Women and Politics: Clinton or Obama?

With bits of uneaten lasagna dotting our plates, we got down to business: a good, old-fashioned debate about politics. I sat across the dinner table from a friend of the family who is a liberal Baby Boomer who came of age during the ‘60s and ‘70s, dreaming of the day she might vote for a female for president.

I asked her if she was excited about Hillary Clinton.

“I’ve waited all my life to vote for a woman for president, and I absolutely do not want to vote for Hillary Clinton,” she said. “In fact, I don’t know any woman who will.”

She was much more enthused about the idea of Barack Obama, and the possibility of America electing a president whose dad is Kenyan.

Sure, this is just one anecdote. But still I wondered: If middle-aged feminists aren’t going to vote for Hillary Clinton, who is? Can Obama steal a significant portion of the female vote? Are women more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

The Democratic Primary is set to be a spectacular show of Americana, pitting the first viable female candidate for president against the first viable African-American candidate for president. The election—yes, still 19 months away, but who’s counting—could be a rousing sign of America’s changing identity.

Whereas Gore won the female vote by eleven points in 2000, Kerry won it by only three percentage points in 2004. Women cannot be assumed to be Democrats, just like they can’t be assumed to vote for a woman just because she’s a woman.

“My personal opinion is that people who believe that women are going to come out in droves to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she’s a woman have a misunderstanding about the way women do things,” said Michelle Bernard, president of the Independent Women’s Forum, a non-profit created to fight for economic liberty, personal responsibility, and political freedom for women. “Women are much smarter than that.”

I recently attended Barack Obama’s Atlanta rally and was shocked to find out there were 20,000 people in attendance—reportedly more than Clinton or Bush attracted closer to election time. I was also shocked when I opened my US Weekly (a dirty habit I’ve acquired) and found Obama shirtless on the beach. I don’t remember which celebrities he shared the page with, but his presence in a tabloid magazine is telling.

Although Obama’s “rock star” status could wither over the next year and a half, it seems he at least has a shot at attracting a significant portion of the female vote—a demographic that Clinton might have taken for granted.

“[Obama’s] going to do very, very well among black voters,” said Chuck Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. “If he can come close to matching her [for female votes], he’s cutting into the bulk of the Democratic vote.

In March, Clinton launched a Web site aimed at eighteen to thirty-five year old women—

around the same time that a KPIX CBS 5 poll, conducted by Survey USA, showed that in California, Clinton is thirty points ahead of Obama among female voters.

Clinton’s strongest base of support is coming from women aged twenty-five to forty-five, according to Bullock. These women look at Clinton as a role model—not necessarily a peer.

In April, Obama kicked off “Women for Obama,” an aggressive campaign to woo female voters. The inaugural event in downtown Chicago fetched $750,000 and 1,200 people. My husband recently attended an Obama fundraising event in Atlanta where the discussion centered on a high-dollar women’s event with the candidate’s wife, Michelle Obama (also a Harvard Law School graduate and a “secret weapon,” in the words of one Obama supporter).

“The interesting voters, potentially, are black women who might be cross-pressured,” said Chuck Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. “Some literature suggests that given cross pressure, race usually trumps gender.”

When I interviewed Shirley Franklin, the mayor of Atlanta who was reelected with more than 90 percent of the vote, I asked her—an African-American woman—who she would support in the Democratic primary.

“I am very encouraged by Hillary Clinton, by Obama. I’m interested in the other candidates as well, but those two really get me excited,” she said. She went on to praise John Edwards, and it was clear to me that she was trying to figure out where her loyalties lie.

Females comprised 54 percent of the votes cast in the 2004 presidential election, with 51 percent supporting John Kerry, according to CNN.com. As the most powerful voting bloc in the nation, I wondered whether Republican women who want to vote for a Democratic president in 2008 would be more likely to go for Clinton or Obama.

“Hillary Clinton is such a polarizing person, I’m not sure how far she reaches into the ranks of Republican women,” said Bullock. “For moderate Republicans, (Obama) probably has some real drawing power in that if he or she votes for Obama, they can say, ‘My conscience is clear.’”

Bernard admitted that the race and gender at play in the Democratic primary is both “exciting” and “sexy,” but said women are going to place their votes according to which candidate espouses the best policies.

“If race and gender were the deciding factor,” according to Bernard, “Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton would have been elected already.”

“If Democrats and Republicans are smart, they’re going to realize that the gender gap has shrunk, and we don’t know what it’s going to look like by 2008,” she said.