Beating women

Allow me to endorse Ruth Marcus' thoughts here--thoughts that, I think sadly, had to be voiced by a woman first to be taken seriously:

The Philadelphia debate was not exactly a mob moment to trigger the Violence Against Women Act.... Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that beating up, because she is the strong front-runner, not because she is a weak woman.

And a candidate as strong as Clinton doesn't need to play the woman-as-victim card, not even in "the all-boys club of presidential politics," as Clinton called it in a speech yesterday at her all-women alma mater, Wellesley College. I have a pretty good nose for sexism, and what I detected in the air from Philadelphia was not sexism but the desperation of candidates confronting a front-runner who happens to be a woman.

Right. Until Tuesday, the campaign was marked, if anything, by way too much politeness. It wasn't the case in those days that John Edwards and Barack Obama were being oblique and deferential because they were scared of offending Hillary's feminine sensitivities, nor is it the case now that they've decided to take advantage of her feminine vulnerabilities. They're trying to win the nomination, and their old tactics weren't working very well.

Fortunately, my sense is that the outcry from women about how badly the men treated Hillary on Tuesday comes mainly from women who were already in the tank for Hillary, so I think this round of attacks--like most political attacks--won't be neutralized by backlash.