How Millennial Women Feel About Hillary Clinton—and Bill's Sex Scandals

[Purveyor]

Hillary Clinton’s problems with young women just keep coming.

This weekend, her campaign was forced to contend with a pair of statements that have many young feminists up in arms. The first came from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who, while speaking at a Clinton rally in New Hampshire, chided attendees about the importance of electing a female president, saying, “A lot of you younger women think it’s done. It’s not done.” Then, during a Saturday night appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, feminist icon Gloria Steinem told Maher that she thinks young women are supporting Clinton opponent Bernie Sanders because, “The boys are with Bernie.” (Steinem has since apologized.)

On Monday morning, even as Albright and Steinem’s comments continued to tear through Americans’ social feeds, a new threat arose: Kathleen Willey, a former White House volunteer who has accused former President Bill Clinton of sexual assault, told Reuters that she has agreed to work for a political action committee created by Roger Stone, a former advisor to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Willey’s announcement threatens to reignite a controversy that reared its head earlier in the campaign. In an early January CNN appearance, Trump called Bill “one of the great woman abusers of all time” and Hillary, in turn, an enabler. Carly Fiorina joined in during the Jan. 14 Republican debate, saying that, “unlike another woman in this race, I actually love spending time with my husband.” Even Girls creator Lena Dunham—who has been stumping for Hillary—has previously expressed “conflicted feelings” about the way the Clintons attempted to discredit women who accused the former President of sexual offenses in the ’90s, according to a New York Times report.

For Hillary Clinton’s campaign, this raises a vital question: Will Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky—and sexual harassment and rape accusations that have been levied against him by other women—further undermine Hillary Clinton’s support among millennial women, a demographic that she is fighting so hard woo?

To get a sense of the answer, Fortune spoke to a number of women, ages 23 to 30. Most identify as feminists, with many across the political spectrum still considering which candidate to throw their support behind. We asked these young women the question on the mind of so many pundits and pollsters: Does Bill Clinton’s sexual history affect how you feel about—and whether you would vote for—Hillary Clinton?

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http://fortune.com/2016/02/08/hillary-clinton-millennial-women/

[Buzz cook]

1. Why post the question and not the answer from the article?

The clear majority of replies from women was that Hillary's relationship with her husband was not relevant to whether they supported her or not.

This was a common reply from the article.

To one group of young women the idea of judging Hillary based on her husband’s behavior is at best irrelevant, and at worst, sexist. As 30-year-old publicist Eva Zimmerman, put it: “I consider Hillary Clinton as a politician independent of her husband, Bill Clinton. Just as I would never associate Bernie Sanders as a politician with his wife, Jane Sanders, I would never associate a politician as a politician with their spouse.”