Quote of the Day:
From last Saturday’s kickoff of “New Hampshire Women for Hillary,” to Clinton’s appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show last Thursday where she pitched, “If you vote for somebody on the merits, one of my merits is that I’m a woman,” to an online campaign store newly stocked with lady-friendly merch (official “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” tote, anyone?) the not-at-all subtle message is this: Hey ladies, vote for Hillary!
–The Daily Beast in an article headlined "Why Are Women Ditching Hillary?"
The one constituency Hillary Clinton was alleged to have lock stock and barrel was women. But now it appears that women's support for Mrs. Clinton is eroding, and this is a big factor in her slippage in the polls. That, says Patricia Murphy in The Daily Beast, is why we're seeing the kind of effort Mrs. Clinton made on the DeGeneres Show and elsewhere to shore up the women's vote:
The female hard sell is coming as a series of local and national polls show that Clinton’s strength among Democratic women voters has continued to steadily, and in some cases, precipitously erode as her campaign has become bogged down in questions over use of a private email server and Sen. Bernie Sanders has risen on a wave of populist support that the Clinton camp had mostly dismissed or ignored.
The latest bad news for Clinton came last week from the NBC News/ Marist poll Sanders Leads Clinton by 9 in N.H., Gains in Iowa: Poll, which showed Clinton losing to Sanders by nine points in New Hampshire, thanks mostly a huge drop in Clinton’s female support. Although Clinton still held onto women by seven points, her lead among women there is down 16 points since July. The same holds true in Iowa, where Clinton’s lead among Democratic women shrank 24 points between July and September. A previous PPP poll showed Clinton losing New Hampshire women to Sanders by three points.
“I think there is concern on her campaign about the gender gap, which has gotten significantly narrower since our poll in July,” said Lee Mirengoff, the director of the Marist poll. “The campaign seems to understand that although they have a firewall they are trying to build in the South, women are really what this campaign’s strongest base is and they don’t want any slippage there.”
Murphy goes on to say that, in a general election, in which Clinton needs to outperform Barack Obama with the women voters, the danger is not that Democratic women will vote Republican, which would seem a remote possibility if, say, Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, but that they will simply not vote at all.
Murphy doesn't pinpoint why women are ditching Hilary. She speculates that women may be put off by Mrs. Clinton's lack of candor about the email scandals but that's something that affects voters male and female.
I'd like to recall Lisa Schiffren's New York Observer article some months ago in which Lisa claims that Mrs. Clinton, who graduated from Wellesley forth-five years ago and, though a radical, pursued her ambitions through marriage, is not the standard bearer for women today:
Today’s world is peopled with women who graduated in those decades, and pursued serious careers. They have deep experience in the professions, business, and politics. We have female Senators and Governors, who built their own political operations, have measurable achievements, and honest bank balances. A few have wartime military experience. None has faced multiple hearings over legal and ethical lapses. One of them will be the first female president.
Ms. Clinton had a good run. She isn’t the future.
It will be interesting to see how the erosion of supposed sisterly loyalties will affect Mrs. Clinton's ability to get the nomination.