Hillary Clinton’s Everywoman Moment
Hillary Clinton’s Everywoman Moment
The direct confrontation between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton over Mr. Trump’s treatment of women didn’t come until the final moments of Monday night’s debate. But in many ways, the entire event played out as a big-screen version of what women encounter every day. There were plenty of aha moments for any woman who is the sole female member of her company’s management team, a female sportscaster, bartender, cop, construction worker, law partner or, yes, a beauty queen. And maybe for the sole female presidential candidate, too.
Mrs. Clinton leads Mr. Trump by double digits among women and minorities. But non-college-educated white women are one of the biggest groups of undecided voters, and her campaign has been wooing them for months, toggling between portraying her as a tough potential commander in chief and a champion of women and girls. On Monday night, those women got to see Mrs. Clinton stand up to that common hazard of working while female: the sexist blowhard, the harasser.
When Mr. Trump began by addressing Mrs. Clinton as “Secretary Clinton,” saying, “yes, is that O.K.?,” Mrs. Clinton laughed off the condescension. But she wasn’t playing along — she was awaiting her moment. After nearly 90 minutes, it came. Lester Holt, the NBC News anchor who moderated the debate, asked what Mr. Trump meant when he had said in a rally that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have a “presidential look.” “She doesn’t have the look,” he said. “She doesn’t have the stamina.”
Mrs. Clinton’s response: “Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”
do as good a job as men,” she said. “And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy.’ Then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’ because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado.”
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