We can thank the third and final debate for blowing out of the water the obsession with Hillary Clinton's likability. Most of the country now feels as some of us have always felt: "So what if you don't like her? Who cares if you don't warm to her? Was I ever planning to be close friends with Walter Mondale? And by the way, I heard you the first time."
Yes, I think by now most people can recognize that there's more at stake. But there's one category of those who don't like Hillary that's still worth some more thought. I've listened to several good solid liberals who say they liked Clinton in the 1990s, but don't like her now, or at least not as much. They do plan to vote for her, so maybe we should be content with that. But I'm puzzled about what is going on. After all, Clinton is still what she has always been: a centrist Democrat. Why is that disappointing now when it wasn't before?
To be sure, context makes a difference. Twenty years ago there wasn't a Bernie Sanders explicitly tugging at Hillary Clinton from the left.
But I think something else is at play. Because a major difference between Hillary Clinton then and Hillary Clinton now—besides the massively important experience she's gained as a world leader--is that she has been the target of over twenty years of unrelenting sexist attacks.
Oppression--whether it be racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, or anything else—takes a toll: over time, it makes anyone feel less human. After all, that's the goal. But here's the thing: even when we acknowledge and repudiate an oppression, we don't like to see its effects on people. No one likes to see how people get beaten down, become more rigid, less trusting, less spontaneous. It's discouraging, and it makes us face—even if only in a tiny, unaware place in our brains—that we live in a world where people hurt other people for their own gain. And that we're all less human because of it.
So we prefer Horatio Alger to a homeless person; we prefer Cliff Huxtable (well, maybe not anymore, but you get my point) to an African-American person who looks downtrodden. Hell, we prefer younger people to older people. We prefer that people not show us that they've been hurt. It's not "attractive." It's not "appealing." We don't "warm to" it. We don't want to see the damage our society inflicts.
Sexism and other oppressions kill people every day. Sometimes in obvious ways—in the seemingly never-ending police shootings of black men and women, or in domestic violence cases that wind up in murder. That's why it matters when a presidential candidate cavalierly invites "second amendment people" to shoot his opponent. But oppressions also kill in less evident ways, through chronic health conditions and depression. And in addition to killing people, oppressions kill our hopes for the future.
Sexism won't end when Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected president, just as racism didn't end when Barack Obama was. She will not be able to change all the systematic ways in which people mistreat each other. And we don't need her to. This kind of change, to which I firmly believe we are headed, has to come from everyday people, through the millions of individual and collective decisions we make.
What we do need is someone to govern with a steady hand that makes space for those ideas and movements for change to bubble up, instead of encouraging the worst in people. What we need is someone who has built relationships around the globe that connect Americans to other people, so we can all share our best ideas.
To those who "used to like" Hillary, I issue this challenge: instead of focusing on how she's changed in twenty or so years, look again at how she's been able to remain herself. Because that is the really amazing story. And the hope we can derive from that is worth way more than our discouragement.
Hillary 2016
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November 6, 2016
Addendum. If you didn't see Oprah say, "You don't have to like her. Do you like this country? You betta get out there and vote, " here is your minute and a half chance.
