The Sanders Campaign’s Sexist New Argument: Hillary Tries Too Hard--too ambitious
Spot on.
April 7, 2016 9:38 a.m.
The Sanders Campaign’s Sexist New Argument: Hillary Tries Too Hardhttp://nymag.com
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By Rebecca Traister
From Tracy Flick to Hillary Clinton, female ambition isn't pretty. Photo: Getty Images, Paramount Pictures
On Tuesday night, following Bernie Sanders’s big win in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, understandably jazzed in the midst of a victory lap, said a really stupid sexist thing about Hillary Clinton.
When CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about the increasingly aggressive rhetoric between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, Weaver averred that his campaign was prepared to play hardball. He then sounded a warning to the former secretary of State and her supporters, suggesting that they not get too critical of Sanders or his supporters. “Don’t destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States,” Weaver said.
It was a small comment, in every sense. A throwaway bit of nastiness coming from a campaign manager in the late stages of a long and hotly contested primary battle. But the line, which overtly cast Clinton’s political ambition as a destructive force and framed her famous drive and tenacity as unappealing, malevolent traits, played on long-standing assumptions about how ambition — a quality that is required for powerful men and admired in them — looks far less attractive on their female counterparts, and especially on their female competitors.
Weaver’s language made explicit a message that has, in more inchoate form, been churning through the Sanders campaign’s messaging in recent weeks. As Sanders’s staffers spin the story of how they got to this point in the race — with a candidate whose success has been unexpected and thrilling, especially with young Democrats and independents, but who has failed to win over voters of color and older voters, and remains badly behind his tough opponent by nearly every metric — they seem to have been working on a new framing of Hillary, one that relies on old biases about how we prefer women to conduct themselves and how little we like those who flout those preferences.
So far during this Democratic primary contest (which has been respectful and high-minded compared to the GOP side), Team Sanders’s depiction of Hillary has been of an unimaginative pragmatist, a hope-dashing incrementalist, and a corporatist too beholden to the financial sector to ever regulate or reform it in the way that will be required of our next president. These critiques have been tied to Clinton’s gender in various complicated ways, sure, but they’ve also been rooted in reality — she is a pragmatic incrementalist who’s accepted money from banks that she shouldn’t have! There are compelling arguments about the wisdom of the first two qualities and really nothing good to say about the third, but there you have it.
Of course, Weaver’s assertion that Clinton is ambitious is also rooted in reality. But in offering it up so baldly as a negative, in the weeks during which the campaign should be mounting its final argument, Weaver seemed to be suggesting that the argument against Clinton has come down, in part, to this: She’s Tracy Flick. And no one likes the woman who tries too hard, who competes with too much intensity, who applies too much focus to her own advancement. It’s a message that some of Weaver’s colleagues have been nosing around for a couple of weeks, but Weaver’s comments seemed to make the argument cohere. It goes like this: Bernie Sanders is a kind man whose relaxed and respectful approach to power has led him to come in second to a woman who works too hard and wants to triumph too much; Hillary’s unembarrassed commitment to winning the race not only makes her unappealing but could be ruinous to the party she’s vying to lead.....................
= new reply since forum marked as read
call out the steaming piles of BS, but we can 
We don't even have to be dishonest, negative or abusive to do it. The facts are on our side.
they act like just by running, she's stepping beyond her bounds. I guess she's supposed to just step aside now that the man is here?
