Lost in all the commentary about the crying game was another pivotal moment -- perhaps the pivotal moment -- in Hillary Clinton's turnaround: two unidentified men yelling "Iron my shirt!" at the candidate the night before the election.
The New York Times has a piece up on the rally-round-the-flag effect sentiments like this can have:
“I was really pained by the thought that her campaign really was over,” said Amy Rees, a stay-at-home mother in San Francisco who will vote in the California Democratic primary on Feb. 5. “I kept thinking that the truth is, a woman — even a woman of her unquestioned intelligence and preparedness — can’t get even a single primary win. It really stung.” Ms. Rees had favored Senator Barack Obama of Illinois; now she is thinking of voting for Mrs. Clinton. ...
“I do want Hillary Rodham Clinton to take the White House, but until she lost Iowa, I didn’t realize how much, or how much it had to do with her being a woman,” said Allison Smith-Estelle, 37, director of a program against domestic violence in Red Lodge, Mont. What bothered them as much as the Iowa results, said several dozen women in states with coming primaries, was the gleeful reaction to her defeat and what seemed like unfair jabs in the final moments before the New Hampshire voting.
The Clintons aren't stupid. They know this stuff is out there. They also know how women are likely to react to it when it's brought to light. I suspect they also know that simply welling up is not going to generate the same kind of visceral reaction with their target audience as showcasing the uglier responses to a female candidate.
The Clinton strategy since the beginning has been to embrace Hillary's feminine side, not run away from it (Ann Lewis has probably given about 37 on-the-record interviews to this effect). This is the candidate who opened the campaign by saying "Let's chat." Who pushed this envelope a bit too far after the Philly debate. The strategy is not to bottle up the woman factor, and hoping to embrace it to tap into the raw power of 56-60% of the Democratic electorate that are women.
So when those guys hoisted the "Iron my shirt" signs, Clinton had an answer already teed up: "Ah, the remnants of sexism, alive and well."
I don't deny that sexist sentiment against HRC exists. I've seen it in more places than I'd like to online. But does anyone else find it convenient that this only surfaced the day before the New Hampshire primary, with the campaign in well-documented desperate straights, in the middle of a bid to humanize (and feminize) the candidate? In a way that perfectly contextualized the vulnerability ("some of us... put ourselves out there...") HRC displayed earlier that day?
Has anyone found these guys? Interviewed them? Let me just say that I would not be terribly surprised if they were members of a union that endorsed HRC, or if there was a photo of them with Hillary paraphenalia at a past event.
Just sayin'...
UPDATE: It looks like this was a stunt. Nice work guys. You just handed HRC the NH primary and probably unstoppable national momentum.
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