Vagina-Americans have their say

So why were the polls so wrong in New Hampshire?

We heard last night that it might have been the Bradley Effect at work ("instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots"), but if you look at the breakdown of the vote by race and gender, you see that black women broke for Hillary and white men for Barack:


Now look at the breakout purely by gender and you see that Hillary was the clear winner among females:


This is not how it went down in Iowa. While the same percentage of the voters were women in both races (57%), in Iowa, Clinton only received 30% of the women vote there ( 35% Obama, 23% Edwards). In NH it was: 47% for Clinton, 34% for Obama, 14% for Edwards.

Now add to this that 39% of Clinton's supporters made up their minds on election day:


and it sure looks like John Edwards fucked up royally when he responded to Hillary's barely welling up for a second by playing the "Women are too emotional to be Commander in Chief card" or as Nation columnist Katha Pollitt put it:

John Edwards just lost my vote. How dare he take cheap shots at Hillary Clinton for letting her eyes mist over (not "crying" as was widely reported) at a meeting with voters in Portsmouth NH earlier today? This is a man who has used his most private tragedies--his wife's cancer, his son's fatal accident -- in his campaign in a way that had a woman done the same she would surely be accused of "oprahfying' the lofty realm of politics. This is also the man who promoted himself early on as the real women's candidate, and who has repeatedly used his likeable wife to humanize his rather slick and one-dimensional persona. Today he deployed against Hillary the oldest, dumbest canard about women: they're too emotional to hold power.

Let's go now to one of the best blog takes on last night. It's from Jeff Fecke (a man!) over at Shakesville:

And that’s why she won tonight; because women recognized that, at least for tonight, their future was inextricably bound up with Hillary’s, and that, at least for tonight, they needed to send a clear message that misogyny and sexism just won’t work anymore. Clinton may yet lose — there are plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose her. But if she loses, it won’t be because she was too emotional, or because she reminds someone of their ex-wife. It will be because she loses on her merits as a candidate. That’s as it should be, and it’s why our country should be grateful to the angry women who rallied to her, angry women who were angry for a righteous reason, angry women who accomplished something grand. [Emphasis Added]

In closing: a little story.

A few years back I worked for what was at the time the Hispanic shop of a top ad agency. I was basically doing three jobs at once: Corporate Communications Director, Co-director of PR and I also wrote all the correspondence for the CEO (who was not a native English speaker). I put in 70 to 100 hours a week.

While I shared a title with my co-director of PR that was really only on paper as he was not allowed to speak to clients without my being present. At some point, I discovered that my male coworker was making ten grand more than I was. I took it up with the CEO and got a raise and the difference in the last year's salary in the form of two bonuses (one paid immediately and one to be paid a couple of months later).

However, before the second bonus was due, I was sitting in a meeting with the CEO, A VP and another department director (all males). We were all gathered at the end of a conference table. The CEO started in on a sneeze. He looked around as to where to direct it. He looked at each of us. The MFer didn't go for the handkerchief in his bespoke suit pocket. No, he finally turned back towards me and let out the sneeze. None of it really hit me, but I went back to my office after the meeting, called one of the partners in a company that I had worked at before and secured a job there. I then gave the CEO my two weeks notice.

In the interest of full disclosure: I just gave the Hillary Clinton campaign a whopping 10 bucks. It was for the sneeze more than the $10,000. (I still don't consider myself a Hillary -- or anybody else -- supporter.)


(Voter breakdown charts courtesy of Rimjob's diary at Daily Kos.)
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