On the Sunday morning before Election Day, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman ever to be nominated by a major party for the American presidency, gave a sermon at the Mt. Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia. Her voice hoarse after days of multistate campaigning, Clinton sounded exhausted but happy to be there. Even at the bitter end of a nearly two-year marathon campaign, she could still get energized by speaking at a black church on a Sunday.
Clinton preached to the congregation about the Founding Fathers but not in the way that most politicians, in this era of right-wing deification of the countrys forebears, would invoke them two days before a presidential election. Our Founders said all men are created equal, Clinton said. [But] they left out African-Americans. They left out women. They left out a lot of us.
The congregation stood, hands in the air, calling back to her. Our founders said our democracy should be shaped by We the People, but we didnt get to vote, did we? And even when the Constitution was amended to allow African-Americans to vote, it was still only men. And then, finally, when it was amended to allow women to vote, it took decades before that became a reality.
Clintons point was clear: Her historic candidacy, coming on the heels of the election and reelection of our first black president, offered another crucial revision to the countrys founding assumptions, another inversion of its exclusions. And if she were to win, it would be thanks to a coalition of voters of color and women, exactly the people who had had to fight for centuries for the franchise.
The next night, Clinton stood alongside Barack and Michelle Obama before a crowd of 33,000 people outside Philadelphias Independence Hall, the spot where the architects of the nation had endowed its citizens with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as they built their new country on the backs of enslaved African-Americans and subsidiary women. Clinton and the Obamas were taking an audacious risk in presenting themselves as united in a mission to broaden Americas notions of what leadership could look like, of what the power of expanded enfranchisement could mean for the kinds of people from whom it was withheld for so long.
This coalition-building was not just an illusion produced by a few high-wattage appearances. A poll released by the nonpartisan African-American Research Collaborative the Friday before Election Day found that while black voters were most motivated by jobs, 89 percent of respondents also were invested in comprehensive immigration reform, and support for same-sex marriage had risen 11 points since 2012 to 61 percent. Issues that used to divide marginalized populations recall the passage of Prop 8 in 2008, thanks in part to a lack of support for gay rights among the African-American voters who turned out for Obama* seemed to be, slowly but righteously, becoming common cause. The prospect of a truly intersectional Democratic movement seemed possible not just possible but key to electing the first woman president, a woman who would not only shore up the Supreme Court but who was running on promises of comprehensive immigration reform, paid family leave, subsidized child care, a higher minimum wage, the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, and criminal-justice reform, all of which would of course have trouble getting past an obstructionist Congress, but nonetheless composed a blueprint for the future, an interlocking set of fixes that might begin to address structural barriers to equality. A more integrated progressive future was a glimmer in the eye of our sitting president, his would-be successor, and the coalition of voters that appeared to be forming behind her.
Which is why that last rally in Philadelphia was so stirring. It was chilly, and clear, and the most silent political rally I had ever attended. The intensity, the held breath, the reverence for the possibility that the politicians in front of us were standing in for the increased engagement and participation of many groups of Americans who spent centuries disenfranchised but now felt they had the power to elect presidents. This was a crowd praying that the Obama presidency had not been an exception to Americas white-male rule, but instead heralded an era in which diverse participation, leadership, and representation in government was the new rule.
There are those who argue that this election was not a referendum on women, it was a referendum on one woman; if the Democratic candidate had been Elizabeth Warren or practically anyone else, this might not have been the outcome. Throughout the election, many people complained that Clinton was not beating Trump by 20 points. How could she not be mopping the floor with this lying, bile-spewing monstrosity? But plenty of us understood all too well that the exceedingly prepared woman often loses the job to the far-less-qualified man. And, for the record, she did lead him by 20 points or more with African-American voters, with Latino voters, with single women voters under 55, and by close to that number with Asian-American voters; the only reason this election was even close was because of white people, mostly white men. Few seem eager to examine the possibility that certain segments of America simply do not want to be led by a woman, and that almost every other explanation for what was wrong with her her high negatives, reputation for being untrustworthy, the email mess originates with the ways she has been systematically demonized her whole career for being a threatening woman.
The media narrative about the wretchedness of her political skills has obscured the fact that Hillary Clinton was a pretty great candidate for the presidency. Not a magnetic or inspiring speaker, no. The bearer of way too much awkward baggage, yes. But also: steady and strong and strategic and smart. Despite being under investigation by Congress and the FBI and the media, despite having her State Department emails made public, despite having her campaign staffs emails hacked, despite being married to a man whose legislative and personal history made him deeply problematic, and despite the rolling waves of sexism directed at her and the racism directed at her predecessor and political partner Obama, she literally won the popularity contest. And the fact that she tried to build a coalition of voters that brought together the marginalized groups that will one day be the majority in this country was inspired and forward-thinking, even in its ultimate failure.
We are in a period of tremendous national turmoil. What we are seeing is a backlash not just against Clintons candidacy but against the entire eight years of the Obama administration. Its not just about who gets to be president. Its about who gets to vote for the president, who gets to stay in America and make their families here and how those families get to be configured. Its about who controls the culture, who makes the art, who makes the policies, whom those policies benefit and whom they harm.
Full article at the link. It's quite long, but worth a read.
