Like many feminists, I’m conflicted about the whole Hillary-for-President thing. I think a lot of us had pinned our hopes on her, and we feel like she failed us. Her support of the Iraq war is one of the biggest issues for me; her support of welfare reform was a sad reminder that for all her talk about women’s rights, she’s willing to sell certain groups of women down the river for political gain; and her recent attempts to be a moderate just make her look spineless. But I’m still clinging to the hope that if she was elected, she’d be good. She’d not only be a female president, but a feminist president. And at the end of the day, she’s a politician — her primary interest is getting re-elected, so she’s never going to be my ideal representative. But compared to a lot of other politicians — and a lot of other Democrats — she’s pretty good. And if she runs for president, she’ll have a lot of people who will be very willing to work very hard for her.
But I still think she has to earn our votes. And I remain very undecided. This week, two other feminists have taken on the Hillary question, and come to opposite conclusions. See Siren Magazine’s Allison Hantschel, who writes that she won’t vote for Hillary just because she’s a woman, and Salon’s Rebecca Traister, who argues that Hillary is us. Thoughts?