I Am Hillary Hear Me Roar

Just two days before her mother made it official, Elle magazine released its interview with Chelsea Clinton in which she said that while it’s good that about 20 percent of Congress is made up of women, “Since when did 20% become the definition of equality? And so when you ask about the importance of having a woman president, absolutely it’s important for, yes, symbolic reasons.”

There it is. Hillary Clinton's daughter says her mother should be crowned president of the United States because “it’s important for symbolic reasons.” Electing a woman – a liberal Democratic woman and not, of course, a Republican conservative woman – would show just how far America has come. Symbols matter, right?

But we elected our last president largely based on symbolism and our economy is still only limping along while Iran tells us to drop dead and a lot of the rest of the world is on fire.

So let’s put symbolism aside for the moment and ask, What do we have in Hillary when we take gender out of the picture?

Well, we have a candidate with no discernible record to run on.

We have a candidate who is not seen as trustworthy. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows that more voters in key states see her as dishonest than those who think she's honest.

Then there’s the authenticity factor. Hillary doesn’t have that either.

Presidential campaigns are about tomorrow. Hillary is about yesterday. She’s been around forever. Her last name shouts ‘90s.

And she’s a terrible campaigner.

So you can’t really blame her if she runs the “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” campaign. What else does she have?

A few weeks ago a group of Hillary “Super Volunteers” came up with a list of 13 words that, as they see it, are sexist code words – and if any news organization uses those words, the Volunteers will be on them before you can say cue up the Helen Reddy song. The 13 “sexist” words are:

"polarizing," "calculating," "disingenuous," "insincere," "ambitious," "inevitable," "entitled," "over-confident," "secretive," "will do anything to win," "represents the past," and "out of touch."

But Hillary is polarizing, just like George W and Barack Obama – and they’re not women, right?

And she is calculating and disingenuous. Look up “insincere” in the dictionary and you’ll find Hillary’s picture.

She is “secretive.” She used her own personal server while she was secretary of state, for crying out loud!

“Entitled”? Oh, yes!

And how are the other words sexist?

They’re not. We all know that. But this is what we have to look forward to: Say anything negative about Hillary – anything – and her devoted, progressive, feminist base will try to paint you as a Neanderthal bigot who hates women.

And now, from a psychiatrist named Julie Holland, we have still another biological reason Hillary should be president. In a Time magazine essay that ran under the headline: “Hillary Clinton Is the Perfect Age to Be President,” Dr. Holland writes:

“Biologically speaking, postmenopausal women are ideal candidates for leadership. They are primed to handle stress well, and there is, of course, no more stressful job than the presidency.”

So Hillary is ready to be president because she’s not menstruating anymore?

Can you imagine if a man, 20 years ago, said women shouldn’t run for president because once a month they get a little crazy – and you don’t want a crazy pre-menopausal woman with the key to the nuclear code, do you?  NOW would take the poor jerk out to the back of the barn and shoot him.

And here’s the best part: If Hillary Rodham married some guy named Bill Smith we wouldn’t be having this or any other conversation about her. She might be a lawyer someplace or other but she wouldn’t be running for president – and wouldn’t have been elected to the United States Senate and wouldn’t have been picked as secretary of state.

Or to put it another way, Hillary got as far as she has because of a … man. A man whose coattails she rode to stardom. Without that man, there’s no Hillary as we’ve come to know her.

But that's moot at this point. So Hillary won't be a pushover.  Quite the contrary.  That's partly because of the Democrats' best friend in presidential elections -- the Electoral College.

Democrats almost always win California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C.  That gets them pretty close to victory right off the bat.

So the GOP candidate doesn't start out with a strong hand.  And if ideologically pure conservatives sit home as they have when John McCain and Mitt Romney ran, if they refuse to vote because the candidate Republican primary voters picked isn't "conservative enough," then it won't just be hard for a Republican to win.  It will pretty much be impossible.