One sure way to get hit by a shitstorm is to qualify that statement made last weekend on a Fox News political talk show by conservative pundit Bill Kristol, to wit: “Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women…it would be crazy for the Democratic party to follow the establishment that’s led them to defeat year after year…white women are a problem but, you know, we all live with that.”
The last part of this statement is obviously sloppy and offensive and misogynist, but (okay, bring it on) older white women are Clinton’s biggest supporters. More than any other Democratic voting bloc, they’re the ones standing in the way of the Obama wave because they feel so in league with Hillary and are so in love with the symbolism of a woman occupying the Oval Office, regardless of the massive Hillary negatives (unifying the right, voters not wanting to return to the psychodrama of the ’90s, etc.) and the polls showing she could very possibly lose to John McCain next November.
But you can’t say this without being accused of crude thinking or offending all these women voters and thereby deepening their Hillary support. The only truly safe and inoffensive thing to say about older white women voters supporting Hillary is….they don’t exist. Except they do. Kristol was wrong, yes, but not entirely so.