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Will Kathleen Sebelius alienate Hillary supporters?

June 16th, 2008
By SOPHIE GILBERT

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So there are 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling. And yes, Hillary Clinton is right: women are engaging in and commenting on the political process more than ever before. But where do we go from here? To misquote Phillip Vera Cruz, if not Hillary, then who? If not now, then when?

When I interviewed some high-profile feminists for Obama (Katha Pollitt, Ayelet Waldman, Ellen Bravo) earlier in the year, this question kept cropping up. All acknowledged that it would be an overwhelming achievement for women to have a female president. They just didn’t think Hillary Clinton was the best candidate for the job. So who, I asked, would be the next big thing for women? Who has what it takes to be the first woman president?

The name Kathleen Sebelius kept coming up. As the Governor of Kansas, Sebelius has had a pretty impeccable record in terms of women’s rights. Although “personally pro-life,” she’s vetoed abortion legislation in Kansas four times since 2003. Despite the fact that abortions in Kansas have declined by 7.6 percent under her governorship, Sebelius was recently touted by Robert Novak as “a pro-choicer’s dream veep.” (you know you’re headed for great things when Old Bob Novak takes a swipe at you).

Sebelius has been in the news recently as one of the top contenders for Vice-President on the Obama ticket. Washington Post even ranked her at number one. It’s easy to assume that having a woman on the ticket would be the next best gesture in terms of appeasing disgruntled Clinton supporters. However, this piece, in Slate today, disagrees. “In the fantasy baseball game know as the Veepstakes,” Christopher Beam writes, “Kathleen Sebelius appears to be the complete package…. But selecting her could backfire big time.”

According to Beam, there are four reasons why Clinton supporters won’t welcome Sebelius on the ticket.
(1) She’s Not Hillary (ie, if it’s going to be a woman, it should be the one who spent 16 months campaigning for it).
(2) She’s A Woman. And putting a woman on the ticket is a slap in the face to Hillary.
(3) She’s inexperienced, and has no foreign-policy credentials, much like Obama.
(4) Nobody has ever heard of her.

So basically, we need a woman in the White House. But only if that woman is Hillary Rodham Clinton. Otherwise, the glass ceiling can stay splintered.



This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Feminism, Newsweek Blogitics, State Politics, Barack Obama, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, 2008 Elections. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 3 Comments

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    "Nobody has ever heard of her."

    That's a big liability given the problem Obama has with lack of experience.

    This was the kind of blunder the Dems made before, with Ferraro (someone many of us never heard of, while there at the time were plenty of well-known celebrity-status female politicians like Dianne Feinstein) and I suspect they know it and won't make it again.

    It would be a yawner and laugher if she were chosen, though there wouldn't necessarily be the derision expressed that we'd observe if McCain were to choose Condolezza Rice for his Vice President.
    • ^
    • v
    This comment at Balloon Juice sums up my feeling

    On another note; if the easily-insulted Clinton supporters would publish a list of those things that they consider a slap in the face things would smooth right out. I’m sure that, in .pdf form, it wouldn’t be larger than eight or nine megabits.
    • ^
    • v
    I understand the yearning and the drive of women who support Hillary (or another woman, but I don't understand the sense of entitileemnt. to have that glass ceiling broken now, this election cycle..
    Obama didn't gain the nomination, BECAUSE he is black. He achieved it IN SPITE OF his mixed race parentage.

    I'm particulalry startled by this statement: "We need a woman in the White House."
    It's true, but we've needed a woman in the White Hosue for decades. It's a miracle a black man got the nomination, and the election is precarious. Why would women want to saddle a candidate already sailing against cultural headwinds with the responsibilty (it's made to sound like a debt) of breaking another political and cultural taboo at he same time?

    There is mention of appeasing disgruntled Hillary supporters. There are also disgrutnled racists in the electorate. Should they be appeaseed, as well? This is politics I don't understand, and i"m sorry to say, it sounds manipulative.

    As a woman and a lifelong feminist, this is a feminist psychology totally foreign to me.
    I believe that women should be recognixzed and awarded on a par with men, but I also believe that women have to take it on the chin like men. Affirmative action for women should not start at the very top, the presidency.

    Hillary would bring a lot of voters to the Democratic ticket, but she would drive others away, because the negative associations with the Clintons' past would be dragged in, and also, because her crtiticisms of Obama during the primaries would be revived to echo throughput the campaign. No one knows what the mathematical formula is for calculating the +'s and the -'s.

    It would be wonderful if Obama found a woman for the VP slot. He is the one who has to carry the ball for the Democrats, however, and he is is the one who has to make the decision. I would hope that Dempcratic women would be gracious enough and realistic enough to realize what is at stake in this election and to not put stumbling blocks in the way. They are not winning any popularity contests right now, so their own political power is at stake, too.

    If the situation were reversed, would Hillary's camp feel obliged, obligated even, to make Obama the VP candidate without considering the consequences in the general election? They would not. not it they wanted to win above all other considerations.

    For me, the election comes first. From her statemtns, I surmise Hillary feels the same way.
    i suggest we all think of it in terms of priorities.
 
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