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Home , Hillary Clinton, Woman card

the parties were a battle between the sexes. AMERICAN CHRONICLES Republicans and Democrats are “just like men and women,” Trent Lott liked to say: Democrats might be from Venus, but THE the G.O.P. is “the party of Mars.” Dem- ocrats have talked about a Republican How feminism and antifeminism created and . “war on women”; Trump says, of Clin- ton, “The only card she has is the woman BY JILL LEPORE card.” She polls better among women; he polls better among men. The immediacy and starkness of the contrast between the candidates obscures the historical re- alignment hinted at in their own biogra- phies: she used to be a Republican and he used to be a Democrat. This election isn’t a battle between the sexes. But it is a bat- tle between the parties, each hoping to win the votes of women without losing the votes of men. It’s also marked by the sweeping changes to American politics caused by women’s entry into public life. Long before women could vote, they car- ried into the parties a political style they had perfected first as abolitionists and then as prohibitionists: the moral crusade. No election has been the same since.

or a very long time, the parties had no idea what to do with women. At Fthe nation’s founding, women made an argument for female citizenship based on their role as mothers: in a republic, the civic duty of women is to raise sons who will be virtuous citizens. Federalists dofed their top hats, and no more. In the eighteen-twenties and thirties, Jack- sonian democracy involved a lot of brawls: women were not allowed. When the so- cial reformer Fanny Wright spoke at a t means FREEDOM for WOMEN Buren, and as the only political meeting in 1836, she was called “ TO VOTE AGAINST THE PARTY THIS Presidents to have served both in the a “female man.” Instead, women entered DONKEYI REPRESENTS” read the sign on Senate and as . If she public afairs by way of an evangelical a donkey named Woodrow who, wear- loses the election to Donald Trump, he religious revival that emphasized their ing a bow, was paraded through Denver will be the first man elected President who moral superiority, temperance by the National Woman’s Party during has never served the public either in gov- reformers and abolitionists: they wrote its campaign against the Democratic in- ernment or in the military. Trump wants petitions. “The right of petitioning is the cumbent, President Wilson, in 1916. This to make great again; Clinton only political right that women have,” year, the hundredth anniversary of the wants to make history. That history is Angelina Grimké pointed out in 1837. Woman’s Party arrived, unnoticed, on less about the last glass ceiling than about The Whig Party was the first to make June 5th. Two days later, Hillary Clin- a party realignment as important as the use of women in public, if ridiculously: ton became the first woman to claim the Nixon-era Southern Strategy, if less well in 1840, Tennessee women marched Presidential nomination of a major party: known. Call it the Female Strategy. wearing sashes that read “Whig Hus- the Democratic Party. For the past century, the edges of the bands or None.” Because neither the If elected, Clinton will become the parties have been defined by a debate Whig nor the Democratic Party was first female President in ’s about the political role and constitutional able to address the question of slavery, history. She will also join John Quincy rights of women. This debate is usually a crop of new parties sprang up. Fuelled Adams, , Martin Van reduced to cant, as if the battle between by antislavery arguments, and adopting the style of moral suasion favored by The G.O.P. was built by women, who brought the moral crusade to party politics. female reformers, these parties tended to 22 THE NEW YO R K E R , JUNE 27, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTOPH NIEMANN be welcoming to women, and even to not everyone bought the argument that of the female campaign on the Ameri- arguments for women’s rights. it was necessary to disenfranchise women can political style has yet to be taken. The Republican Party was born in in order to secure ratification. “Can any But that influence was felt first, and long- 1854, in Ripon, Wisconsin, when fifty- one tell us why the great advocates of est, in the Republican Party. four citizens founded a party to oppose Human Equality . . . forget that when At the Republican nominating con- the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threat- they were a weak party and needed all vention in 1872, the Party split into two, ened to create two new slave states. Three the womanly strength of the nation to but neither faction added a sufrage plank of those citizens were women. Women help them on, they always united the to its platform. “We