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The Hillary catharsis – it wasn’t about women

What the Hillary voters are not getting is that this was not referendum on women.  It was about the Clinton’s wielding power.  Hillary was going to get the nomination until the Democratic leadership sensed that someone else could take on the Clinton juggernaut.  And as soon as there was an alternative, they jumped on board.  If the alternative had been a woman, they would have go with her.

Which is why this ‘need for catharsis’ talk is trivializing the place of women in the Democratic party and will do so for years to come. 

Yes, women have waited a long time. Yes, Hillary was a great candidate.  Yes, she got lots of votes (though, if Hillary had pulled out of the election when a normal candidate would have she would not have the count she had).  Yes, it is historic.

And I like Hillary.  When I voted for Bill the first time, I said my vote for Bill was actually a vote for Hillary.  She’s strong, smart, and disciplined. 

But, Hillary is a coattails candidate – she’s there because of her husband.  (like Bush because of his father, like Kennedy because of the family legacy, etc.).  And, she can’t control her husband.  And, he’s just got baggage.  Baggage, that the country didn’t want to live with any more.  She’s lucky she did so well.

And, what is with this catharsis crap?  Check out these definitions of catharsis:

• The emotional reenactment in thought or symbolic form of a painful experience that brings relief of the distress caused by the original experience.
  ehe.osu.edu/cs/bitf/eatgloss.htm

 

• an event or sensation of spiritual cleansing brought on by a powerful emotional experience
  www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Clerks  

• when therapy is thought of as “catharsis” it is thought of as a way of emptying oneself of frustration and misery. …
  www.california.com/~rathbone/local2.htm  

• According to Aristotle, as interpreted by Freud and Lacan, catharsis (as found, for example, in the tragedies of Sophocles) produces a pleasurable calm by exciting the emotions, homeopathically one might say.
  method.vtheatre.net/dict.html  

• the emotional release an audience feels after the downfall of a tragic character. [Greek]
  www.ket.org/Trips/horsecave/vocab_foreign.htm  

• Catharsis is a key element of tragedy which induces pity and fear in the audience: pity of the hero’s plight, and fear that it will befall us
  www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/poetics/terms.html  

  I grant you – being married to Bill Clinton certainly does make Hillary a tragic figure.  And her tragic flaw is, in my opinion, her willingness to overlook his flaws to her own detriment.  Because, he is the baggage that cost her this election – at least it was for me.

  But catharsis?  Ya know, it just seems like sour grapes to me.  And to say that you’re going to vote for McCain instead of Obama makes no sense whatsoever from a policy or strategic perspective.  And make no mistake – if Hillary had won the nomination, the VP candidate would still have been a white guy.  It wouldn’t have been a black man or woman.  And it wouldn’t have been a white woman.

  And what is so unnecessary about this is that Hillary was the first women to actually play the game – she was down on the field, taking the hits, playing hard.  To turn this into a referendum on ‘respect’ for women diminishes that accomplishment, and sets up the next viable woman candidate to be taken less seriously in the process.  And not only that, they are annoying everyone.  Get over it.