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“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman” #hehashisreasons

“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman”

by digby

TI has now apologized for making this remark:

“Not to be sexist but, I can’t vote for the leader of the free world to be a woman,” he said. “Just because, every other position that exists, I think a woman could do well. But the president? It’s kinda like, I just know that women make rash decisions emotionally – they make very permanent, cemented decisions – and then later, it’s kind of like it didn’t happen, or they didn’t mean for it to happen. And I sure would hate to just set off a nuke. [Other leaders] will not be able to negotiate the right kinds of foreign policy; the world ain’t ready yet. I think you might be able to the Lochness Monster elected before you could [get a woman].”

But really, should he apologize for saying out loud what many men believe? He’s a little unusual in that he’s African American and they tend to like Hillary Clinton a lot more than white men do. But still, it’s not something we don’t hear all the time. For instance, look at this article from National JOurnal which points out that Clinton has a huge problem with men that she’s going to have to overcome if she wants to win. White men really don’t like her at all:

When Hil­lary Clin­ton entered the pres­id­en­tial race, she ex­pec­ted to win over­whelm­ing sup­port among wo­men in her bid to be­come the first fe­male pres­id­ent. In­stead, she’s find­ing out that an un­pre­ced­en­ted level of res­ist­ance to her can­did­acy among men is un­der­min­ing the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom that she’d be the strongest Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee in the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Put an­oth­er way: Clin­ton is now nearly as un­pop­u­lar with men as Don­ald Trump is with wo­men.

That’s say­ing something.

The latest round of polling for Clin­ton is bru­tal. This week’s NBC News/Wall Street Journ­al/Mar­ist sur­vey in Iowa shows her fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ing with men at a mere 27 per­cent, while two-thirds view her un­fa­vor­ably. Her minus-39 net fa­vor­ab­il­ity with men is 28 points worse than Vice Pres­id­ent Joe Biden and 27 points be­hind Sen. Bernie Sanders. The story is the same in New Hamp­shire, where the NBC/WSJ/Mar­ist poll found both Sanders and Biden with net-pos­it­ive rat­ings, while Clin­ton’s ap­prov­al is deeply un­der­wa­ter, stuck at 30 per­cent.

The swing-state polling is a mir­ror im­age of her na­tion­al num­bers. Last week, Quin­nipi­ac found Clin­ton’s neg­at­ive rat­ings with white men at a stun­ning 72 per­cent—sig­ni­fic­antly worse than the Demo­crat­ic Party’s already-ser­i­ous struggles with that demo­graph­ic group.

It’s possible that this discrepancy is because of her positions on foreign policy where they are much more dovish than she is. Or maybe it’s about her positions on the TPP. Or maybe it’s mostly what TI said, it’s impossible to know.

But I am also skeptical that she can win because of this phenomenon. If enough women went the other way she might be able to, but there are a whole lot of Republican women who will vote for the Republican (just as Democratic women would vote for the Democratic male if a GOP woman was on the ticket.) This is about Democratic men. One assumes they would vote for her against a Republican. But it’s a gamble. After all, we don’t have a lot of data to go on. No woman has ever been a presidential nominee of one of the two major parties.

I had to chuckle at this article though. It doesn’t even bother with an aside about the gender gap possibly being about gender except to the extent that Clinton has made a huge error is trying to appeal to women — as if their votes don’t count.

It’s aw­fully iron­ic that some of the Demo­crat­ic Party’s sharpest strategists, who once saw Clin­ton as uniquely cap­able of mo­bil­iz­ing the Demo­crat­ic base be­cause of her ground­break­ing bio­graphy, are now hedging their bets—by look­ing at the 72-year-old Biden as a more-cred­ible can­did­ate cap­able of stop­ping the party’s prob­lems with men.

Ironic isn’t the word I’d choose. Predictable is more like it. White men are getting sick of all this nonsense. The smart money is with that macho dude Wayne LaPierre on this one:

“I have to tell you, eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.”

It seems there are a lot of men who think it’s time to get back to normal.

None of that should b construed as a slam on Biden. I don’t believe that’s his calculation. He’s the VP who has a chance to be president and that could be true no matter who was running. Neither is it wrong for any individual, male or female, to prefer Sanders on ideological grounds. That’s what primaries are all about. But there are plenty of people in the Village and in the country, like this reporter, who simply don’t even consider that there might be an underlying phenomenon that’s worth questioning as anything but a failure on the part of women to overcome sexism.

The Democratic men who see it this way might want to look at this through the lens of the Obama administration being held responsible for failing to force Republicans to stop being congressional anarchists. I think any knowledgeable liberal can see what a useless, biased analysis that is.

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