Posted by Vince Foster

From The Progressive

I can’t help asking women I know what they think about Hillary Clinton. Here is the historic, first viable woman candidate for President of the United States, and yet . . . ho-hum. I listened to a group of accomplished women of about the same age as Hillary argue about her candidacy the other night. A fellow Wellesley alumna (she graduated before the Presidential candidate and didn’t know her) said she can’t stand Hillary’s overbearing, dorm-monitor persona. A businesswoman laughed at the style criticisms—"Is that really important?"–and said she’d vote for Clinton because she’s "really, really smart." And a filmmaker and an art curator both said they thought Hillary was OK.

All in all, enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton is not that high among women I know–certainly no match for the outright hatred for her that has been brewing for more than a decade on the right.

Lakshmi Chaudhry describes it in the July 2 cover story of The Nation as a "feminist problem." She corrects Anna Quindlen, who wrote in Newsweek that "Senator Clinton has a woman problem." In fact, Chaudhry observes, Clinton polls the highest of all the candidates among likely women voters in the Democratic primary, and gets 21 points more among independent women than independent men. The criticisms of Hillary she quotes are mainly from progressives, like Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin and Bitch magazine’s Lisa Jervis.

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