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Hillary Clinton: “Incredible” Elizabeth Warren Lost Because She’s a Woman
Benjamin Lindsay
Around the 100-minute mark of
Hillary, Hulu’s upcoming long-form documentary, filmmaker
Nanette Burstein asks subject
Hillary Rodham Clinton about a charged topic: her “likability factor.”
The former secretary of state, assured and passionate, answers the question head-on: “My bluntness, my outspokenness, my pushback—all of that creates cognitive dissonance in people.” Even as first lady of the United States, she acknowledges, Clinton defied the expectations set for women in politics: “I violated them from the beginning.” Nevertheless those expectations persist—and continue to dog women seeking office, who are more likely to be criticized for being unlikable than their male counterparts. “They bring it up with a
lot of women,” Clinton notes.
Which brings us to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Once, a record six female candidates were running to be nominated for the nation’s highest office; now it has narrowed to a two-person race between former vice president
Joe Biden and Senator
Bernie Sanders. Senator
Elizabeth Warren stood as the last woman on the ballot until Thursday, when she formally
ended her campaign after an underwhelming Super Tuesday turnout.
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Speaking with Vanity Fair at the New York premiere of Hillary on Wednesday night, Clinton reflected on Warren’s campaign, admitting that “she has been an incredible candidate”—who, like fellow candidates Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris, was subjected to the realities of misogyny in politics. That difficulty is something Clinton knows a thing or two about.
“I think we made some progress, but there still was a lot of the unconscious bias and the gendered language that has been used around the women candidates,” Clinton said. “I think it affected all of the women that ran.”
Clinton also acknowledged that Warren’s campaign is now at a crossroads. “She has really set the bar for putting out policies that would make a big difference in lives of Americans,” the former New York senator said. “Now she’s obviously taking the time to think about what’s ahead for her. She’s been an incredible and effective competitor.”
Along with Clinton, the Oscar-nominated Burstein—who’s been working on Hillary since 2018—has a unique perspective on what it takes for a woman to rise to power in politics. Though she admitted to being a Biden supporter, it was still “really disheartening” for her to see Warren falter, Burstein said: “I really like her as a candidate. She has the same ideas, and actually better plans, than Bernie Sanders. And yet she’s gotten no traction.”
The filmmaker also echoed Clinton, speculating that Warren’s losses could be blamed partially on the challenges facing women in power.
“We’re just not comfortable, and so we judge them with a different perspective,” Burstein said. “And I wouldn’t have said that, except I’ve seen that play out in the current election cycle and the same criticisms come up: the way they talk, the way they present themselves. Elizabeth Warren is schoolmarmish, or a woman could never win, so we shouldn’t vote for her. There’s so much more to overcome. ‘Am I a good presidential candidate?’ is kind of the last thing.” The problem, she agreed, is that these prejudices tend to be unconscious: “I don’t think people think about it overtly, and that’s the problem. That’s what makes it hard.”
Hillary, in part, combats this idea. In addition to being a biographical account of one of the world’s most famous figures, it’s also a means of illuminating the biases that hamper female politicians, highlighting how Clinton has stared them down through her decades in the spotlight (to mixed effect)—and positing what needs to be done to achieve real ideological progress.
“I think the more that we can be vocal and point it out to ourselves, to men, to everyone, I do think it ultimately, cumulatively makes a difference,” Burstein said.
Clinton, before wrapping her brief set of interviews and entering the DGA Theater to screen
Hillary’s first two installments, agreed, saying that the real sign of change will come when a woman does what she and “a lot of women” have helped lay the groundwork for.
“It’s going to take somebody getting out there and actually breaking that highest, hardest glass ceiling and becoming our first woman president.”
