Why older women are so enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton

[ehrnst]

The older women who support Hillary Clinton are enthusiastic for her for all the reasons anyone else is — and for the special and meaningful reason that she validates their lives and has a voice that often goes unheard.

One of the pervasive (and inexplicable) storylines of this election has been that there is “low enthusiasm” for Hillary Clinton.

This is, of course, entirely false. A candidate does not get to be a major party’s presidential nominee if they inspire little enthusiasm — and Clinton certainly wouldn’t break a 227-year barrier against female nominees if there was no enthusiasm for her candidacy.

One of the ways this narrative has been perpetuated is simply by invisibilizing the evident enthusiasm with which she is greeted at every campaign stop. A browse through her Flickr account shows a campaign that looks very different from what we are typically shown by the corporate media.

It also matters that among her legions of enthusiastic voters are countless older women, whose representation across all media is inexcusably scant. It is important to acknowledge that Clinton has commanding support from older women — especially Black women.
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Older women occupy a very particular space in our culture — a space frequently defined by an abandonment of listening. Rather than valuing the lived experiences of older women, and the wisdom those lives have imparted, we turn away from them, dismissing them as irrelevant; we neglect to listen, just at the moment where they may offer insights most profoundly worth listening to.

http://shareblue.com/why-older-women-are-so-enthusiastic-about-hillary-clinton/