Will misogyny trump racism or vice versa in the Democratic presidential nomination?

[jaunthie]

I've been watching the various presidential-candidate races forming up in both the Democratic and Republican parties for a while now. At this stage it's still theoretically anyone's game, but the American voting public and its relationship with the mass media being what it is, the fields are already narrowing before a single ballot has been cast.

The Republican candidates are pretty uniformly awful, in my opinion: the loony factor is high, the economic stances are insane, and the ethical standard is abysmal. Right now I don't think any of their candidates has a reasonable chance of winning the whole election - but then again, I never believed the American public could be so stupid as to vote for Bush in 2004, either. So what do I know? All I can say is, I wouldn't vote for any of them, and that makes me sad. We need high-quality, highly-qualified candidates put forward by BOTH parties if our system is going to truly work, and right now the Repubs are too busy pandering to the uber-wealthy and the uber-conservative to do so. All that being said, it looks to me as if Romney might be the Repubs most likely candidate. I think his overt religiousity (no matter the doubts many have over Mormonism), his general telegenic quality, and his willingness to commit to the current party line* will win over the caucus. To which I say, *snort*.

Over on the Democratic side, the race seems to be narrowing down between a black man (Obama) and a white woman (Clinton). Yeah, Edwards is still in the mix, but Richardson and Biden are both dead in the water, and Edwards is being marginalized in a lot of the national press. (Then again, that could very well be to his advantage. Hm.). Setting aside any discussion of the actual merits of either Clinton or Obama for the job, it occurs to me to wonder which is more likely to win out in the Democratic population: racism or misogyny? Because for a lot of people, that's what it's going to boil down to (yeah, my faith in the intelligence of the American voting public is really high, isn't it?). Qualifications won't matter much for either candidate; I think it's going to come down to a gut check on the general voters' part rather than a fact check at the end of the day. And judging from what I see around me, I'm guessing misogyny trumps racism. I think the general voting public is more ready to vote for a man as President, no matter his skin color, than a woman. From what I can observe in the media and in my general day-to-day life, overall racism is a much less potent force than it was when I was younger (although if you're visibly of Middle Eastern descent, that's another story entirely, and one of the reasons why the right-wingers keep dragging out the "Obama is a Muslim" lie), but misogyny is just about as strong as ever - even stronger, in some ways.

What do you think? All else being equal, do you think misogyny or racism is the stronger force in today's society? Who do you think the likely candidates are in the Presidential race?


*note: Romney's current political stances are of course in no way related to those he espoused when running for and serving as the governor of Massachusetts. But given the Repubs' longstanding and well-proven ability to ignore historical facts, I doubt it will matter.

Comments

[hiker-chick.livejournal.com]

Not sure about society in general, but I had my own "gut check" moment last week. I decided that I'd rather have a woman in the Oval than an African-American. More interesting to me is the question of whether either should take the veep slot, if offered. It's such a bad image either way: a woman clearly subordinate to a man or a black clearly subordinate to a white. OTOH, if things go well, it sure makes running in 2016 easier, no?

Seen at Scarecrow Video:
Cthulhu in 2008--when you're tired of voting for the *lesser* of two evils.

[jaunthie.livejournal.com]

LOL on that bumpersticker! I want one for the office door!

I think that right now the *only* way we're going to get a woman in the oval office is if she's veep first, and even then it's questionable (barring the obvious *oops the prez just keeled over* moment). But yes, the question of subservience occured to me too. Can you imagine public reaction if Clinton is the candidate, and *any* male is picked as veep? Or the reaction if she picks a *female* for veep???

[monkeybard]

At this point I personally would vote for the most left leaning, notawhitemale candidate. Not a great POV, I readily admit. My ideal candidate right now is a black lesbian Muslim ex-military in a committed relationship. Just piss off everyone and have done with it, I say.

More on the point, I think misogyny will win out. There are still too many men with tiny dicks out there who can't handle women with power. (Me, cynical? Hell yes.)

[jaunthie.livejournal.com]

Jesse & Jesse in '84, eh? ;-)

And I hate to say it, but it's not just men. Some of the most misogynist people I've ever met or heard of have been women. Exhibit A: Ann Coulter...

[monkeybard]

Ann Coulter is not a person, though, she is an abomination. There's a difference. ;-P As far as I know, one must still be human to run for US pres. Or at least sub-human like the current president. Gods, but I must need more coffee.

[tylik.livejournal.com]

(posted way after I started this -- distractions...)

"but then again, I never believed the American public could be so stupid as to vote for Bush in 2004, either"

Gods, now wasn't that the scariest slow motion train wreck ever? I remember thinking that he was more of a joke than a candidate, but people kept giving him money, and then I got really scared.

So I've mostly been studying neuroanatomy, and not following the races that much...

I think the femininity question is more insidious. I find myself often wondering how much the things about Clinton that irritate me are really gender skew -- would they irritate me the same way in a man? It's a hard call. (Her husband annoyed the heck out of me on a regular basis. Of course, I still voted for him, and then as soon as he was out of office I missed him dreadfully.) Clinton (darned the name thing is annoying - I'm a little alarmed by how the one woman running is called by her first name, but then considering she only took the name "Clinton" to support her husband's career...) has taken a lot of stances that have really bothered me. But sometimes I really like her, too -- she has many of her husband's gifts (she's one of the best speakers in the party, though Obama is the other real standout) and has a steadier hand, I think.

Obama... oh, who can say? I think he'd make a brilliant vice president, and I say only that because darn it, he's pretty new to the game. (I think eight years as an active and politically prominent first lady does count.) And he's a less polarizing figure than Clinton. Possibly because he's done less. And possibly in part because of the insidious femininity that she mostly doesn't follow. Though if they exchange enough volleys its hard to see how they could work together. (Though if they spun it right, they could make it part of a bit about uniting people despite their differences...)

[fisherbear.livejournal.com]

It's hard to say, because Clinton isn't running against run-of-the-mill misogyny. She's running against a very personal smear machine that's been telling people she's a witch for fifteen years. (Talk about going medieval on someone... some of the imagery I've seen played against her is straight out of the Malleus maleficarum.)

It's unfortunate, but one of the side effects of liberal democracy is that if you spend enough time and money attacking someone, you can make it impossible for them to lead the country. (They can still govern, but that's not at all the same thing.)

Obama? Well, he's black, and he has a funny name, but short of fifteen years' worth of cartoons of him staining a keffiyeh with watermelon juice, it's not really a level field.

I'm tempted to spend some time hashing out a balance between the need to unite the country vs. the need to spit in the eyes of the kind of freaks who could run a fifteen year hatchet job, but the truth is that I don't really care. At this point, given the inexplicable failure of our political and legal system to have the current occupants of the White House remanded for trial, I've pretty much reached the point that the 2008 election is a referendum on the law and whether or not the federal government is above it. Whoever takes the hardest line on executive accountability will probably get my vote, ovaries and/or melanin levels be damned.