Hillary and the generation gap

“I don’t think this campaign is about gender,” Hillary Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But of course gender is a critical factor, and she wants it to be. The only way she can win the Democratic nomination and the presidency is through the votes of women.

From the beginning, Clinton has calculated that if she could get her fellow females excited about making history, about breaking through the “highest and hardest glass ceiling,” she could match the enthusiasm and energy generated by her chief opponent, Barack Obama.

So far, the results have been muddy. There is a gender gap among Democratic voters but also a generation gap and an economic gap. The “making history” argument is working better with mothers than with their daughters, better with poorer women than with their richer sisters.

Obama won the Iowa caucuses by running 5 percent ahead among women. The generation gap was distinct — only women over 65 voted heavily for Clinton. That gap reappeared in New Hampshire but the dividing line shifted sharply down, to about age 40.

Clinton’s teary moment helped her, revealing a personal, even vulnerable, side. But she can’t cry her way to the nomination. The debate among women reflects deep fault lines and different historical experiences.

Women who are Clinton’s age (she’s 60) fought the battles for gender equality and have the scars to prove it. For them, winning the White House has been a driving dream, a symbol of their struggle.

We belong to that generation. Our mothers were born before women could vote; we graduated from college before employment discrimination based on gender was outlawed. So we understand the emotions expressed by Marie Wilson, head of a program that trains women for leadership, who told author Suzanne Goldenberg: “We are still fighting against things that are deep in the culture, and she is the place where we have that conversation. … Because she is the first, she has tested many of the issues that are really not about her but about the deeply cultural issues that have kept women out of leadership.”

What’s fascinating here is that older women are lecturing their daughters about the importance of Clinton’s candidacy. The Washington Post quoted Kirstin Neff, co-president of the College Democrats at Wellesley, Clinton’s (and Cokie’s) alma mater: “My mom didn’t like hearing me talk about Obama much at all. She started telling me about how our generation takes for granted a lot of the advances that women have made. She told me what it was like in the ’70s and ’80s and, you know, the general feeling that you were never as good or as important as your brothers or the men you worked with.”

That argument works with some women who are Neff’s age, but falls flat with others. Their experience tells them that they are as good as their brothers, or classmates, or any other men. They feel like equals and don’t relate to the “making history” argument because they think that history has already been made. Or soon will be.

Women voters reflect many factors apart from gender. Working-class females tend to favor Clinton, and feminist writer Gloria Steinem says you can tell a woman’s politics by her shoes: “If she is wearing nurse’s shoes or waitress’ shoes, she supports Hillary.”

There are many gaps in Democratic ranks this year: gender and generation, race and wealth. But the conversation between mothers and daughters could well be the decisive one.

Steve and Cokie Roberts can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected].