Anecdotal evidence and prevailing wisdom suggests Hillary Clinton’s run for President has created a deep rift among women, pitting older "second-wavers" against younger "post-feminists". Here’s why I think the twain didn’t meet.
People’s choice of social theory reflects a desire to see themselves in the best possible light. First generation millionaires tend to be ferocious supporters of free markets, since laissez faire philosophy frames their success as a reward for virtue – smarts, hard work, thrift, etc. (as for the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Gates, remember that philanthropy is quite different from supporting taxation as justice).
Leftist sympathies usually emerge among later generations of the rich, since it is much harder to pretend that inherited wealth reflects on one’s personal qualities. In fact, noblesse oblige serves as the best possible form of self flattery when you can no longer brag about industry and talent. Limousine liberals are typically not new money. Economists are too crude in their emphasis on self interest over self image.
One problem every society under transformation has to cope with is the obsolescence of old roles and skills. Those whose social roles get devalued by change are drawn to narratives that portray society as deeply unjust, even conspiratorially so. Those who prosper in a new regime develop a vested interest in conceptualizing the system as meritocratic and fair. The clash of latte-sipping sophisticates of the knowledge economy and bitter, gun-and-God toting steel workers of Pennsylvania is ultimately the competition of memes that bolster self worth.
Women of Hillary Clinton’s generation lived through overt discrimination and entrenched sexual division of labor. Many stayed at home or gave up career advancement because raising a family carried high social reward and working up the corporate ladder carried too little (or worse). As the doors cracked ajar and social incentives started readjusting, the irreversible choices of their youth became hopelessly outdated. Like the sexual revolution of 1963, realignment of workplace and family values came “too late for me” to many a boomer Betty. It is not easy for a woman of that era (or for an older black man like Jeremiah Wright) to face reality in the eye and recast herself from victim to fossil.
Slate’s team of female writers have consistently sided against Hillary in this race, often identifying the conflict as a generational one without being able to put their finger on a deeper reason. For successful female journalists or corporate lawyers (as opposed to lowly company secretaries, home makers and academic feminists whose raison d'etre is gender injustice), buying into a story where women are hapless victims of a still dominant patriarchy undermines personal success. It turns them into Uncle Toms, dick-sucking power whores, or even worse, undeserving beneficiaries of liberal corrective measures like affirmative action. You’d be inclined to believe it’s a fair game if you’re one of the winners.
Hillary didn’t run on a feminist platform and to the extent she had an image strategy, it was schizophrenic. Her constituency was formed through identification with her persona and background, not from her marketing slogans of experience and establishment connections. She of the vast right wing conspiracy and spousal betrayal exuded victimhood and feisty defiance in equal measure. It is interesting that other than older women, the group whose loyalty she captured is also one reeling under the threat of obsolescence – blue collar manufacturing workers with a stake in America’s vanishing industries.
To what extent society is still sexist or racist is a complex, empirical question. My point is that to the extent there is progress, older generations of disadvantaged groups will find self serving and experiential reasons to underestimate and younger generations to overestimate it. The ironic aspect of social justice is that the fruits of struggle often accrue disproportionately not to the generation who led the struggle but their children. The sister wars have been marked by a remarkable lack of empathy in either direction.
Obama’s constituency presents a different kind of puzzle. If one were to take his revolutionary rhetoric of “change” at face value, one should expect its appeal to spread among those left behind and disaffected, i.e. among many who actually supported Hillary and whose world view is seeped in a sense of injustice. Other than blacks and young people who have a direct tribal identification with Obama, he garnered support among high income, highly educated professionals, the yuppies, academics, journalists and urban elite. These are folks with some of the best seats in the auditorium!
One of the biggest myths in politics, I think, is that people vote for one bundle of policies or the other. Many of the fractious debates in American politics (e.g. gay marriage, gun licensing, God in the pledge or ID in the classroom) are over issues that have highly symbolic but very little consequential value. To put it simply, politics is largely about whose cultural totem pole gets erected in the village square, even though people like to pretend it is about restructuring reality.
To many, Obama represents urban cool and agnostic cosmopolitanism, the world of multi-ethnic offices, the global span of the internet, sushi and burgers, European vacations and Chinese teaching assistants. He represents, more in his being and demeanor than in his manifesto, the ethos of a growing demographic – the melting pot that is America’s big cities.
Geraldine Ferraro was only half right. Much of Obama’s appeal derives from his identity – not the blackness but the indefinable hue and mongrel origins. Andy Sullivan underscored the same points, but as part of an instrumental argument to elect him. I suspect those who vote for Obama will vote more out of a desire to change the cultural icon on Washington’s big billboard (no more provincial cowboy swagger please) than a wish to change America and the world in any fundamental way.
