Her Own Favorite Theory

by tristero

Gail Collins thinks she’s solved the profound mystery of why Clinton won in New Hampshire:

My own favorite theory is that this week, Hillary was a stand-in for every woman who’s overdosed on multitasking. They grabbed at the opportunity to have kids/go back to school/start a business/become a lawyer. But there are days when they can’t meet everybody’s needs and the men in their lives — loved ones and otherwise — make them feel like failures or towers of self-involvement. And the deal is that they can either suck it up or look like a baby.

Oh, I could write megapixels on the serial misconceptions in just those few sentences. But let’s go on:

The women whose heart went out to Hillary knew that it wasn’t rational. She asked for this race, and if she was exhausted, the other candidates were, too. (John McCain is 71 and tired and nobody felt sorry for him.) The front-runner always gets ganged up on in debates. If her campaign was in shambles, it was her job to fix it or take the consequences. But for one moment, women knew just how Hillary felt, and they gave her a sympathy vote. It wasn’t a long-term commitment, just a brief strike by the sisters against their overscheduled world.

Don’t you just love it when someone in the mainstream media tells us that women behave irrationally? In the 21st Century no less?

Okay, to her credit, Collins does consider an alternative:

Or it could just have been a better get-out-the-vote operation.

Well, yes, I admit it. A good “get-out-the-vote operation” is probably helpful in winning the New Hampshire primary. I suspect that bathing every day and changing your clothes every once in a while is also helpful. But normally, I wouldn’t think it was worth mentioning something so obvious in a column for what was once the most prized op-ed page in the country.

Now what you’ve read so far from Collins’ column, dear reader, are all too typical examples of the kind of boilerplate stupidity that passes for public discourse in these…interesting times. Nothing special, merely infuriating.

But don’t touch that dial! For I’m about to reveal what makes Collins’ column so incredibly weird. She actually seems to know why Clinton won. But either she can’t believe it matters or she simply can’t resist being a clown (or both). I’ve quoted above from the end of her column. Here are some excerpts from earlier moments. I don’t have to tell you to notice the “tedium” and the gratuitous hedging:

Clinton actually seems most genuine when she’s being dull. She’s gone back to talking about policy with voters. That’s just the way she saved her first Senate campaign by disappearing into the depths of upstate New York for an endless listening tour that drove reporters mad with tedium but seemed to make the citizens very happy…

…when she started answering questions, she got very Hillary — talking about carbon neutrality and H.M.O. payments and procurement reform, ticking off her five-point plans and three-part explanations. The large crowd, which had been standing in a high school gym for nearly two hours before she arrived, seemed to enjoy it. Her bond with the people isn’t a passionate one, but when it works, it’s a genuine connection that starts with the belief that she will work really, really hard on their behalf.

Apparently, to Collins, the reason Clinton won had very little to do with the fact she’s willing to listen to voters. Or that she knows what she’s talking about on a myriad of issues, any one of which is far beyond the capability of Collins’ pea brain to master. Or that voters actually do care about these issues and care that someone has thought them through and can be articulate and organized in discussing them (flashback: “Is our children learning?” Oh such a charming manly codpiece of a man!). Or that voters weighed what Clinton proposed and concluded they were pretty good ideas, and that she made a better case than her rivals.

No, sez Collins. Clinton won because women – and all New Hampshire women are multi-tasking city slickers like Collins and her friends – identified with Clinton. And you know what that is? That’s pseudo-psychoanalytic horseshit. It assumes adults are still inevitably grappling first and foremost with issues of separation/individuation and failing. It assumes grown up women are simply incapable of making a mature decision based on rational appraisals of information. It is not only specious crap. It is insultingly elitist and sexist specious crap.

In other words, it’s high time for Gail Collins to recognize that while she, and Chris Matthews, and so many others who opine for a living, are condemned to go through life with a 3-year old’s capacity to reason (and feel), those voters who stood for 2 hours while Clinton explained her policies are not.

But, of course, they never will. People as immature as Collins simply can’t imagine anyone different from themselves. That’s the point. They have as much business having an opportunity to influence American public opinion as a seven-year old has flying a plane. The consequences are most likely to be, and have been, catastrophic.

As the campaign continues, voters will continue to listen to what Clinton and the other candidates have to say. Perhaps they will continue to believe her ideas and approach will be the most helpful. Perhaps they will find someone else, Obama or Edwards maybe, more persuasive. The debate over ideas and proposals won’t make a bit of difference to Gail Collins and her ilk.

Oh, yes, emotional appeals and perception are certainly important factors in choosing a candidate. Maybe all that research is right and they are the most important factors. But maybe it’s also the case that ideas matter, that voters do care about the substance of what the candidates say, and maybe, just maybe, it would be a good idea every one in a while to focus on that, without condescension and with real comprehension about what’s at stake in this terribly critical election.