a glass ceiling: if you're competent, you get promoted. It's that simple.
Lots of companies have promoted men - and women - who sank, or nearly sank, the boats they were charged with sailing (Carly Fiona of HP comes to mind.)
Success and failure have nothing to with gender.
Republicans would unite around Condolezza Rice in a SECOND if she ever decided to run. No glass ceiling on the Republican side; it must be a liberal thing.
"And for all her breakthroughs, it’s fair to wonder if her candidacy will do any more than Ferraro’s to give rise to more female candidacies in subsequent elections."
I don't think you establish the fairness of your wondering that at all. In fact, you sound simplistic and ill formed. The thrust of your argument, if it must be called that, seems to be that women might look at the hurdles Hillary faced and be discouraged themselves from running for office. That doesn't allow much room for the human truths of uniqueness and persistence, but it does conveniently suit your, um, analysis.
You should speak with a few women of varying ages before you draw your grand "conclusion."
Ferraro, Schroeder, and Hillary are all cut from the same cloth...that is, they stink.
People who vote for (or against) candidates because the candidates have (or don't have) a certain variety of genitalia or skin color are too stupid to listen to and if they are the deciding votes in our elections, we are doomed.
Voting FOR a person because she is female or Black, is the same kind of idiocy as voting AGAINST that person for the reverse reason.It's been pretty entertaining to see the party that defines itself by Identity Politics get mired in the swamp of its own making.
Lissen up, Dem gals: Black trumps female in Identity politics everytime. You were happy when Bill Clinton was named the First Black President because you figured that Hillary could take that part of the electorate as well as the dumb woman vote.But when Hillary is running against an authentically Black person, and 90% of the Black vote goes to the Black man, you're outraged. Idiots.
Congratulations, Pat, on your successful tenure at ABA! I am a published writer and also a Portlander. But to answer your question -- what causes men, especially those with access to microphones or print pages, to take unfair aim at Hillary? I'll tell you ... As I have emailed Matthews, Alter, Fineman, Stein & others, it is that white men are insecure and therefore must attack a strong, bright woman.
I've been there, was bedeviled by the stupid white man syndrome myself. And eventually joined the community of color where the mysogynistic phenomenon is nonexistent.
You've had 43 presidents who have ALL been white men - why not give them a rest the poor things - and bar them from presidential office for the next, say, 50 years ... that should even it up a little AND move the USA up from its lowly place (31st) on the World Economic Forum's Gender Gap list of countries. Cuba, Columbia, Namibia, Belarus, Costa Rica are some of the countries listed as treating their women better than the USA treats theirs. Good article by the way!
The feminist movement was narrowly focused on elite white women...and, consequently DIED. Hillary Clinton is the standard bearer of this elite group, who piggy-backed those who really fought/died the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s...and kept minority women (African-American, Latina and Asian) women out of their concerns at Ms. Magazine (despite a few tokens). Focusing exclusively on the ambitions of 7-Sisters graduates and not on ALL women, has made Gloria Steinem, Pat Schroeder and Hillary Clinton archaic and irrevelant. THEY no longer define the so-called Woman's Movement by their elite, exclusive, entitled experience -- piggy-backing men and other movements. WE have moved on. Had Gloria, Hillary and their ilk worked to extend rights to ALL women across the ethnic/economic strata and not limited it to themselves and their own aspirations, perhaps Princess Hillary would have had more traction. Women don't want charity from these elite women, we wanted respect. Instead, their arrogant superiority and sense of entitlement is repulsive. Real women BAKE COOKIES, make costumes and also work as professionals, Hillary. Stop with the insecure MOCKERY of those that are different and you clearly don't understand in your bubble...with Gloria. We live VERY complex lives w/out the trappings of being First Lady half of your professional life and sychopantic "friends" insulating you from everything but Bill, Hill. We don't OWE you anything. We earn our stripes as modern women each and every day. Turn the page!
