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Clinton Embraces Her Gender

Ruth Marcus on

WASHINGTON -- You know something has changed in the state of gender and politics when the Democratic front-runner jokingly alludes to the, er, plumbing differences that necessitated a longer-than-planned mid-debate bathroom break.

"It does take me a little longer," Hillary Clinton told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

This is not your Clinton 2008 campaign.

Then, Clinton was more skittish about playing up her gender. Not that she didn't mention it -- she did. Still, it was an at times awkward and muted embrace, undergirded by the campaign's conviction that, although the country was ready to elect a woman, voters also needed to be convinced of her toughness.

"Most voters in essence see the president as the 'father' of the country. They do not want someone who would be the first mama, especially in this kind of world," Clinton pollster Mark Penn advised in a 2006 internal memo. Penn's suggested role model was Margaret Thatcher -- projecting smart and strong, not warm and funny.

Even in 2008, the "ready for a female president" question felt antiquated, a fusty reflex. Yet the years since then have brought social change that further eases the path to a woman in the Oval Office. Voters have absorbed -- or not -- another first in the form of President Obama. And Clinton armed herself with new national security credentials in her four years as secretary of state.

 

"The problems for women candidates is they have to show they have the standing and gravitas to fight with the big boys in Washington, but they also have to be a human being," said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. "Hillary doesn't have to prove the stature stuff anymore and so that liberates her."

Liberated she is -- stylistically and substantively. Issues of pay equity and work-family balance that were notably -- some advisers think mistakenly -- subdued in the 2008 campaign are at the center of her platform today. Fusing the third rails of gender and age, she burbles about being a grandmother; she is unabashed in talking about coloring her hair.

The 2016 Clinton campaign has no doubt that gender benefits Clinton. The single-digit slice of voters who say they would not elect a woman are not Clinton supporters in any event, in the campaign's view, and are outweighed by the facts that women voters make up more than a majority of the electorate and tend to vote more heavily Democratic.

Thus, Clinton Unbound was on full display during last week's debate. The coda of her opening statement was a reference to what would be the historic nature of her election: "Yes, finally fathers will be able to say to their daughters, you, too, can grow up to be president." Twice when confronted with tough questions, Clinton deflected by invoking her gender.

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