Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement
7B
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 // The Statement
7B
When will America be ready for her?
BY ELI RALLO, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
I
n 2016, I voted for President of the United States
for the first time. I remember walking to my poll-
ing place in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a freshman
in college, and waiting in line with a feeling of thrill in
my chest. As I walked toward the booth I felt a bit of
hesitance — almost as though I didn’t have the agency
to cast my own vote, and thought back to the times my
brothers and I would file in after my mother to watch her
vote in the town hall in our hometown of Fair Haven,
New Jersey. I thought back further to the women who
fought for me to have this privilege today, how it wasn’t
always given at the age of 18. I looked down at the ballot
for the highest office in American politics, old enough to
make my own vote, all alone, and had the privilege to see
a woman’s name printed clearly on the ballot alongside
then-nominee and current Republican President Donald
Trump.
In plain writing, there it was: history.
Seeing a woman represented on a major political bal-
lot shouldn’t have to feel surprising, exciting or exhaust-
ing, but it does — it did. Former Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, who faced harassment and targeted
gender attacks throughout her campaign, beat Trump
in the national popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes,
but ultimately lost the presidency by 77 votes in the Elec-
toral College. Clinton had numerous qualifications for
the presidency, such as her Senate seat, position as U.S.
Secretary of State and her work as First Lady, but in the
aftermath of the election, many argued that despite her
popular vote win, America wasn’t ready for Hillary — or
any female president.
Perhaps it seems like a no-brainer that most women
gravitated toward Hillary Clinton as their choice in 2016,
but this was not the case. According to an Edison Nation-
al Election Poll run in 2016, just over 50 percent of white
women with a college degree voted for Clinton in 2016 —
not really an overwhelming win. This is in large part due
to white women, as 61 percent of non-college educated
white women and 44 percent of college-educated white
women voted for Trump.
Among women of color, only 3 percent of non-college
educated African American women and 25 percent of
non-college educated Hispanic women voted for him. 77
percent of nonwhite percent of college-educated women
of color voted for Hillary Clinton — much more than col-
lege-educated white women.
The support for Trump from white women has
been analyzed as arising from the white woman’s his-
toric loyalty to the right, their privilege in being able to
support a male, Republican president, and the power
their whiteness has. Moreover, and among women and
men alike, there was the underlying anxiety of trusting
a woman in power, regardless of her qualifications. For
some women, electing a female president is secondary to
winning the election — beating Trump comes first. Oth-
ers simply cannot see a woman in such a high position of
power. In 2016, studies showed that Clinton’s gender had
a huge impact on her loss, with people going so far as to
say “she doesn’t have a presidential look.”
Structural gender bias and the Clinton campaign’s
steady uphill battle against gender discrimination and
sexism made it ridiculously difficult for a victorious elec-
tion. By way of analyzing slogans like “Trump that Bitch,”
the criticism Hillary faced for not smiling (or smiling
too much) and a fear of the subordination of Trump by a
woman, it is clear that Hillary’s gender was used against
her throughout the 2016 election, and Trump’s was not.
This led to a stark double standard. Clinton was berated
for matters that Trump was not: While people criticized
Clinton’s use of private emails, they barely questioned
Trump’s involvement in utilizing a private email for work
himself. The bias deficit made it immensely more difficult
for Hillary, or any woman, to be elected over a straight
man.
Despite all the possibilities to Clinton’s 2016 loss, there
befalls a valid and important question, arguably the most
telling one: Would those who voted for Donald Trump
have been more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton if she
were a man?
Following the election, there was a deflated feeling
among Clinton’s supporters and those who hoped for the
first female president to dismantle the historical norm
and superior electability of male presidents. Despite the
hope for many that a woman would make her way into the
White House in 2020, All in Together’s 2019 poll found
that both Democratic and Republican voters predicted a
male Democratic nominee — not a female one — would
win against Trump in 2020. They saw hope in the pros-
pect of a male Democratic candidate and feared another
apparent expected loss by a Democratic woman. Now,
with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, as the last woman in
the race and polling extremely low, it’s apparent the next
President will indeed be a man.
As America readjusted in the weeks after Trump’s
election and subsequent inauguration, I wondered when
Americans would vote a woman into office — with both a
popular vote and overwhelming support of the Electoral
College — if Hillary Clinton, a woman with accolades and
throngs of experience, who many thought was a shoo-in,
didn’t beat Donald Trump. I wondered if the fact that
Hillary Clinton almost reached the Oval Office would
ignite a fire in Americans to truly strive for a female
presidency, or introduce a lackadaisical attitude about
promoting a female president, coming off of the sting of
Clinton’s loss.
Despite the fact that the Democratic Party saw many
women campaign throughout the 2020 Democratic pri-
mary election cycle, they also saw these women slowly
drop out, due to lack of support or exhaustion of expenses.
With the stakes high for the Democratic Party to defeat
Trump in 2020, the mainstream conversation in the
media has become less about breaking the White House’s
glass ceiling, and more about getting a Democrat — any
Democrat — in the Oval Office. The priority for Demo-
crats is turning the White House blue again, and both
Democrats and Republicans alike have commented they
don’t think a woman is the person for the job.
***
As Americans watched all six women face defeat, they
have begun to analyze how these politicians’ shared
identity as American women affected their likeability
and campaign success during the primaries.
I wondered how college-aged, left-leaning women con-
sider their gender identity when selecting a candidate to
vote for. And more specifically, how the candidate’s poli-
cies on women’s issues affect how young women voters
consider them as viable options when voting.
In the weeks prior to Super Tuesday, I spent time
interviewing college-aged, left-leaning women from
the University of Michigan. What I found, in talking to
them, is that the rhetoric of candidates and their stances
surrounding women and minorities is overwhelmingly
important when selecting a politician to vote for — issues
like a woman’s agency over her body, equal pay and
foundational human rights. Voting, for these women, is
extremely subjective based on their needs and preferenc-
es, yet all of them had astute opinions on Warren — the
strongest female contender — her struggle for the nomi-
nation, and how her gender stood in her way.
Theatre & Dance junior Emerson Smith voted for Ber-
nie Sanders on March 10, and leans strongly on policy
when making a decision about who to vote for. I asked
her what communities she identifies with within society,
and how these groups affect her voting choices.
ILLUSTRATION BY DORY TUNG
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com