She is still number one in my book as she continues to pull ahead in the popular vote.
BY CHARLOTTE ALTER
Winners get to write history. Losers, if they are lucky, get a ballad. Hillary Clinton made history for three decades as an advocate, a First Lady, a Senator, and a Secretary of State, but she will now be remembered as much for what she didn’t do as what she did. A female candidate in an election that didn’t hinge on gender after all, she became a symbol in a fight that was about much more than symbolism. She’s the woman who was almost President, she is what might have been and what will yet be.
In the autopsy of the doomed Clinton campaign, there is no shortage of fatal causes. Expectations certainly missed their target: the race between the first plausible female presidential candidate and a man who bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” did not boil down to gender. In interviews across the country in the year leading up to the election, many voters suggested that shattering the glass ceiling wasn’t an urgent priority for them. Some took it as a given that a woman will be President one day, and it wasn’t worth electing someone they believed was the wrong woman just to show it could be done.
To some, other issues—economic anxiety, cultural values, a desire for change—mattered more. Of the 70% of voters who said Donald Trump’s treatment of women bothered them, 29% voted for him anyway. The female coalition was a mirage, splintered by party, race and education: Clinton won 54% of all women, but Trump won 88% of Republican women, 52% of white women and 61% of white women without a college degree. She walked away with a lead of more than 2.5 million votes, but not the White House.
There is plenty to disagree with in this article. Bustle‘s Cate Carrejo raises an objection with the first paragraph. My personal objection precedes Cate’s since I would not label Hillary Clinton a loser. But the line Carrejo highlights forms the premise of Alter’s thesis.
In its annual postmortem of the year, TIME Magazine released its perennial list of top influencers for 2016, and this year’s #2 is a familiar face. Hillary Clinton, who was runner-up in the November presidential election, also came in second to Donald Trump in the Person of the Year contest. But TIME‘s article on her election and legacy seems to have underestimated why the loss happened. TIME‘s assertion that the presidential election was not about gender is infuriating, because it ignores the massive setback that Clinton and her campaign had to contend with before the race had even begun.
Far from seeing Hillary as a wildflower lost in the woods and fading from the public eye, I see her resurging – rising as we all implored her to in 2008. Ever the Phoenix, she will be back, I expect, and more awesome than ever for the scars she acquired in course of this election cycle. Hillary has amassed an even larger and stronger coalition in this effort than she did in 2008. Then she accrued 18 million of us. This time around she has more than 65-and-a-half million of us. We are battle wise and battle ready. Whatever Hillary decides to take on, her army will be right at her back.
Oh! And by the way, she also won this poll! The editors make the final decision.
After beating Donald Trump to the popular vote in the United States election, Hillary Clinton took her popularity a step further as she defeated Trump again in the Time Magazine Person of the Year poll.
Result of the poll shared by stand up comedian Mike Drucker show that of the total votes of 107,511 Clinton amassed 50 per cent as against Trump’s 30 per cent.
These Tweets About Hillary Clinton & ‘TIME’ Person Of The Year Make It Clear What People Wanted
If you’re been on social media today, then you’ve probably already seen the announcement. President-elect Donald Trump has been named Time Person of the Year for 2016, in a move that surprised precisely nobody. But in the run-up to the announcement, there were several different options in Time’s online reader poll, and one of them was, well, the other candidate in the 2016 race ― the won who actually won millions more votes than the next American president did. That’s right, there are many tweets saying Hillary Clinton should’ve been Time‘s Person of the Year for 2016.
Sure, it may not seem logical to give the distinction to the runner-up, especially if you’re gauging future impact. Clinton’s career as an elected official is likely over, while Trump’s hasn’t even begun yet (as weird and frightening as that may sound).
But the enormous historical landmark Clinton’s candidacy represented in American history can’t be overlooked, and whether it’s earnest or aspirational, some people out there really would’ve rather seen her face staring out from the cover of Time than Trump’s iconic glower. Here are nine tweets making the case, or simply wishing desperately that things had somehow gone differently.
The Wrong Woman syndrome. In the phrase, “someone they believed was the wrong woman”, TIME undercuts their thesis that there is nothing to see here when it comes to gender as a factor in Hillary’s “loss”. The author fails utterly to consider the possibility that because of deeply rooted misogyny there can never be a “right” woman. And basing her analysis of the campaign and the ultimate vote on how women voted is just bizarre. As if women do not live in the same toxic environment as men and are somehow immune to all the misogyny they breathe in every day. And finally, as Still 4 Hill rightly points out, it is wrong to characterize Hillary as a loser when she received approaching 3 million more votes than her opponent. She may not become president, but in our sexist society, I guarantee that if the roles were reversed Trump would not be described as a “loser”.
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Once again, Hillary wins the popular vote, and the honor is given to a man. Now some so-called Democrats actually want the Electoral College to elect John Kasich (!) president. This grotesque pattern alone proves that gender is still very much a factor in EVERYTHING we do in this society.
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I agree Hillary will rise again, better than ever. What do people here think she will do? I wonder if she will take a job with the U.N. or some international organization.
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“This time around she has more than 65-and-a-half million of us. We are battle wise and battle ready. Whatever Hillary decides to take on, her army will be right at her back.”
Well said! 🙂
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[…] news of TIME’s pick for “person of the year” pretty much dotted the [I]s and crossed the [T]s. Readers voted overwhelmingly for Hillary […]
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[…] Time Magazine named her “Number 2 Top Influencer.” She actually won the popular vote by readers for “Person of the Year,” but, like the electors, the magazine’s top brass chose Trump. […]
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