recognize the equal- wrote Republican campaign literature, words ‘without regard to sex, race, or ity of all men before the law,” the Lib- and made speeches on behalf of the color’? ” one frustrated female supporter eral Republicans declared, specifically Party. Its first , in of the Republican Party asked. She could discounting women. Stanton called the 1856, was John Frémont, but more have found an answer in an observation position taken by the regular Republi- than one Republican observed that his made by Charles Sumner: “We know cans—“the honest demand of any class wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, “would how the Negro will vote, but are not so of citizens for additional rights should have been the better candidate.” One of sure of the women.” be treated with respectful consider- the Party’s most popular and best-paid This election, many female voters, es- ation”—not a plank but a splinter. Still, speakers was Anna Dickinson, who be- pecially younger ones, resent being told a splinter was more than sufragists ever came the first woman to speak in the that they should support Hillary Clin- got from the Democratic Party. In 1880, Hall of the House of Representatives. ton just because she’s a woman. It turns Anthony wrote a speech to deliver at The women’s-rights movement was out that women don’t form a political the Democratic National Convention. founded in 1848. “It started right here in constituency any more than men do; like It began, “To secure to twenty millions , a place called Seneca Falls,” men, women tend to vote with their fam- of women the rights of citizenship is to Clinton said in her victory speech on ilies and their communities. But, in 1865, base your party on the eternal princi- June 7th, after efectively clinching the how women would vote was impossible ples of justice.” Instead, her statement Democratic nomination. Advocates of to know. Would black women vote the was read by a male clerk, while Anthony women’s rights were closely aligned with way black men voted? Would white looked on, furious, after which, as the the Republican Party, and typically fought women vote like black women? The par- Times reported, “No action whatever was to end slavery and to earn for both black ties, led by white men, decided they’d taken in regard to it, and Miss Anthony men and all women political equality just as soon not find out. vexed the Convention no more.” with white men. In 1859, Elizabeth Cady Women tried to gain the right to vote Close elections seemed to be good for Stanton wrote to Susan B. Anthony, by simply seizing it, a plan that was known the cause because, in a tight race, both “When I pass the gate of the celestials as the New Departure. Beginning in 1868, parties courted sufragists’ support, but and good Peter asks me where I wish to black and white women went to the polls women soon discovered that this was sit, I will say, ‘Anywhere so that I am all over the country and got arrested. So- fruitless: if they allied with Republicans, neither a negro nor a woman. Confer on journer Truth tried to vote in Battle Creek, Democrats campaigned against Repub- me, great angel, the glory of White man- Michigan. Five black women were arrested licans by campaigning against sufrage. hood, so that henceforth I may feel un- for voting in South Carolina in 1870, This led to a certain fondness for third limited freedom.’ ” months before be- parties—the Equal Rights Party, the Pro- After Lincoln signed the Emancipa- came the first woman to run for Presi- hibition Party, the Home Protection Party. tion Proclamation, Stanton and Anthony dent. She announced that women already J. Ellen Foster, an Iowa who had gathered four hundred thousand signa- had the right to vote, under the privileges- helped establish the Woman’s Christian tures on petitions demanding the Thir- and-immunities clause of the Constitu- Temperance Union, spoke at a Republican teenth Amendment. They then began tion, and, in 1871, she made this argument rally and cautioned that a third party re- fighting for the Fourteenth Amendment, before the House Judiciary Committee. wards women’s support with nothing more which they expected to guarantee the Anthony was arrested for voting in 1872— than flattery: “It gives to women seats in rights and privileges of citizenship for all not for Woodhull but for the straight conventions and places their names on Americans. Instead, they were told that Republican ticket—and, in the end, the meaningless committees and tickets impos- “this is the Negro’s hour,” and that the Supreme Court ruled against Woodhull’s sible of success.” In 1892, Foster founded amendment would include the word interpretation of the Constitution. Thus the Women’s National Republican Asso- “male,” so as to specifically exclude women. ended the New Departure. ciation, telling the delegates at