IS HILLARY TOO OLD TO REPRESENT FEMALE MILLENNIALS?

…Millennial Women Voters for Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire

 

Madeline Albright and Gloria Steinem were the wrong Hillary supporters for New Hampshire.

 

If you look seriously at the major difference between the votes for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, there is only one major place to look.  That is at the group of New Hampshire women voters under 30 years of age.

 

Back in 2008, when Hillary was 8 years younger, the outlook of the women’s movement for the then first time women voters could still identify with the feminism of women like Hillary.  These feminists were the ones that had spent their lives “breaking the glass ceiling” for future generations of women.

 

This was what the former first-ever female Secretary of State, Madeline Albright and the feminist Gloria Steinem were trying to say when they showed their support for Hillary Clinton last week.  It was a real surprise to many women over 50, when it was learned that many women under 30 were insulted when Secretary Albright made her statement that: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.” Albright was referring to the need for women voters to support Hillary. 

 

And the younger group was also upset when Gloria Steinem said, “When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”   This same Ms. Steinem was the co-founder of Ms. magazine and an iconic leader of the ’60s feminist movement.

 

The surprise for all of the younger women was the idea from these older women that all women should support Hillary, just because she is a woman.  They also disagreed with Ms. Steinem’s idea that the girls would be with the boys because the girls always follow their boyfriends.

 

Those young women in New Hampshire were saying, “How dare Steinem insinuate that young women are just chasing boys? And, how dare Albright to curse young women for failing to support Clinton!”

 

During the cable TV coverage on election day, the networks showed some college students on a student shuttle that was taking students from the local college, to and from the voting auditorium.  The reporter on the shuttle asked those that had just voted, “How many of you voted for Bernie?”  Virtually every hand in the bus went up.  When the reporter asked, “How many voted for Hillary? Only 2 hands went up.”  The polls had shown that 80% of the women under 30 supported Bernie Sanders.  Once again, he polls were right.

 

The reality is that the feminist of the past have done a very good job.  But for young women today under 30, these older feminists are sorely out of touch with today’s younger women. The world these older women knew and helped change has now produced a new generation that is no longer as concerned with the issues that were so important to their mothers and grandmothers.

 

Needless to say, progressive millennial women are tilting toward Bernie Sanders rather than for a woman who would be the first female president of the United States. The older feminist are asking, “What are these young women thinking?”

 

To these older women, they came from the time when it was true that many of the “girls” did follow the “boys” with the purpose of finding a life-mate.  They were not considering which political candidate should receive their vote.  As one young women said, “I’m listening to what the candidates stand for and which ones think as I do about the future.  I’m insulted that they think I am supposed to vote for someone because of their gender.  If I liked a woman candidate’s ideas better, I would vote for her”

 

Personally, I don’t think that is the whole truth for the current young female support for the 72 year old Sanders.

 

I believe that young progressive women are attracted to the older guy because he’s promising a dream in which the rich have less and the less-rich have more. These younger women are not kids.  Many are working women and married with kids.  Many are also dealing with expensive college loans, and they see their own parents having problems with health care costs and in making ends meet.  They see Bernie Sanders as an honest politician that says things that would make their  family's lives better.

 

Another point is that Bernie’s message is short, clear and concise.  Hillary’s message is less clear when she says: “I’m more qualified, trust me to do things for you.”  Since Hillary has been in politics since 1972, she is part of the “establishment”, whether she likes it or not.  Today, “establishment” for this election has become a “dirty word”.  The do-nothing Washington “establishment” is the reason so many of the members of both parties are so angry.

 

Plus, the Republicans have done an excellent job of putting doubt in people’s minds that Hillary is not “trustworthy”.  Let’s face it, they have been going after Hillary nationally since the early 1990’s and they’ve never let up.  I give Hillary a lot of credit for her tenacity.  But having a whole political party on your back for over 25 years can take a big toll.  In addition, the younger people today have no background for understanding what Hillary and other strong feminist women have done to make these younger women’s lives better.

 

The following will show the difference between those young women that support Bernie, and some older New Hampshire women that had decided to vote for Hillary.

 

The decision that older women have voted for Hillary was because, even though they actually preferred what Bernie had to offer, these older women were concerned about what Bernie’s ideas would do to increase their taxes.  They were concerned about the costs of Bernie’s programs and how the programs were going to be paid for.  For the most part, the younger women really did not pay that much attention to taxes, as they haven’t worked for very long and haven’t made that much income.  Therefore, they've had no real history in paying large tax bills.

 

As Kathleen Parker of The Post has written: “What is obvious, if bittersweet, is that Steinem and Albright, and possibly Clinton by association, have passed the baton, without realizing it. Through their temerity and hard work, they’ve created a world in which their original purposes have become obsolete through acceptance.  Millennial women and those afterward have never known a world in which they were not treated to daily doses of "go-girl" power. They’ve never known a time when abortion wasn’t an option. They really can have it all, including the choice to not vote for a woman just because she’s a woman, because, after all, that would be sexist.”

 

That pretty much says it all for today's millennial women.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016