Mike Crowley links to this Salon interview with Elizabeth Edwards and flags this quote:
Look, I'm sympathetic, because when I worked as a lawyer, I was the only woman in these rooms, too, and you want to reassure them you're as good as a man. And sometimes you feel you have to behave as a man and not talk about women's issues. I'm sympathetic -- she wants to be commander in chief. But she's just not as vocal a women's advocate as I want to see. John is. And then she says, or maybe her supporters say, "Support me because I'm a woman," and I want to say to her, "Well, then support me because I'm a woman." The question is not so much how she campaigns -- that's theater. The question is, what does her campaign tell you about how she'll govern? And I'm not convinced she'd be as good an advocate for women. She needs a rationale greater for her campaign than I've heard. When she announced her candidacy she said, "I'm in it to win it." What is that? That's not a rationale. Same with Senator Obama -- I've yet to hear a rationale. John is extremely clear about what he can accomplish and why he's the one to do it.
His response:
I'll set aside the gender card for the moment and say that, for what it's worth, in New Hampshire on Friday I heard the following rationale from Hillary: I'm the most experienced. I will get America out of Iraq ("responsibly"!). I will end Bush's preferential treatment for the rich and help the struggling middle class, especially via health care. And I will elevate America's standing abroad.
Quarrel away with those points if you like--I'm just sayin' that that's what she's sayin'.
Fair enough. But I don't actually think that Elizabeth Edwards would deny that. It seems to me that what EE's saying is that "in to win" equates directly to a handful of mealymouthed policy ideas including what is--in her mind--an insufficiently full-throated support of abortion rights. In that same interview, she went on:
I don't think we should muddle the language. Yes, we have to be able to talk to someone who's squeamish about it, but the question really is, who should make the decision? And it has to be the woman. Hillary may be expressing exactly what she believes -- I hope she is -- but the wiggle room in what she says makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't think she has found the best way yet to explain her position to move the people who are squeamish.
I think Elizabeth Edwards' point here is more than just that--surprise!--she supports her husband, but that women who care about reproductive rights should support also support her husband because he's out there with a controversial, but forceful and unambiguous position on access to abortion, contraception, etc. And that all of the X-chromosomes Hillary Clinton can bring to bear against John Edwards won't change the fact that, next to him, she's taken a fairly tepid position on the issues. She may take those positions because she's "in to win". But the fact being "in to win" plays such a big role in defining her positions is precisely Elizabeth's point.
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