Women make up half the population – more or less – of the United States. Clearly that makes them an attractive demographic for politicians.
But gender probably isn’t a great and reliable demographic to use when creating campaign strategies, policies and rhetoric. Look what happened last week when two equally well-known feminists excoriated any woman who failed to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Any attempt to exhort voters identified by their gender to vote for a candidate based on their gender is going to fail and this one did. It backfired badly on former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem, author and well-known feminist.
“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” said Madeleine Albright at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton.
Steinem, in a television interview with Bill Maher, suggested young women were backing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders so that they could meet young men.
“When you’re young, you’re thinking: Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,” Steinem said.
Targeting voters based on their gender assumes people relate to their gender more than they relate to the political policies of a candidate and more than they relate to the history and experience of a candidate. It’s not just a bad campaign strategy, it is outrageously sexist and insulting to the intelligence of men and women.
Imagine if the reverse were tried. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell urging voters to elect a male candidate only as a means to help out another man or Hugh Hefner suggesting that men were only supporting a female candidate because that was where the women were hanging out.
Ouch. It backfired. At least in New Hampshire this week where Sanders won the overall women’s vote 55 to 44 percent. He won among men too, 66 to 32 percent, by the way.
