Hillary Clinton’s final push to recruit women voters before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary may have backfired.
Over the weekend, she campaigned with a large group of female lawmakers and activists including New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Gov. Maggie Hassan who have both endorsed her, along with equal-pay activist Lilly Ledbetter, Emily’s List President Stephanie Shriock, and U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and Debbie Stabenow.
“You’ve heard of Bernie’s bros? We are Hillary’s sisters,” Shaheen said at an event on Friday, referring to a group of male Sanders supporters who have reportedly attacked Clinton supporters online with sexist comments.
However, the real controversy came at a rally in Concord, N.H. on Saturday, where former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Albright was speaking directly to young women, urging them to support Clinton.
“We can tell our story of how we climbed the ladder, a lot of you younger women think you don’t have to… it’s been done. It’s not done. And you have to help,” she said.
Adding fuel to the fire, noted feminist Gloria Steinem implied in a recent interview that young women are not very politically active and only support Bernie Sanders to meet men.
“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie,” she said.
Steinem later retracted her statement in a Facebook post.
“What I had just said on the same show was the opposite: young women are active, mad as hell about what’s happening to them, graduating in debt, but averaging a million dollars less over their lifetimes to pay it back,” she wrote.
Hannah Oh, a recent graduate of Claremont-McKenna College, said she believes comments like those from Albright and Steinem will hurt Clinton even more with young women voters.
Oh also pointed out the significant policy differences between Clinton and Sanders, stressing that when young women choose their candidate it is not simply based on gender preference.
“Women are tired of being told what issues they have to care about or what candidates they have to vote for simply because of their gender,” she said. “We are educated voters who think independently, and Hillary supporters have demonstrated that they do not respect or understand that.”
Saint Anselm College student Emily Rice, on the other hand, defended the two speakers despite their poor choice of words.
“Gloria Steinem’s remarks, though badly construed, were meant in my opinion to call women to action as women,” she said, adding, “Madeline Albright was using a phrase she has used many times.”
“Women need to help other women understand all their options, and what each of the candidates have to offer,” she continued.
Rice personally believes Clinton’s message is more hopeful than other candidates “who fuel their campaigns on anger. Anger with Wall Street, with Congress, with our parents or grandparents.”
The final CNN/WMUR New Hampshire Primary Poll conducted Feb. 4-8 showed Clinton is poised to lose even more young voters to Sanders than she did in Iowa. Among likely Democratic voters between ages 18 and 34, Sanders leads Clinton 87 percent to 9 percent.
Clinton made one last pitch to young voters at a campaign event on Monday, acknowledging that many of them are supporting her opponent.
“You may not support me now, but I will always support you,” she said.
