There
is politics; and there is the political culture.

Politics is about power – who can wield the power of the government to advance their interests and their theory of the general good.  The political culture, on the other hand, is about what people think and say about politics – what they think the issues are, how they vote.

The issue for progressive people has been how the political culture is constructed in such a way that the majority of people are convinced to vote for candidates and parties that do not serve their interests.   Why should the GOP win elections when they effectively work to make the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer?  

The political culture must  obscure these power relationships.

In 1980, there was a radical shift of our political culture.  In the aftermath of the defeat of the US in Vietnam, Watergate, the OPEC oil shock, the invasion of the Afghanistan by the USSR and the general levels of unrest and cultural dislocation of the 1970’s, the political culture was unsettled.  At the very lowest and most common level, the changes of the 60’s and 70’s appeared as changes in the role of women, and the first beginnings of the gay liberation movement.

In 1980, the culture of American politics became organized around gender panic.  When the manufactured masculinity of the Hollywood Actor, Ronald Reagan, was deemed to be more useful, and more powerful,  than the nuclear engineer and Submarine officer Jimmy Carter, the country entered in a period in which the cultural assertion of traditional masculinity was the coin of the realm.

The Republican Party became the party of “real men.”

The Democratic Party was relentlessly depicted by GOP publicists as  a party of  men who were not real men, and women who were not real women. 

The mainstream media in this country has found this theme to be useful, as a way to talk about the character of political leaders without having to evaluate their positions and policies.  A whole school of political commentary and analysis developed which was focused on the psycho-sexual issues of political leaders.  See Maureen Dowd and Chris Mathews.

The imagined psycho-sexual ambiguity of Democratic leaders was merged with GOP criticisms of Democratic positions.  The result has been a narrative about Democratic political leaders which turns on their personal inauthenticity.

The upshot has been a generalized critique of Democratic leaders, (a critique that originates within the GOP, but has been taken up by the mainstream media) that they are congenitally inauthentic, which is demonstrated and proved by their psycho-sexual ambiguity.

Hence, Bill Clinton is not really a man, because he has a powerful and emasculating wife.

Al Gore is not really man because he sought the advice of a woman, supposedly, to project a less threatening male image.

John Kerry was not really a man, because ‘he looked French’ and wind-surfed  etc.  That he married a woman with much more wealth than him was noted.

Whereever you look the story is the same: Democratic leaders are inauthentic and, indeed, deceptive about their true positions, and that is intertwined with stories about the psycho-sexual  confusion.

Even Bill Clinton’s sexual impropriety with a young woman was eventually perceived as not masculinity (surprisingly, since traditional masculinity has always seen the sexual attentions of young women as a reward for power.) but as juvenile hijinx,  an immature rebellion against the castrating power of Hilary, the dragon-lady behind the throne.

At the core of all of this is a Republican strategy of consolidating a reactionary majority who respond viscerally against the fact that men no longer act like men and women no longer act like women, and that the world is dangerous, and falling apart because these basic pillars of reality are being shaken.

At the very center of this, the ground zero of  gender panic , has been Hilary Clinton.  She was first identified as a she-bitch from Hell  as a critique of her husband’s masculinity.  He was not truly a man, because he was linked to this strong woman, who was reputed to be his political and intellectual equal, if not superior. 

A joke from the early 90;s.  Hilary and Bill are out driving and stop for gas.  The gas station attendant went out with Hilary in high school.  After leaving the station, Bill says, “just think, Hilary, if you married him, you would be married to a gas station attendant.”  To which Hilary replies, “No Bill, that guy would be President of the United States of America.”

It is through the demonization of Hillary that the GOP and the popular media have vilified Bill Clinton.  

Large elements of the Democratic party have accepted the vilification of Hillary Clinton as inauthentic,  castrating and manipulative.  It is the ultimate cave-in of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, which says, “we will fight the administration and the GOP everywhere, except in one area, we will accept your characterization of our leaders as true.  We will accept what you say about Bill Clinton; we will accept what you say about Al Gore; we will accept what you say about John Kerry; we will accept what you say about Howard Dean; we will accept what you say about Hillary Clinton.”

I say no.

 I do not believe that we can compromise with this trend in political culture.  It is tempting to believe that Barack Obama can move us beyond this moment, just as it was tempting to believe that a proven war hero like John Kerry would allow us to transcend the criticism that Democrats were soft on national security.

The only way to end this era of a political culture defined by gender panic is to defeat the GOP with the woman whom they have vilified the most as unwomanly.  Only then , will they get the message that even though they all hate Hillary, it is not true that a majority of the country shares their prejudices.

If Obama is nominated, the same thing will start all over again.  This time, the critique will be that Barack is a little boy, who can’t keep his papers straight, and Michelle wears the pants in that family.  And his inauthentic façade of masculinity only suggests all the other ways that he is deceptive: from he is not really black to he is not really Christian, to that he is a secret Muslim agent. 

And if he is nominated,  then he will face the same Clinton problem as Al Gore.  Will he allow Bill Clinton to have a major role at the convention, the pundits will ask.  If he does,  then  Barack is not a real man,  but under the thumb of the narcissitic Bill and his  she-bitch controller, Hillary.  If he does not, then he is not a real man, afraid to let his rival overshadow him.  

While the pundits revel in the psycho-sexual angst of Obama Barack, the GOP will delight in the political neutralization of the most popular living American ex-President, who will be sidelined during the campaign, as he was in 2000, to preserve the masculinity of Obama Barack. 

 The Democrats have a strong hand in 2008.  We have good candidates, party unity, a fired up base, and the issues are cutting our way.  The GOP has an extraordinarily weak hand in 2008.   They are split, saddled with an unpopular incumbent, a discredited war in Iraq, and a gathering recession.  They are running an old man—the Bob Dole of the 21ST Century.

When your opponent is weak, you want to push all your chips into the pot, so that your opponent bets everything they have.   We want them to bring all of their psycho-sexual gender panic to the battle, so that they can be defeated holding the strongest weapons they have.

They have chosen Hilary as their nemesis, not because of anything about her, but because she was the screen upon which they could project their reactionary hate and confusion.   What they have done to her is unconscionable. 

I am willing to bet the future of the country on her as she fights to be seen as the person she really is, which is her tiny piece of the fight that we are also fighting -- to be the nation that we really are becoming.