We see the modern women's movement reflected in ourselves and our own lives -- Hill. Not in you/yours. A vote for you BECAUSE you are an entitled woman -- sets us BACK -- because a majority of Americans know you are unqualified for a number of reasons, not the least of which is your continued attempts to FUSE yourself with your husband's career accomplishments, deceptively and dysfunctionally -- making a MOCKERY of the systems we have in place limiting the no. of Presidential terms, and the intelligence of ALL Americans in the process. Were you a man, you could not have gotten away with this game. Consequently, you ARE running as an entitled woman and not as what Ms. Schroeder and other feminists are articulating as the glass ceiling. You have run this game of guilt/victim for "35 years." Shame on you and the women who think we are too stupid to see through this charade. Turn the page.
I'm so tired of this whooooo as me Hillary nonsense.
There is sexism but the reality is that Hillary plays the Gender card for votes every time she can (I’ve seen it personally in 3 debates)…if Obama actually got on TV and said (which he never has) that being the first black president would be a “sea change” and help the hopes and aspirations of blacks and change the way power was distributed in this country, watch his white approval rating drop on a daily basis till he has to drop out.
So yeah there are all types of double standards. In reality white women do far better politically than any black person male or female and that is not mu subjective opinion it is indisputable historical fact.
Sexism is real but compared to racism in this country as far as politics, there is no competition. Hillary should and her supporters should really stop their moaning. This is not just my subjective opinion, do some basic math.
Lets look at some statistics though to tease this out a bit beyond simple opinion.
If you look at the census, America is 12% black and about 66% white. I will say white women are about 33.5% or that or so (women live longer than men).
That means white women are more than 2.75X more populous as any black American males and females combined.
If you look at Governors, Senators, mayors, etc. you will easily find that there are far more than 2.75X white females in these positions than any blacks.
Obama is the first black Senator elected to congress in almost two decades and only the 2nd since Reconstruction (before the successful implementation of Jim Crow).
Currently we have had over 30 white females Senators in Washington.
We have had two black elected governors in America. Deval Patrick in Massachusetts (current) and Douglas Wilders in Virginia back in the early 1990’s.
That’s it.
Compare this to White women governors; we have had over 25 in America’s history. Right now I know we have at least 5. I know Delaware, Kansas, Nevada, Michigan, Washington State. If there was parity there should only be 3.
Until very recently in history (last 20 years) it was almost impossible for a black person to win a statewide political race in this country anywhere, so although I recognize sexism as real, I don’t think it compares to the amount of racism out there and statistically speaking it is far better to be a white woman in America in politics than a black man.
I think Blue State people really don’t understand how hated any Clinton is in Swing and Red States and the problem Hillary has is her husband’s sins, not her gender.
The reactions to this article shows just how rampant the misogyny toward women still is in our culture- including the so called "progressives" backing Obama who threaten and harass anyone- but especially females, who "dare" to speak of their support of Hillary Clinton. Their attitudes would be laughable if our culture had actually changed. These so called progressives are the ones stuck back in the past- before 1968- when the second wave of feminism took to the streets because they faced the same words and attitudes by so called progressive and radical men of all races then. The same is true in 2008. Women of all races and social classes were then and are now feminists. The ignorant statement that feminism was only by and for upper class white women is an incredible piece of stupidity. In every wave of feminism women of all races and classes were a core part of the struggle. In fact, upper class white women in every wave have been the group most likely to be against feminism. From the Victorian anti feminist Eliza Lynn Linton, to the second wave antifeminist Phyllis Shafley and Camille Pagalia, to the third wave antifeminists: Anne Coulter, Christine Hoff Sommers, Katie Roiphe. Every one of them were and are upper class white women. Upper class white women are the class of women brainwashed the most to want to fit into stereotypical female roles. Few feminist activists have ever come from this class of women- Eleanor Roosevelt being one the few notable exceptions. Even the white women who became feminist activists tended to come from the poor to lower middle class- like Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin in the second wave.
The Obama campaign uses this lie about feminism being only for elite white women to try to goad female voters to not vote for Hillary. I've heard this line spouted by almost every college age women for Obama as one of the major reasons they are for Obama. It's another sexist talking point used in an Rovean way by the Obama campaign. The media will not talk about feminism at all, except to spout the same talking point.
