Meet the New Hillary Clinton

[DonViejo]

Democrats are trying to rebrand the longtime public servant. Can they do it?

By Susan Milligan | Staff Writer
Aug. 5, 2016, at 6:00 a.m.

For women like Hillary Clinton, the battle against gender-based double standards has often been maddening. A woman of that generation lived through legal discrimination (equal pay was not passed until 1964) and just plain de facto bias. (Harvard Law School told Clinton they didn't need any more females. So she went to Yale.) The way to get ahead, women felt, was to prove their competence, education and knowledge. And yet, being qualified-on-paper wasn't enough to win Clinton the Democratic nomination in 2008. Despite her resume of both private-sector and public-sector endeavors, not to mention her work on civil rights and for children, Clinton watched as a charismatic but less-experienced freshman senator won the nomination and the presidency. True, Clinton was up against another barrier-breaking candidate in Barack Obama, one whose message of hope and change seemed at the time to be a welcome salve on the open partisan wounds that were keeping Washington from working. But perhaps most frustrating for the candidate was the criticism levied by political pundits and armchair sociologists: she just wasn't "likeable."

That's a moniker which genuinely baffles her friends and longtime associates, who describe her as warm, funny and self-deprecating. But it also goes against the precise feminist prescription women believed could bring them to equal positions in business, education and politics – indeed, one that is at the heart of the concept of American exceptionalism: work hard, learn more, study more and you will be rewarded with the job, the promotion or the elected office. What should so-called "likeability" have to do with it?

Fast forward to the current campaign, and the issue remains for Clinton, who continues to battle high negatives and perceptions that she is cold, craven and calculating. But this time, Clinton isn't running against a charmer-in-chief. She's campaigning against a man who appears to revel in finding a new group or person to insult: women, Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, the Pope, disabled people, parents of a slain war hero, fire marshals and (most recently) crying babies and their mothers, whom Trump urged "out" of one of his rallies. Donald Trump's negatives are high (the highest since Gallup began polling the topic), but complaints about the real estate magnate go to his temperament and to some degree, his questionable knowledge about world affairs. Still, Trump can mock a reporter with a disability, call Mexican immigrants "rapists" and even accuse fire marshals of conspiring for political reasons to keep his rallies smaller. And yet, while the first female major party presidential nominee struggles to get people to like her, Trump appears to have won people over for the very sort of behavior elementary-schoolers are warned will leave them friendless.

"Even if you can't stand Donald Trump, you think Donald Trump is the worst, you're going to vote for me," the candidate said of himself at a Virginia campaign rally.

Clinton, experts say, suffers not just from a "likeability" problem, but from a double standard that demands women be accommodating and pleasant while men can get away with being abrasive – especially if that unpleasantness is interpreted as toughness.

-snip-

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-05/meet-the-new-hillary-clinton?emailed=1&src=usn_thereport

[Tatiana]

1. I think the rollout has been brilliant and they are being successful in this endeavor.

One of my tea party neighbors has told me she is probably going to vote for Clinton. It will be the first time in her life that she has voted for a Democrat.

I really think showcasing her as a woman and a mom -- not running away from her gender, but embracing it as part of a total package was the right way to go. I think she will pick up quite a few votes from married Republican women.

I also think getting in touch with her liberal side has helped her win back Democrats.

[Brainstormy]

2. And, Tatiana, I think you're brilliant! n/t