Oprah Winfrey is excited about the election: “I see that we’re about to have a woman president,” she told talk-show host T.D. Jakes. And that’s important not just for the mundane matters of governance—for finding someone competent to sit in the big chair—but for the larger impact it has on society: “When you can look at somebody who has done something like what Hillary is about to do, that is extraordinary,” Oprah said. “She will stand forever as this beacon of possibility for all women.” With Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, the “glass ceiling has been shattered for all time for other women to rise.”
Oprah didn’t always put such an emphasis on the importance of breaking the “glass ceiling.” She took no little grief, it will be remembered, for choosing to back Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some of the women in her (almost exclusively female) audience declared her to be a traitor to her sex. There’s no such clash of loyalties this time around, and Oprah has had no discomfort energetically backing Hillary.
It might be possible to share in Oprah’s excitement if there were any prospect that a Clinton presidency would somehow transform the state of debate on gender and fairness in America. But one has to ask: If there is a Clinton presidency, will we hear less or more about the patriarchal oppression of women? Will a woman president promote good will between the sexes, or just more grievance?
If Oprah’s own politics in the Era of Obama are any guide, get ready for new and more aggressive grievances.
Americans of all races bought into the hope that Mr. Obama would change race-relations for the better. A USA Today/Gallup poll in the wake of the 2008 election found that nearly 70 percent of Americans expected that relations between blacks and whites “will eventually be worked out.” Those numbers may have been overly optimistic, but they represented something positive and admirable in American society—a widespread desire to overcome racial divides. Many acted on that desire, putting aside partisan and policy preferences and voting in good will for a candidate of color in hopes of reconciliation.
In the early days, Oprah was a cheerleader for the idea that electing Mr. Obama was healing racial rifts. The night of the election in 2008, as the landslide results were pouring in, CNN caught up with Ms. Winfrey: “It feels like America did the right thing. It feels like there’s a shift in consciousness. It feels like something really big and bold has happened here,” Oprah proclaimed. “It feels like anything is now possible.”
In the weeks to come, Oprah was nothing if not more bullish on a transformed America with Mr. Obama as president-elect: “I think it already has meant a new level of consciousness for our country,” she told her studio audience. “Can’t you all feel it? Even if you weren’t for him, it’s a new way of being in the world.”
But the era of good feelings didn’t last. In the years to come, as happens in politics, there were issues on which people disagreed. There were even some people who dared to disagree with President Obama—which for Oprah was proof that the new way of being in the world hadn’t trounced the old after all. Opposition to Mr. Obama was done disrespectfully, she said: “And that occurs in some cases, and maybe even many cases, because he’s African American. There’s no question about that. And it’s the kind of thing no one ever says, but everybody’s thinking it.”
Which brings us back to the glass ceiling and the imminent shattering thereof. We’re told to be excited that a first woman president will mean a new era of gender relations. But we were told that a first black president would mean improved race relations. Instead, the fact of Mr. Obama’s race was used against the president’s opponents, who were denounced as racists for the mere act of resisting his policies.
Will the end of the glass ceiling mean gender issues recede? Or will it mean, to the contrary, four years of relentless gender gripes? Will every dispute over policy be disdained as nothing but irremediable sexism?
Americans aren’t opposed to the idea of using their votes to further one or another vision of social progress. But they’d prefer not to be punished for their tender-heartedness.
