Wednesday March 11, 2020; 12:11 PM EDT
Four years later, after watching the 2020 campaign, I think I finally understand why we didn't have a woman president the last four years. No surprise -- of course it is because of our attitude toward gender, and the way it forms women's public personalities. I don't know how it gets better, but first imho you have to understand the problem. Here's the story from my point of view.#- I supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, so I noticed things from a woman's point of view that I normally wouldn't. In debates, Bernie Sanders yelled over her or waved his hands in her face. She couldn't respond in kind. I wanted the moderators to put a stop to it. She couldn't respond in kind because who would tolerate a woman who behaved like that. Exactly why we shouldn't tolerate a man behaving like that.#
- When I hear people say they hate Hillary Clinton, I remember when I hated her too. I remember exactly the moment that changed. Listening to an incredibly smart and well-spoken women being interviewed on NPR and stopping the car and waiting to find out who it was. Hillary Clinton. This was in the 90s when she was First Lady. Ever since I've challenged my assumptions on why I hate a public figure. I think about it, and decide whether that's correct. #
- The source of the hate was resentment. Who was she to have such a public voice. The bug was that of course she had earned a public voice. As wife of the president, she wasn't as she said the kind of woman who stays home and bakes cookies. She was very much part of the presidency. #
- So, Hillary Clinton eventually became a Senator then a Secretary and then a candidate for president. Of course I supported her. Over the years I had come to appreciate her intelligence, hard work, thoughtfulness, all the qualities you want in a president. But one. She often lacked confidence. She was incredible of course, I could not do what she did, that's not the point. You can feel confidence in another person, and hers was fragile, a surface-level thing, it's where the sense she wasn't "authentic" came from. #
- When she was finally coasting to victory, the wind at her back, you could feel it, she could feel it, all of a sudden it comes crashing down, with another bogus attack, the kind she had been suffering her whole life, the process that knocked her confidence down so thoroughly. She collapsed. You could see it in every speech, every interview. She was doing a great job of trying to hide it, but it couldn't be hidden. She was defeated. #
- HRC had been going through this all her life. It scarred her. She tried to do something that in her time proved to be impossible. There's no shame in that, but that is imho why she isn't president. #