History catches up with Hillary Clinton

ABC News reports today that Hillary Clinton's campaign is setting up a new web site to attack Barack Obama.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

You can spend weeks and months analyzing what event or remark or personal quality is responsible for Senator Clinton's drop in the early-primary state polls and Senator Obama's corresponding rise.

But the answer might be more fundamental than that.

Did you know that black men got the vote in America fifty years before white women did?

Did you know that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony refused to support black male suffrage if the right to vote was not also guaranteed to women?

Back in 1870, when many states still banned African-Americans from serving on juries and marrying whites and holding public office -- this is after the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment -- the states passed a constitutional amendment that said they could not deny or abridge the right to vote on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

But it was fifty years later, in 1920, before the states would agree to a constitutional amendment that said they could not deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex.

It's possible that even if Hillary Clinton was an honest, trustworthy, experienced national leader with an actual record of accomplishment (instead of a "thirty-five year record" of "fighting" and "caring" and "working"), she would not be able to overcome the deep historical currents in America that favor men over women.

The Washington Post's Lois Romano has a story in today's paper about this gender gap in New Hampshire and Iowa. She reports the comments of men who say they would never -- no way -- vote for Hillary Clinton. One man said he disagreed with her policy on Iraq and also disliked her personality. He said she "wears the pants in that family," is "pushy," and should have left her husband after he was caught cheating on her. Then the man was asked which candidate he was planning to support.

The man turned away from the phone and asked his wife, "What's the colored fella's name? Obama. Yeah, Obama, I like him."

It's enough to drive Susan B. Anthony to drink.


Copyright 2007

.