During the 2008 Democratic primaries The New Republic ran a cover showing a crazy-looking Hillary Clinton spouting nonsense speech-bubbles, with the headline "The voices in her head".
You didn't need to be Sigmund Freud to figure out what TNR was saying there with a sledgehammer. It was a nadir in a bitter campaign frequently marked by casual and not-so-casual sexism aimed at a high-profile woman candidate.
But that was in 2008 – and we've all learned and moved on, right?
Not so fast. In 2011 the Republicans have a female candidate in Michele Bachmann who launched her campaign with gusto and some success in the New Hampshire debate this week. The New Republic's John Judis gave his evaluation of the candidates, including this appraisal of Bachmann:
It was difficult to take the other candidates seriously.... Bachmann likes to play up her role as a rightwing gadfly in the Republican congress, but she lacks Palin's charm and sexual charisma.
So, it was difficult to take Bachmann seriously because she lacks "sexual charisma"? This is how we rate presidential candidates now? Needless to say, Judis didn't rate any of the other (male) candidates for "sexual charisma" or their lack there-of, or indeed compare them to Palin.
Simply comparing Bachmann to Palin is glib, and perhaps as a result the US media thinks Palin now can't possibly run because Bachmann is running and there can be only one right-wing female candidate, apparently. This is the currently-fashionable "Bachmann is Sarah Palin with brains" meme, as exemplified by this Ezra Klein blogpost, complete with apologetic coda:
I don't put Palin and Bachmann into competition because they're the two women in the Republican field. I put them in competition because they're the two candidates who can plausibly consolidate the tea party wing of the GOP behind them.
Naturally, the post starts by pointing out how many children Bachmann has.
There's a danger that because Bachmann is a very conservative right-winger, the US left and its supporters might make the same mistake as the British left did with Margaret Thatcher and glide into misogyny. It's not looking good so far.
