Hillary Clinton is not the incumbent president, but otherwise is in a similar position to Barack Obama’s in the spring of 2011: she’s already next year’s presumptive Democratic nominee but has, at best, an educated guess as to who her Republican opponent will be. In the meantime, recommended lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte in a Monday piece for Talking Points Memo, Hillary should decide to run as a “bitch who [gets] things done” rather than as “your mom,” an approach which fizzled for her in 2008.
“If Clinton is smart,” contended Marcotte, “she’ll put on those sunglasses and that black pantsuit and be the ladyboss we all wish we had: tough, smart, but compassionate. Soccer mom Hillary is too thirsty and it turns voters off. But ass-kicking Hillary makes people swoon. Hopefully, the campaign will pay heed to this difference.”
From Marcotte’s column (bolding added):
It’s hard not to be apprehensive about a Clinton campaign. The 2008 primaries were lost by Clinton just as much as they were won by Obama. As her husband did in 1992, Clinton chased the older white voter so hard she ended up alienating a lot of younger people and people of color. But while that might have been a viable campaign strategy in the early 1990s, Clinton discovered, the 21st century is a much different landscape. Younger voters and people of color turned out in droves to support Obama, who felt like a major change of pace from politics as usual. And so the “inevitable” candidacy of Hillary Clinton went down in flames…
The big issue, which is doubly unavoidable with Republicans doubling down on their war on women, is Clinton’s gender…
…By making women’s issues central to her campaign, Clinton will be turning what is largely perceived as her greatest weakness—her gender—into an asset, making it a lot harder for her opponents to try to undermine her through sexist swipes. The big question is, however, what kind of woman she is going to try to be?
The Hillary Clinton of 2008 tried to be your mom, notably wearing unflattering clothes in pastel colors. The strategy, no doubt designed to make her seem less threatening, backfired because it just made Obama seem even cooler in comparison…
But after Clinton became Secretary of the State, she got a complete makeover, becoming what Tina Fey and Amy Poehler wanted her to be: the bitch who got things done. This Hillary Clinton, who was more fond of black pant suits than pastel sweaters, was wildly popular. This time around, the viral website was Texts From Hillary, which portrayed Clinton as a badass mofo who wore sunglasses all the time and had no time for your nonsense. Her approval ratings soared, and though they have inevitably declined as she has made it clear she is, in fact, running for president, they remain higher than any of contenders on either side of the aisle…
…[I]f Clinton is smart, she’ll put on those sunglasses and that black pantsuit and be the ladyboss we all wish we had: tough, smart, but compassionate. Soccer mom Hillary is too thirsty and it turns voters off. But ass-kicking Hillary makes people swoon. Hopefully, the campaign will pay heed to this difference.
