I dread what will happen when America finally elects a woman president

[yallerdawg]

Source: Washington Post opinion, by Alyssa Rosenberg

*****
When Obama was running for president in 2008, his political opponents spread all sorts of racist memes to prevent him from gaining the presidency, from suggesting that his birth certificate had been falsified, to trying to tie him to former radical underground figures like Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, to insisting that he was an intellectual clone of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Those attacks failed to keep Obama out of the highest office in the land. But if his inauguration was a moment of national self-congratulation, seeming proof that we had overcome the biases that have defined the United States since its inception, the subsequent reaction to Obama’s presidency proved that optimism wrong.

The first woman to be elected president of the United States seems likely to face a similar experience. Her victory at the polls and her inauguration would undeniably be symbolically significant. But that triumph and her tenure in office would also provoke a nasty wave of sexist response. As much as I will be proud to see a woman serve as president, I’ve also come to dread that time and the ugliness that will inevitably accompany it. I can’t wait to for those four or eight years to have come and gone.

For all the debates about Clinton’s qualifications for the presidency, which are considerable, there is a part of her résumé that is particularly relevant to this dilemma. More than any other woman in the United States, Clinton has experience absorbing tides of sexist trash and getting along with her work, whether she’s representing New York in the U.S. Senate, serving as secretary of state, or stumping on the campaign trail.

It’s true that being attacked doesn’t, in and of itself, make Clinton a virtuous person. And the decades of scurrilous attacks on the Clintons have left them less able to admit error than I might like. But even so, Clinton has had decades to learn how to withstand the attacks that will be aimed at the first female president, and to build relationships with other lawmakers, bureaucrats and foreign heads of state who now know her for herself.

Perhaps asking her to weather another four or eight years of viciousness is unfair. But Clinton appears to want the role. And if she wins it, she could spare another woman the very specific politics of personal destruction aimed at the first women and people of color to hold major roles in American public life.

Read the whole thing at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2016/02/17/i-dread-what-will-happen-when-america-finally-elects-a-woman-president/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines

[TlalocW]

1. I think we're in for more crap from the Right-Wing like they did to Obama no matter what

Because whoever wins the dem nomination, they have the opportunity to become the first "something" president - woman or Jewish. I have no doubt that they'll go after Hillary's being a woman with the same gusto they go after everything else that's, "woman," since they can be as mean as they want in that regards because they have no chance with democratic women and a great many republican women have basically been Stockholm Syndromed. (Don't verbify nouns). I don't hear a lot about the Jewish vote though - I know Obama carried it, but is that considered a "lock" in the same manner the Black vote is (regardless whether that is actually true or not).

TlalocW

[yallerdawg]

2. As a Hillary supporter I must say...

being of Jewish ancestry is the least of Senator Sanders' (I-VT) problems.

Now, when you look at President Obama and Hillary Clinton, you 'see' what makes them 'different.'

[Treant]

3. I doubt it gets any worse

than with President Obama, it's just that the tenor of it shifts. We'll hear far more "weak woman" memes than "Muslim" memes, for instance, but they'll be about equally offensive and annoying.

And hopefully, Madame President will simply ignore them as useless noise, just as President Obama has done.

[comradebillyboy]

4. I'll be very happy when Hillary is sworn in