If Hillary Clinton were a man, she'd have lost worse

[Perd Hapley]

Some academics re-staged portions of the Trump/Clinton debates, word-for-word, and gesture-for-gesture, with an actor saying Clinton's lines, and an actress standing in for Donald Trump. She-Trump won bigly, and He-llary lost harder.

https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html

Salvatore says he and Guadalupe began the project assuming that the gender inversion would confirm what they’d each suspected watching the real-life debates: that Trump’s aggression—his tendency to interrupt and attack—would never be tolerated in a woman, and that Clinton’s competence and preparedness would seem even more convincing coming from a man.

We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.”....Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience. There was someone who described Brenda King [the female Donald Trump] as his Jewish aunt who would take care of him, even though he might not like his aunt. Someone else described her as the middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you.

[Hawkmoon]

There was another moment in that same debate where Clinton says, “When I was First Lady, I had to work with Democrats and Republicans,” and we ended up having to cut the “When I was First Lady” because when we tried it as “When I was First Man,” it just made no sense.

  First Lady is not an elected position and the First lady has no role in government other than occasionally hosting tours of the White House. Hillary claiming that as First Lady she "had to work" with Democrats and Republicans is a ludicrous statement.




eta:   ummm, did we forget the no nicknames rule ??

[K Frame]

"Hillary claiming that as First Lady she "had to work" with Democrats and Republicans is a ludicrous statement."

Actually not a ludicrous statement, and likely one of her few truthful statements. Because remember what Bill appointed her to do as first lady...

Chair the closed-door Task Force on National Health Care Reform, which eventually proposed Hillarycare, or the Health Security Act, as it was formally known. Members of the panel included over 100 people who were employees of members of Congress, Republican and Democrat both. As chair of the task force she also met with many members of Congress and testified extensively on the act.

So, yeah. She worked rather extensively with, and against, both Democrats and Republicans and their representatives as First Lady.

[Perd Hapley]

Hawkmoon's point was that she didn't "have" to, which is correct. A First Lady has no official duties.

It's never surprised me that she tried to claim her First Lady gig as "experience;" I'm just continually surprised when people don't laugh at her for it.

[K Frame]

You're reading her statement too literally and assuming that she's ascribing the role of first lady with official duties. She's not.

She's stating what she did during a particular period of time.

So that first lady had official duties that, while not related to her position as first lady, were none the less official duties.

[Perd Hapley]

toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe

[MechAg94]

toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe

Leave my toes out of this!    :

[Firethorn]

First Lady is not an elected position and the First lady has no role in government other than occasionally hosting tours of the White House. Hillary claiming that as First Lady she "had to work" with Democrats and Republicans is a ludicrous statement.

She doesn't even have to do that.  However, as the person with the presumed closest ear of the president, let's not pretend that first ladies don't have enormous soft power.

A traditional duty often taken on by the wives of presidents is looking after the best interests of the nation's children.

If they want to flex that power to its fullest, they're going to have to deal with members of both parties.