Whatever Happened to Sisterhood?

So, at last, Hillary Clinton can be accorded "grace" and "eloquence" – in defeat of course. Now she has conceded defeat in the Democratic primary race and publicly vowed to stand by her man – as she has been told to do by all the great and the good for months – expect a flurry of articles referencing her courage, a victory for women even in defeat, a major politician in her own right etc etc (see, just in the Guardian, the articles by Helen Wilkinson, Jessica Valenti and today's editorial). But before the moment passes there is one interesting question worth asking. Why did prominent women in public life back off from backing Hillary during the campaign?

I wouldn't have the temerity to raise this, given the arrangement of my sexual parts, but for the fact that I appear to be have been one of few to have written in support of Hilary's candidature – the equivalent in the liberal-left media of declaring that you enjoy drowning kittens. I haven't had a team of researchers scouring the archives, but have kept an interested eye on the British and American media, and I can recall only one piece of clear advocacy of Hillary in the later stages of the campaign from a female commentator, by Sarah Churchwell in the otherwise unrelentingly pro-Obama Independent. If there are scores of articles since Gloria Steinem's notable piece in the New York Times back in early January that have passed me by, I must have been looking in the wrong places (you know, the NYT, Washington Post, LA Times and other obscure publications like that).

Of course the media may be part of the problem. Since they fell in love with the Illinois senator in Iowa, they have virtually been part of Obama's campaign. Rarely can there been such a bias in a political contest – it makes the Evening Standard's recent coverage of the London mayoral election look like a paragon of balance. It's not so much that they have been proselytising for Obama at every opportunity, but that since Iowa, virtually everything that's been written has been from an Obama viewpoint: has he clinched it, will this impact on his advance, can he rise above this attack. The US media has already appointed itself judge and jury in the case of Hillary Clinton v the fourth estate and resoundingly declared itself innocent. But do all senior female journalists really go along with that?

And yes, finding the language to deal with the conflict between the competing claims of race and gender is extremely difficult. Both the attempts of Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro to raise the issue foundered on the use of sensitive terms such as white and black. But feminists have never retreated before in trying to reframe the terms of political debate – and maybe some help from her friends might have enabled her to find that language.

Or perhaps it's the lingering legacy of Bill (as quickly dispatched from hero to zero as a Chelsea football manager) and of Monica Lewinsky that hovers like a ghost. Never mind that the Clinton presidency set up 15 years of economic growth that put America back to work, by slashing cold war defence spending and bringing down the debilitating budget deficits left by the first Bush; that he started no wars and came as close as anyone has to a Middle East peace deal. All that matters is what he may or may not have done with a cigar in private with a consenting adult. And since when should a woman be judged by her partner?

It's not that there has been any lack of sexism and misogyny in this campaign: in public (banners held up saying, as our editorial recounts, "Life's a bitch. Don't vote for one"); in the wild west of the internet, and even in the contributions to the blogs of respectable newspapers. Let's remember that Hillary's jest late in the campaign about the lady in the pant suit was in response to remarks about her body ("a woman who does not possess good legs" was a comment from an impeccably liberal female commentator); and when she asked rhetorically towards the end of the campaign, "What does Hillary want?", she was responding to a New York Times headline that thought it perfectly OK to recycle to old sexist jibe "What do women want?"

But the whole Obama attack on her after Super Tuesday had an undertow of sexism. She couldn't win – this at a time when Obama was still some 500 delegates short of a winning total; continuing would only play into McCain's hands, damage her and lose the Democrats the election. Let's unpack this; isn't this saying, at bottom: here's this hysterical woman who won't let go and is going to carry on her embarrassing behavior and spoil the party for everyone. No misogyny there.

And the Obamamaniacs (as Bonnie Greer called them) cheered on the strategy of bullying her out of the race in Pennsylvania by outspending her by three or four to one and depleting her financial ability to continue, without a hint of self-awareness that this might just be a trifle undemocratic. And they – and their groupies in the media – have continued to act as though Obama won an overwhelming victory, rather than what is close to a statistical tie.

In so close a race – remember Obama won only six of the last 12 primaries – might it not have helped if female academics, public figures, businesswomen and writers had been there with Hillary Clinton, shoulder to shoulder, literally, on the political platform, or demanding to make themselves heard in the public prints and on the blogs? Instead, who came to the aid of the party? Elton John – and then she got flak because he's not an American. And as one prominent male superdelegate after another declared for Obama, the leading female Democratic politicians seemed only concerned about making sure there was a decent burial.

Perhaps in the end nothing would have changed the result. And luckily she has lost to another remarkable candidate, who may open up different avenues in American public life. (You get grey plodders two elections in a row and then two great candidates come along at once. Life is, indeed, a bitch.) But surely it was worth a shot. Competing to be the most powerful person on the planet must by any standard constitute the most important feminist battle of recent years.

Ordinary American women who gave their passionate support certainly saw it that way – particularly many from the great feminist generation of the 1960s and 1970s and working-class women. But it seems, to paraphrase the old adage, that they were not so much lionesses led by she-asses, as lionesses with no pack leaders at all. Sisters, where were you?

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