This is why elite women are brainwashed to be aganist feminism. The media is part of that brainwashing- left, right and center. Nonelite women of all races are affected by that brainwashing too, but face a reality like Hillary Clinton has, every single day. This is one reason why Hillary backers get more firm in the face of these attacks, both on Hillary and on themselves for "daring" to back her.
This is the world we see every day. I've been called by all kinds of gender slurs merely for being a feminist and standing up for women's rights (of all colors, classes, religions, state of ability, and sexual orientations)Hillary is being used by these people (left, right and center) as a surrogate for their misogyny against all women.
Elite white women (and to a degree now, also elite African American women- like Oprah, Condie Rice, Michelle Obama and young upper class college age women)are brainwashed to believe if they cheerlead for men who belittle feminism the hatred isn't for women like them. This of course isn't true- as soon as they stop cheerleading for a man and try to address a wrong committed by any male to themselves they will be attacked with the same hatred, as Anita Hill found out.
I just posted this comment on Slate and came across the above story while factchecking and referred to it. Seems only fair I post it here too....
I appreciate the piece but I don't think it goes far enough in debunking the "a woman can't be elected president" myth. I don't think Hillary has affected the prospects because I think it has been possible for a while for a woman to win, if one would only run. And the main reason none has run is that WOMEN don't think it is possible.
Years ago as a (male, non-white) political science professor I used to assign hypothetical essay topics involving Dianne Feinstein as president, dealing with a global warming crisis. Invariably my female students had a harder time seeing this than my male students. In this they resembled Sen. Feinstein herself who, after losing her gubernatorial bid in California was so demoralized she went for the safer two year Senate seat in 1992 rather then the six year one that Barbara Boxer won that same year. This attitude probably explains why Feinstein has never considered a run, although she was well placed to try in 1984.
In this context it is instructive that the two women in recent years who did consider national runs -- Patricia Schroeder, the Colorado Democratic Congresswoman who toyed with it before 1988 and Elizabeth Dole who thought about it for the 2000 Republican nomination -- both aborted their presidential runs before a single vote was cast, because they didn't raise enough money. This even though Dole was running second in the national polls behind Bush and Schroeder was in the middle of the pack of a crowded field.
Maybe the fact that it is easier to raise money through a grassroots efforts now will make more women stay in. But the truth is, I don't think that is the key issue. Raising money over the internet was pioneered by people like Howard Dean who were determined to run but couldnt raise money from fat cats, and anti-establishment underfunded candidates have often won through grassroots efforts in the history of modern democracy. Jimmy Carter won the nomination in 1976 doing little more than stumping Iowa on foot and letting that victory generate money for him.
I once read an interview with Schroeder explaining why she never ran for the Senate in Colorado. The comment was intended to be about sexism in the Democratic party and explained that she had considered doing this at one point (I think for Gary Hart's seat) but was not "invited" to run by the state party leadership despite her seniority. Well in 1992, at least two of the women elected to the Senate -- Patty Murray and Carol Mosely Braun -- won the nominations as insurgents before winning the general. Why did Schroeder need an invitation?
In this context I find the comment about the "John Edwards/Barack Obama syndrome" especially annoying, even offensive. The person making the comment asserts that a woman "could not" run for president with so thin a resume. Why not? Patty Murray ran for senate as a "mom in tennis shoes" with no political experience beyond activism, and beat two congressMEN, one for the nomination, one in the general. And, while the Edwards "phenomenon" might have been anticipated by Clinton (had he run in '88) and was anticipated by Carter (you know, the one term governor who was the last Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote) these are all white southern men. Who, four years ago, would have credited the possibility that a black man could pull off what Obama has ... so soon? Is the problem rather that a woman "would not" attempt this .... without an invitation? Well, then, it seems to me, that is the problem.
Maybe Hillary Clinton will make it easier for future candidates just by setting an example of sticking it out when the going gets tough. But if so, the barriers she is breaking are those in the minds of potential women candidates more than in the political environment they face.