Hillary Clinton attracts the female vote for obvious reasons. Gloria Steinem has defended her in the New York Times. But why is she considered such a pioneer for women? What separates her from, say, Carol Moseley Braun? Well, for one thing, she's been a professional wife. Yes, her most important qualifier for the presidency is her marriage -- which, as we know, has been infamous. Hillary is not a self-made woman. Where would she be without her husband? Where would she have gotten access to party insiders early on? On whose coattails would she have been able to ride into a carpetbagged New York Senate seat? Who else would have given her the name recognition necessary for her to be the frontrunner ever since John Kerry lost in 2004? Where else could she have dipped into a pool of rich (and corrupt) money circles to fund her campaign? None of the heavy lifting is her own. And yet she feels an entitlement to the presidency.
Barack Obama grew up as a mixed-race boy, moved from state to state (and country to country), and worked his way up to Columbia University. He worked on the ground in Chicago helping communities deal with the problems of the inner city. He became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He became an influential legislator in Illinois and won a landslide election to the US Senate, where he became the first black Senator since 1979 and the second since Reconstruction. He was behind in the polls since day one of his campaign and won over people with his message and rejection of the slash-and-burn political techniques. He is a true inspiration. And that is why he can win in November.
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I don't exactly buy that Sen. Clinton owes her fortunes entirely to Bill. Hillary Rodham would have been a highly successful lawyer with lots of connections, including many in Congress and the national Democratic Party from her years at Yale Law and on the Nixon impeachment staff. While she probably would not have the name recognition or profile she does now, I can't say that someone with her drive would not be a major candidate at some point.
Which is not to say that she hasn't done exactly what you say. She's a machine politician, for sure.
Additionally, Braun come from a distinctly different place politically than either Clinton or Obama: she ran specifically as a "black candidate".
Hillary is a very driven woman who was making strides for herself as a lawyer. But there is no way that she could have become -- ever since Kerry lost -- a national frontrunner who led in practically every single poll of any state other candidates had not visited. She would be another Carol Moseley Braun candidate -- a woman who had worked hard to achieve for herself, gotten places, but entirely unknown and without such impressive connections.
Sure. But that just shows that those polls (all of which had Giuliani leading the Republicans) were not measuring real opinions.
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