When I returned to the U.S. a few months ago, after living years in Quebec, I was surprised by the popularity of Bernie Sanders among my friends and other progressives. The sting of the country’s treatment of Hillary Clinton during the 2007-08 primaries was still fresh when I left for Canada, a few months into Barack Obama’s presidency.
At the time, I felt the aspirations of heroic women such as Alice Paul and Luce Burns begin to dim: It was as though progressives refused to consider that what Clinton, as a female person, had experienced on the long route to possible candidacy for the U.S. presidency was not as arduous, ugly, historically momentous as her opponent’s route.
This time around, paired with Sanders, I can’t help but notice a suspicious fixation on Clinton’s flaws. As though locating flaws in Clinton will justify why we have prevented women from having fair representation in our political system since the beginning of our country. From her fierce persistence to her emails, Clinton’s flaws, real or imagined, represent what we have had to tell ourselves about women to justify their exclusion from numerous arenas over multiple centuries. Rather than come to terms with the fact that we were wrong to ever stand in the way of women’s ambitions, we look instead for current reasons why the mistreatment must have occurred.
We allow men numerous free passes that would never be handed to female counterparts. Think of Mark Sanford or Ted Kennedy. Both men advanced politically. Or even Obama, who refused to support marriage equality until late into his first term — and then, only because Joe Biden’s outspoken support forced him to. But also, I suspect that a female version of Sanders — a disheveled, intellectually scattered, 74-year old woman, clinging to abstract ideas from the 1960s — would have been dismissed from serious consideration months ago. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been deflecting calls for her resignation because of advanced age since what age?) This over a comparatively robust, professional-looking woman who has proven, more convincingly than most, a mastery over the taxing task of travelling the world to get business done? And with incredible grace. After all, how many male secretaries of state have done diplomacy in countries where, like Clinton, he would be denied the right to own property were he a citizen of the country?
As someone who recently lived six years in one of the Socialist Democratic havens Sanders insists is the U.S.’s higher expression, I suspect that few progressive Democrats in need of somewhat regular medical care would put up with Canada’s health care system in its current form. There are endless war stories I could pull out here, stories that rival any we heard coming out of the U.S. in the years leading up to health care reform.
And before a country like Canada is regarded as a more perfect realization of equality and fairness, we may want to consult minority ethnic groups, such as the Quebecois, first.
Sanders seems to be a good person. But does he really compare in experience or intellect to Clinton? And aren’t these — experience, intellect — the sort of qualities we have used for centuries, 44 times in a row, to rationally select our presidents?
As long as they were men.
Would progressives flock to a male version of Clinton, with multiple leftist achievements spanning from health care reform and educational equality to advocacy for those traditionally excluded? In the context of what mindset do the accomplishments of such a person transmogrify into unelectable qualities? Is this a mindset that progressives stand by?
Not so long before I left Canada, three female premiers (think “governors”) — female firsts for the provinces they represented — abruptly lost their positions after stretches of brutal criticism. One of these women was the Quebec premier, and I watched the spectacle closely. The attacks on her were personal, misogynistic. The night this woman was elected — the same night a fanatic attempted to assassinate her — I yelled in joy in my apartment at her victory. My grandmother, my memere, was born in Quebec at a time when she would have been considered property. And there in Montreal, I witnessed the impossible being realized less than 100 years later.
If Clinton is elected, I fear the same fate for her: that the public will pounce the moment she does something imperfectly. I fear she will be scrutinized unlike any president before her, and that the so-called imperfections will be hurled at her in attempt to shame her, all women, for even trying.
I hope I’m wrong. And if any person can rise triumphant following such attacks, I think recent history has shown us that it would be Hillary Clinton.
Jane Martin holds an master’s in creative writing from the University of Michigan and a master’s in dramatic literature from Tufts University in Massachusetts. She grew up in Biddeford.