the Par- “Do you believe the African race is com- Prevented from entering the elector- ty’s Convention that year, “We are here posed entirely of males?” Stanton asked ate, women who wanted to influence pub- to help you. And we have come to stay.” Wendell Phillips. And then she warned, lic afairs were left to plead with men. “If that word ‘male’ be inserted, it will For decades, these women had very lit- n the second decade of the twen- take us a century at least to get it out.” tle choice: whatever fight they fought, tieth century, anticipating the ratifi- The insertion of the word “male” into they had only the weapons of the nine- Ication of the Nineteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment had conse- teenth-century religious revival: the ser- the parties scrambled to secure the loy- quences that have lasted well into this mon, the appeal, the conversion, the cru- alty of voters who would double the size year’s Presidential election. At the time, sade. The full measure of the influence of the electorate, no less concerned than

THE NEW YO R K E R , JUNE 27, 2016 23 Sumner had been about how women Terrified by the very idea of a party the real purpose of adding the new G.O.P. would vote. “With a suddenness and of women, the D.N.C. formed a “Wom- seats was to reduce the influence of black force that have left observers gasping en’s Division” in 1917, the R.N.C. in Southern delegates. women have injected themselves into 1918. The G.O.P. pursued a policy of The was the national campaign this year in a man- “complete amalgamation,” its chairman nonpartisan, but the National Woman’s ner never before dreamed of in Ameri- pledging “to check any tendency to- Party remained antipartisan. It focussed can politics,” the New York Herald re- ward the formation of a separate wom- on securing passage of an Equal Rights ported in 1912. When Theodore Roosevelt en’s party.” White women worked for Amendment, drafted by Paul, who had founded the Progressive Party, it adopted both parties; black women worked only lately earned a law degree, and first in- a sufrage plank, and he aggressively for the G.O.P., to fight the Democratic troduced into Congress in 1923. Yet, for courted women. He considered appoint- Party, which had become the party of all the work of the Woman’s Party, the ing to his cabinet. At the Southern whites. “The race is doomed G.O.P. was the party of women or, rather, Progressive Party’s Convention, Addams unless Negro Women take an active of white women, for most of the twenti- gave the second nominating speech. Then part in local, state and national poli- eth century. In the late nineteen- twenties she grabbed a “Votes for Woman” flag tics,” the National League of Republi- and thirties, black men and women left and marched it across the platform and can Colored Women said. the Republican Party, along with smaller up and down the auditorium. Roosevelt After 1920, , numbers of white women, eventually had tried to win the Republican nomi- the longtime head of the National Amer- forming a New Deal coalition of liber- nation by bribing black delegates, who ican Woman Sufrage Association, turned als, minorities, labor unionists, and, from were then shut out of the Progressive it into the League of Women Voters, the South, poor whites. F.D.R. appointed Party’s Convention. When Addams got providing voter education and other aids Molly Williams Dewson the director of back to , she found a telegram to good government. Meanwhile, she the D.N.C.’s Women’s Division, which from a black newspaper editor: “Woman told women to join the parties: “The grew to eighty thousand members. sufrage will be stained with Negro Blood only way to get things in this country is In 1937, determined to counter the unless women refuse all alliance with to find them on the inside of the polit- eforts of the lady known as “More Roosevelt.” ical party.” Inside those parties, women Women” Dewson, the R.N.C. appointed , a feminist with a Ph.D. fought for equal representation. The Marion Martin its assistant chairman; from the University of Pennsylvania Women’s Division of the D.N.C. imple- during her tenure, she founded a na- who’d been arrested for fighting for mented a rule mandating an equal num- tional federation of women’s clubs whose sufrage in England, decided that Amer- ber of male and female delegates, in 1920. membership grew to four hundred thou- ican women ought to form their own In 1923, the Republican National Com- sand. Martin, thirty-seven and unmar- party. “The name Woman’s Party is open mittee introduced rule changes—billed ried, had a degree in economics and had to a quite natural misunderstanding,” as “seats for women”—that added bonus served a combined four terms in the admitted, in- delegates for states that had voted Re- legislature. She led a moral cru- troducing the National Woman’s