Why Feminist Hillary Won't Quit Her Race

Few People in our country don't know something about Hilary Clinton, although in the last few days she's been given some time off as the Republicans start their ancient engines and rev up to destroy their targets. In this case, it is Barack Obama and all who support him that they are firing toward. Have no doubt, there is some short-haired, man somewhere in the country who is convinced or who has been convinced that his duty is to investigate the national 'traitors' who have the audacity to practice democracy by opposing the reigning powers, as proven in their support of a man of color, Barack Obama.

But back to Hillary. She fascinates me, as she does many people. However, I don't find her particularly inspiring. Never did even though I supported her husband's presidency and even though I am a feminist. I wanted to support her. I really did. But I've never trusted her. Throughout these years that she's been a public figure, I'd had a nagging feeling about her which I can fairly say now that my intuitions were right. The thing about her is this. She is desperate. I'd never have said that before this election cycle, but her behavior during this campaign has been surprisingly desperate. I'm old enough to remember Nixon and Watergate, so I believe many of our recent political campaigns could be characterized as desperate. But Hillary is the first really viable female candidate we've had, and on the outside, she doesn't come off as someone you would think of as desperate. She's a mature woman, one who has spent the majority of her life in public. She is a wife and a mother, but one of means. I've been puzzling over her this entire campaign trying to figure out why she is so desperate.

Unlike Huckabee in his failed bid for the Republican nomination, she has demonstrated a distinctive lack of grace and consistency. His continuation in his bid seemed futile certainly, but never desperate. There always seemed to be a reasoned approach and a self-knowledge fueling his continuation beyond hope. He had one consistent personality and one message and a sincerity that was appealing. I don't support him politically, but never felt suspicious or puzzled by him.

Why would an intelligent, seasoned politician, a relatively dignified woman run a campaign that lacked dignity on all but the most superficial fronts?

Well, it came to me while watching her speech following the Indiana primary. She exuded a particularly false persona during that speech as she is sometimes likely to do. But it was different than her other 'false' personas. She was a caricature of a mother telling a bedtime fairy tale to a young child. Her head bobbed back and forth, her pitch was elevated. Bill Clinton stood behind her, puffy and chastened looking. His tie had been carefully coordinated to match her blue suit. Chelsea was next to her mother, not facing the audience, but facing her mother in a stance of very personal solidarity.

Her words were those of a concession speech at times. She stated she'd back the nominee in August at the convention, even while declaring to fight on. But the image I saw was of a woman's inner eye looking backward toward the chastened husband who stood behind her. He looked as sorrowful, defeated, and beaten as I've ever seen him look. Hillary's campaign has been (from one perspective) a chastening of Bill. It's be definition a diminishment of him by dint of the campaign elevating her above him in the public eye and public discourse. This is of course, an obvious reversal of their historical roles. She had had to assume the supportive role to meet the demands of culture. She had had to drop her maiden name and assume his in order for him to be accepted in the public arena. She had had to become in effect, secondary. Despite whatever gains in equality women think they have won in the last 40 years, this is still true.

What better vindication for a feminist coming out of the 70's!!? How else could a wronged and humiliated woman soothe herself than by displacing the cheating husband, rising when he can no longer rise? There have been repeated examples of him taking charge, and her putting him in his place: we've witnessed the muffling of Bill Clinton!

She is an intelligent, dedicated, feminist public servant whose future looked bright and certain until she was forced by the feminist backlash to take a rear seat to her husband's rising career. And now this is her turn. She's been waiting for quite a while. As an emblematic figure, so too have a few generations of women been waiting for her to take her place.

But the 'times' have often thwarted Hillary. We know this. It's well established history. But the most poignant and telling tales of her public life must be the elephant in the closet. Or in this case, the woman in the black, stained dress.

Hillary endured one of the worst humiliations possible for a woman. Not only was she betrayed by a habitually unfaithful husband, but she suffered most women's worst nightmare on national television. Could there be any greater humiliation for a contemporary feminist? I think not.

So, the public, the media and the pundits spend a great deal of time debating the question of what could be driving Hillary to have run this sometimes careless, insane, inconsistent and at the end, hysterical campaign? Why is she trying to change the rules mid-game? Why is she trying to reinvent simple arithmetic? Why has a formerly smooth operator suddenly morphed into a desperate woman spending millions of dollars against rising odds, willing as some suggest, to destroy the party to get elected against all odds? Why has Hillary lost her composure to such an extent?

How else could she achieve vindication on a scale comparable to her most public humiliation than to supplant her husband in his biggest and most successful role? She could have vanquished the old sod and beat him at one of his biggest games. He's often considered a master of politics. For Hillary, this is not an act of public service entirely. To supersede her husband and presumably become the second Clinton President, to regain the world stage and require him to take the rear seat is possibly the only way she will ever be able to heal her wounded woman's heart.

There is nothing mysterious in the end about this. It is primal, it is irrational, it is a common story, once again, mystified and convoluted by the main media, but after long consideration, I myself, could think of no other reason for a woman of this stature to have run the campaign she has run into the ground.