Chicks need not apply
by digby
This is why I’m still a bit skeptical that America is going to elect a woman as President:
What folks haven’t tuned into, though, is how polarizing a Clinton candidacy would be between men and women.
Witness the new Washington Post poll, which shows Clinton remains popular and would of course be a strong contender to keep the presidency in Democratic hands.
What it also shows, though, is that her candidacy could split the genders in a way we haven’t seen in decades — at the very least.It’s a given in politics today that men will vote more Republican, while women will vote more Democratic. That has consistently been the case for a long, long time. But with Clinton at the top of the ticket, that pronounced split could turn into a chasm.
The Post poll shows that women say they would support Clinton by a striking 61-33 percent. Men, though, say they would back her by a far smaller count of 49-46 percent — within the margin of error. That’s a 25-point gap between Clinton’s margin among women and among men…What’s perhaps most striking among the new numbers is that the difference lies almost completely among white voters. Non-white men and women are pretty similar when it comes to the former secretary of state, but while 58 percent of white women back Clinton, 54 percent of white men oppose her.
Many GOP women won’t vote for her in the end. And if the GOP can find someone to entice enough of the Democratic white bros over to them (Christie your comeback awaits) she could have a problem.
But the GOP field is so terrible that she will probably win anyway. And for the purposes of breaking the glass ceiling that would be good — until some woman smashes the damned thing into tiny shards, female leadership is not going to be seen as “normal” in American politics. At least not by a whole lot of men.
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