Party publican in the previous election. But sade against the New Deal. In 1940, she in 1916. It wasn’t a party, per se; it was the Democrats’ fifty-fifty rule was ob- also got the R.N.C. to pass its own fifty- a group of women whose strategy was served only in the breach, and, as both fifty rule and to endorse the Equal Rights to protest the existing parties, on the Catherine E. Rymph and Melanie Gus- Amendment, formally, in its platform. theory that no party could be trusted to tafson have pointed out in their rich his- This went only so far. In 1946, Martin advance the interests of women. tories of women in the Republican Party, argued that party women needed more power. “We need it not because we are feminists but because there are a great many non-partisan women’s organiza- tions that do wield an influence in this country,” she said. Five days later, she was forced to resign. Hillary Rodham was born in Chi- cago in 1947. In 1960, when ran against J.F.K., she checked voter lists for the G.O.P. By then, the majority of Republican Party workers were female. During the Cold War, the G.O.P. boasted about “the women who work on the home front, ringing the doorbells, filling out registration cards, and generally doing the housework of government.” As the historian Paula Baker has pointed out, party work is just “Is it starting to feel like mission creep?” like other forms of labor; women work harder, are paid less, are rarely promoted, rhetoric was that of the nineteenth- because one of my opponents told me I and tend to enter a field when men begin century women’s crusade. The great cru- was ‘really stupid if I thought a girl could to view it as demeaning. The elephant sader said in 1955, “If be elected president.’ ” was the right symbol for the Party, one it were not for the National Federation senator said, because it has “a vacuum of Republican Women, there would not t’s right about here that the G.O.P. cleaner in front and a rug beater behind.” be a Republican Party.” That year, Repub- began to lose Hillary Rodham. In 1965, Betty Farrington, one of Martin’s suc- lican women established Kitchen Cabi- Ias a freshman at Wellesley, she was pres- cessors, turned the women’s federation nets, appointing a female equivalent to ident of the ; she into a powerhouse of zealous crusaders. every member of Eisenhower’s cabinet; brought with her to college Goldwater’s After Truman defeated Dewey, in 1948, their job was to share “political recipes “The Conscience of a Conservative.” Farrington wanted the G.O.P. to find its on G.O.P. accomplish- But Goldwater’s defeat strongman: ments with the house- led to a struggle for the How thankful we would have been if a leader wives of the nation,” by future of the Party, and had appeared to show us the path to the prom- sending monthly bulletins that struggle turned on ised land of our hope. The world needs such on “What’s Cooking in Schlafly. In 1966, Elly a man today. He is certain to come sooner or .” One mem- Peterson, a Michigan state later. But we cannot sit idly by in the hope of ber of the Kitchen Cabi- party chairman and sup- his coming. Besides his advent depends partly on us. The mere fact that a leader is needed does net was Phyllis Schlafly. porter of George Romney, not guarantee his appearance. People must be In 1963, Schlafly nom- tried to keep Schlafly from ready for him, and we, as Republican women, inated Goldwater to speak becoming the president in our clubs, prepare for him. at a celebration marking the twenty-fifth of the National Federation. “The nut anniversary of the National Federation fringe is beautifully organized,” Peterson That man, many Republican voters today of Republican Women. In a straw poll complained. At a three-thousand-woman appear to believe, is Donald J. Trump, taken after Goldwater delivered his Federation convention in 1967, Schlafly born in New York in 1946. speech, 262 out of 293 Federation del- was narrowly defeated. Three months later, egates chose him. Meanwhile, Marga- she launched her monthly newsletter. Re- olitical parties marry interests ret Chase Smith was drafted into the jecting the nascent women’s- liberation to constituencies. They are not de- race, a liberal alternative. As the his- movement, she nevertheless blamed sex- Pfined by whether they attract women, torian Ellen Fitzpatrick recounts in a ism for the G.O.P.’s failure to fully em- particularly. Nor are they defined by their terrific new book, “The Highest Glass brace its most strenuous conservatives: positions on equal rights for women and Ceiling,” Smith was the first woman The Republican Party is carried on the men. But no plausible history of Amer- elected on her own to the Senate and shoulders of the women who do the work in ican politics can ignore, first, the influence the first woman to serve in both houses the precincts, ringing