As bitter as women of a certain age are about being horribly discriminated against, Gen X has a very LARGE bone to pick with the Baby Boomers. It’s almost too much really to go into detail in a comment like this, but I can’t imagine many Gen Xers voting for Hillary when we have an alternative.
She represents almost the Ne Plus Ultra of the Baby Boomer narrative/worldview.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2006/1304

Chelsea in ‘16!

I have little confidence that Obama will give up much power. But I have even less confidence that Clinton will.

I agree. Ironically for feminist supporters of Clinton, Obama has already demonstrated a leadership style that is more feminine*. Clinton has been trying, since she arrived in the Senate, to strike the pose of the “strong woman” because the GOP has successfully built up macho masculinity as the primary job requirement for the Presidency. Her campaign is quite overtly measuring its metaphorical penis versus that of the GOP nominee, and to a lesser extent versus Obama.

I think there’s a big link between the cult of masculinity surrounding the Presidency and the tendency toward imperialism and police state tactics. If anyone can get away with beginning a turn away from such policy, it’s going to be Obama precisely because he isn’t pitching yet another Big Man Presidency.

* Per the common stereotype of men as uncompromising and stoic and women as understanding and empathetic.

Indeed, when responding to a questionnaire on executive power circulated to all the candidates by The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage earlier this year, McCain (while paying lip service to nice principles and even taking the extreme position that he would never issue a signing statement) refused to say that there was even a single aspect of Bush’s use of executive power that he found unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable:

By contrast, Obama answered the same question at length, and said:

I also reject the view, suggested in memoranda by the Department of Justice, that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments . . .
I believe the Administration’s use of executive authority to over-classify information is a bad idea. We need to restore the balance between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in our democracy – which is why I have called for a National Declassification Center.

Obama then went on specifically to identify numerous issues — torture, detention of Americans as “enemy combatants” without due process, warrantless surveillance, violations of international treaties, the lawless creation of military commissions — which he said were unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable expressions of excessive Presidential power.

I recall somewhere encountering Clinton’s responses, and they were not nearly as comforting as Obama’s.

I get why some people want the symbolic victory of the first woman president, and why they believe it will be more than symbolic. Maybe they’re even right. But Obama carries his own symbolism and potential there. Being neither black nor female, I have no direct interest in either type of symbolic victory (or more than symbolic victory, if we’re lucky) but I figure my country will benefit from either sort of victory. So I look at the candidates, and Obama seems more likely to divest himself of at least a few powers. (But let’s not kid ourselves: Power is intoxicating, even to the purest souls, so don’t be shocked if he keeps far too many powers.)

Finally, I would just observe that 20+ years of alternating dynasties is not good for a country. That’s also a symbolic matter with the potential to go beyond symbolism.

I think a lot of women of her (and your mother’s) generation are bitter. (Perhaps that’s an unfortunate word-choice given recent campaign dynamics…but whatever…) They’ve never gotten over suffering a lifetime of thinly-veiled discrimination as women, of being promised equality on the surface and given second-class status between the lines. I say this without condescension. They are bitter because they have a right to be bitter. And how do you tell someone to “get over” the stifling of their potential?

So I don’t blame them for projecting onto the current Clinton-Obama fight. But at the same time, as somebody without the same background, I hope they’ll understand why their arguments are not compelling to me. As Mona mentioned upstairs, Obama is not guilty of sexism just because he’s male and younger. Without that lifetime of resentment, your mother’s argument is indeed a non-sequitur.

Further, whatever gender-based discrimination women of HRC and your mother’s generation did experience (and I’m almost 52 myself), Hillary’s feminist bona fides just are not sufficient to the pressing issues of today. Indeed, to my mind, they are a non sequitur.

Between the two, I think it far more likely that Obama will reject the imperial presidency that has been prepared for the next Executive. He has explicitly committed himself to rejecting Yooism and to upholding the Constitution. Further, while he must do some “tough talking” about foreign policy, I think his centeredness is far more likely than Hillary’s ambitiousness to result in fewer foreign military follies.

Certainly I think it is a leap to take Leahy’s commentary as his believing that “pluck and grit and stick-to-it-iveness ” are “gender-specific” qualities! Leahy wants Democratric fratricide (sorry, siblingcide?) to cease, because there is a GOP McSame machine to be focusing on stopping.

Finally, a lot of black women have experienced sexism as well. They are tending Obama.

Oh, really finally — I’m so sick of political dynasties. Let’s try something completely different, and Obama is certainly that.