Hillary's gender 'barrier' talk a poor strategy, analyst says
by Ed Thomas
February 22, 2007
(OneNewsNow.com) - - Conservative political analyst Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum says Hillary Clinton's decision to aggressively tout her gender on the presidential campaign trail may backfire, as she could end up alienating both male and female voters.Lately, Clinton is using her new stump speech to raise the question of whether America is ready for a female president, Lukas notes. While addressing an audience of predominantly black women at Allen University in South Carolina recently, the New York senator said the 2008 election is "about breaking barriers," and that she is "the candidate with the experience to break those barriers."
Lukas, the Independent Women's Forum vice president for policy and economics, notes that Clinton's concerted effort to stress her gender marks a change of tone for a woman who once said she did not want to be a stay-at-home mom who bakes cookies and has tea parties.
"I don't think that women are going to come out in flocks for Hillary Clinton ... out of a sense of sisterhood or something [like that]," the Forum official remarks. Women voters are more sophisticated than that, she suggests, adding, "They're going to be looking for the best candidate and the best potential president."
It is fine for Clinton to say she's "proud to be a woman," Lukas says, but it is not a "salient" point in an election where so much is at stake. "People, I think, are really moving beyond identity politics," she asserts. "We're not judging people based on their religion, their racial make-up, or their gender -- this is an issue of ideas."
The 2008 presidential campaign truly "stands out as being about the future and about what that politician believes is the best course for America," the policy and economics expert insists. "I don't care if a candidate is black, white, a female, or a man; I think everyone in America is focused on getting the best person for the job," she says.
Although Senator Clinton garnered 73 percent of the female vote in New York last November, Lukas says the presidential hopeful should not take for granted that she will capture a similarly high percentage of the female vote in the 2008 White House race. "I think it's a mistake for Hillary Clinton, or for any politician, to assume that women are going to vote for someone simply because of their gender," the IWF spokeswoman observes.