doorbells, distributing of a political style perfected, over a cen- of Congress. Asked why she agreed to literature, and doing all the tiresome, repeti- tious campaign tasks. Many men in the Party tury, by citizens who, denied the fran- run against Goldwater, she once said, frankly want to keep the women doing the chise, were forced to plead, and, second, “There was nowhere to go but the menial work, while the selection of candidates the efects of the doubling of the size of Presidency.” She was the first and bold- and the policy decisions are taken care of by the electorate. est member of the Senate to oppose the men in the smoke-flled rooms. The Republican Party that is expected McCarthy, in a speech she made from to nominate Trump was built by house- the floor, known as the Declaration of In the summer of 1968, Trump grad- wives and transformed by their political Conscience: “I don’t want to see the uated from Wharton, where, he later said, style, which men then made their own. Republican Party ride to political vic- he spent most of his time reading the list- The moral crusade can be found among tory on the Four Horsemen of Cal- ings of foreclosures on federally financed nineteenth-century Democrats—Wil- umny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and housing projects. That September, in At- liam Jennings Bryan, say—but in the Smear.” At the Convention in 1964, she lantic City, feminists staged a protest at twentieth century it became the hall- refused to endorse Goldwater, and de- the Miss America pageant, the sort of mark of the conservative wing of the Re- nied him her delegates. pageant that Trump would one day buy, publican Party; it is the style, for instance, Young Trump had little interest in run, and cherish. They carried signs read- of . This began in 1950, when politics. He liked the movies. In 1964, ing “Welcome to the Cattle Auction.” the Republican Women’s Club of Ohio he graduated from military school, where Rodham, a twenty-year-old Capitol County, West Virginia, invited as its prin- he’d been known as a ladies’ man, and Hill intern, attended the Republican cipal speaker for Lincoln Day Senator thought about going to the University National Convention in Miami as a sup- Joseph McCarthy. It was during this of Southern California, to study film. porter of the antiwar candidate, Nelson speech that McCarthy said he had a list Hillary Rodham was a “Goldwater Girl.” Rockefeller. For the first time since 1940, of subversives working at the State De- But Smith was her hero. She decided the G.O.P. dropped from its platform partment. “The great diference between to run for president of her high-school its endorsement of equal rights. Rodham our Western Christian world and the class, against a field of boys, and lost, went home to see her family, and, hid- atheistic Communist world is not po- “which did not surprise me,” she wrote ing the fact from her parents, drove litical—it is moral,” McCarthy said. His in her memoir, “but still hurt, especially downtown to watch the riots outside

THE NEW YO R K E R , JUNE 27, 2016 25 the Democratic National Convention. go to that Convention and you can yell, Lincoln and of Anthony, “We are revers- One month too young to vote, she’d ‘Woman power! Here I come!’ You can ing our position and are about to bury supported the antiwar Democrat, Eu- yell, ‘Black power! Here I come!’ The the rights of over a hundred million Amer- gene McCarthy, before the Convention, only thing those hard-nosed boys are ican women under a heap of platitudes.” but later said she would probably have going to understand at that Convention: Buried they remain. Until 1980, during voted for the Party’s nominee, Hubert ‘How many delegates you got?’ ” She got any Presidential election for which reli- Humphrey. a hundred and fifty-two. able data exist and in which there had In 1969, Rodham, senior class presi- By 1973, Trump was making dona- been a gender gap, the gap had run one dent at Wellesley, became the first stu- tions to the Democratic Party. “The sim- way: more women than men voted for dent invited to deliver a commencement ple fact is that contributing money to the Republican candidate. That changed address, a speech that was featured in politicians is very standard and accepted when Reagan became the G.O.P. nom- Life. In 1970, a leader of her generation, for a New York City developer,” he ex- inee; more women than men supported a student at , and wear- plains in “The Art of the Deal.” He also Carter, by eight percentage points. Since ing a black armband mourning the stu- appeared, for the first time, in a story in then, the gender gap has never favored dents killed at Kent State, she spoke the Times, with the headline “Major a G.O.P. Presidential candidate. The about her opposition to the Vietnam Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias Democratic