Today Maureen Dowd writes in her column, "I know that the attacks against powerful women can be harsh and personal and unfair, enough to make anyone cry." (Meanwhile, she has been one of the first to always attack Hillary Clinton, but she needn't flatter herself, neither she nor any of the other pundits who regularly criticize Clinton have ever made Hillary cry; it's an attack in and of itself to imply that Clinton has been crying because of attacks against her. This is a reference to the two times on the campaign trail that Hillary got a little emotional, but she never actually shed tears. The fact this is focused on is sad: a woman candidate is expected to be steely and strong, if she is too strong, she is seen as too masculine).
Dowd also writes, "While Obama aims to transcend race, Hillary often aims to use gender to her advantage, or to excuse mistakes. In 1994, after her intransigence and secrecy-doomed health care plan, she told The Wall Street Journal that she was “a gender Rorschach test.”
Obama has managed to convince people that he is "transcending race." But what does this mean? In his lofty poetic rhetoric he is always making references to race, and to his own mixed racial background, in a way that connects with African-Americans and gets them to support him, while at the same time saying that he is "above" race. Hillary Clinton could never get away with such doublespeak.
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