Hillary Rodham Clinton: "I had no idea there was such a woman.”
Hillary in History
NOV. 7, 2015 515 COMMENTS
Gail Collins
IT’S officially one year until the presidential election. Amazing how time flies, isn’t it?
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Clinton is the only woman who’s ever won a presidential primary. The only others who ever featured as even remote factors were the Republican Margaret Chase Smith in 1964, and the Democrat Shirley Chisholm, who got 152 delegates in 1972. (There were lots of ways to get little chunks of delegates without winning a primary back then.)…
We do have to talk about Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to have her name placed in nomination at the convention of a major party. “The first woman in politics I was aware of was Margaret Chase Smith,” Clinton recalled. “I can remember opening up Life magazine and reading about this woman who was in the United States Senate. I had no idea there was such a woman.”
Well, there certainly weren’t a whole lot. Smith, who spent much of the 1950s and 1960s as the only woman in the Senate, was the first senator with enough guts to stand up to Joseph McCarthy and his witch hunt. Her courage made such an impression that some Republicans talked about Smith as a possible vice-presidential nominee in 1952. But the party leaders thought a much sounder choice would be Richard Nixon…
The Democrats’ first big moment came in 1972 when Shirley Chisholm ran for the presidential nomination. Chisholm, an African-American, would have been a double historic first. But her party was in no way ready to make symbolic gestures. They needed a winner! So they nominated George McGovern.
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MORE:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/sunday/hillary-in-history.html?_r=0
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