Party began billing itself as War at a convention of the League of in City.” The Department of Justice had the party of women. By 1987, Trump had Women Voters, on the occasion of its charged Trump and his father with vio- become a Republican. fiftieth anniversary. She had become a lating the 1968 Fair Housing Act. “We In the , Republican strat- feminist, and a Democrat. never have discriminated,” Trump told egists believed that, in trading women the Times, “and we never would.” for men, they’d got the better end of the hat followed is more familiar. In 1974, Rodham moved to Washing- deal. As the Republican consultant Susan Between 1964 and 1980, Schlafly’s ton, D.C., where she worked for the spe- Bryant pointed out, Democrats “do so armW of the Party steadily gained control cial counsel preparing for the possible badly among men that the fact that we of the G.O.P., which began courting impeachment of Richard Nixon. The don’t do quite as well among women be- evangelical Christians, including white next year, she married , though comes irrelevant.” And that’s more or male alienated by she didn’t take his name. The G.O.P., less where it lies. their party’s civil-rights agenda. In the weakened by Watergate, and thinking to With the end of the E.R.A., whose wake of Roe v. Wade, and especially after stanch the flow of departing women, chance at ratification expired in 1982, the end of the Cold War, the Republi- elected as party chair Mary Louise Smith, both parties abandoned a political set- can Party’s new crusaders turned their an ardent feminist. In 1975, some thirty tlement necessary to the stability of the attention from Communism to abortion. G.O.P. feminists formed the Republican republic. The entrance of women into The Democratic Party became the party Women’s Task Force to support the politics on terms that are, fundamentally of women, partly by default. For a long E.R.A., reproductive rights, afrmative and constitutionally, unequal to men’s has time, it could have gone another way. action, federally funded child care, and produced a politics of interminable di- In 1971, Hillary Rodham met Bill the extension of the Equal Pay Act. vision, infused with misplaced and dread- Clinton, Donald Trump took over the The shift came in 1976. Rodham ful moralism. Republicans can’t win family business, and , went to the Democratic Convention, women; when they win, they win with- Tanya Melich, , and Shirley at Madison Square Garden. Schlafly out them, by winning with men. Dem- Chisholm helped found the National went to the Republican Convention, in ocrats need to win both the black vote Women’s Political , which, like Miami, where, as the political scientist and the female vote. Trump and Clinton the National Woman’s Party, sought to Jo Freeman has argued, feminists won aren’t likely to break that pattern. Trump, force both parties to better represent the battle but lost the war. For the nom- with his tent-revival meetings, is crusad- women and to gain passage of the Equal ination, Ford, a supporter of the E.R.A., ing not only against Clinton and against Rights Amendment. At the 1972 G.O.P. defeated Reagan, an opponent, but the Obama but against immigrants, against Convention, in Miami, Republican fem- platform committee defeated the E.R.A. Muslims, and, in the end, against every inists demanded that the Party restore by a single vote. group of voters that has fled the Republi- its E.R.A. plan to the platform. They In 1980, Republican feminists knew can Party, as he rides with his Four Horse- won, but at a cost. After the Conven- they’d lost when Reagan won the nomi- men: Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. tion, Schlafly founded STOP ERA. nation; even so moderate a Republican “This is a movement of the Ameri- The Democratic Party, meanwhile, as George Romney called supporters of can people,” Trump wrote in an e-mail was forging a new coalition. “A new hat, the E.R.A. “moral perverts,” and the plat- to supporters. “And the American peo- or rather a bonnet, was tossed into the form committee urged a constitutional ple never lose.” It took a very long time, Democratic Presidential race today,” ban on abortion. Tanya Melich, a Repub- and required the work of the Republi- Walter Cronkite said on CBS News, lican feminist, began talking about a “Re- can Party, to change the meaning of when Chisholm, the first black woman publican War against Women,” a charge “the American people” to include ev- to be elected to Congress, announced Democrats happily made their own. Mary eryone. It hasn’t taken very long at all her bid. She went all the way to the Crisp, a longtime R.N.C. co-chair, was for Trump to change it back. The next Convention. Chisholm said, “You can forced out, and declared of the party of move is Clinton’s, and her party’s. 

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