Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
No takers?
“When my mother says she’s going to vote for Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman, to me that is identity politics at its worst,” Gemma Soldati says. “It’s putting the value of a female president over the value of a president with your values.”
Instead of joining the ranks of some who are eager to see a female president for the first time in the US, young women are opting en masse for Sanders, a candidate who captures their imagination with his promises of political revolution.
He swept their vote in the Iowa caucuses, winning the support of 84% of women under 30, and in the New Hampshire primary, where he beat Clinton by nearly 60 points in the same demographic, according to exit polls.
In Nevada, despite Clinton’s comfortable win, young voters (a gender breakdown was unavailable) continued to turn out for Sanders, giving him 82% of their votes.
This election’s Democrat nomination process is showing that women cannot be treated as a distinct voting block, as Hillary Clinton’s candidacy brings an intergenerational feminist schism into public view.
While many older women are thrilled to see a woman having a shot at the presidency during their lifetime, for many younger women, gender matters less. For them, “women’s issues,” as they’re classically defined, are taking a back seat.
As far as they’re concerned, Clinton stands at the apex of the establishment pyramid, one that is entrenched in the power politics of Washington, far removed from the average young American. She’s just another politician, and that class as a whole should not be trusted.
Young women grew up in a different world than that of Clinton’s generation. Society pressures them less to get married or have children, the gender pay gap among their peers is 93%— far smaller than for the overall population.
The young women choosing Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton identify a wide variety of issues that weigh on their election choices: economic equality, finance reform, racial justice and criminal justice, climate change, foreign policy, education.
Clinton also has more baggage to weigh her down in these young women’s eyes: her support for the war in Iraq, for example, an “extremely influential” moment in their political coming of age, or her ties with Wall Street and support for fracking. Clinton’s financial backing from the private prison industry, a much maligned element of America’s mass incarceration problem, is also a recurring theme.
There’s also Clinton’s “authenticity” problem. Polls show she continues to be dinged on her “trustworthiness” and “honesty”.
http://qz.com/623503/why-young-women-reject-hillary-clintons-brand-of-feminism/?google_editors_picks=true
