While Donald Trump’s recent comments on Hillary Clinton playing the “woman card” may not help him win the female vote should he go up against Clinton in the general election, it’s not because women disagree with his statement. The Republican front-runner has been consistently unpopular among American women, due in large part to his remarks about women like Rosie O’Donnell, Carly Fiorina, and Megyn Kelly. However, when he accused Clinton of playing the gender card, female voters — especially young ones — agree.
Clinton has in some ways based her entire campaign on being a woman, insisting that it’s what makes her an “outsider” rather than part of the “establishment” and even going so far as to say that the only major difference between Barack Obama’s presidency and hers would be the fact that she’s a woman. Despite this, Bernie Sanders has still outperformed Clinton with young female voters.
“This election has done something unique on both sides, it has offered anti-establishment options for both parties and millennial voters are loving it,” said Christian Caroline a South Carolina college student who campaigned for Carly Fiorina. “Female millennial liberal voters love Bernie and see Hillary as a liar. That is it. They just do not like her. Hillary playing her ‘woman card’ does not mean a thing to them.”
“It’s not just about having a woman president. You want somebody that values all of your principles and the morals that you stand for,” explained Gabrielle Greaves, a University of New Hampshire student and Bernie Sanders supporter, during a February interview with CNN.
And when older Clinton supporters, such as Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright, have tried to call on all women to rally behind her — the latter reminding young women that there’s a “special place in hell” for them if they don’t — their urging hasn’t seemed to help.
‘That is something you hear over and over from older women who are hungry to see a female president in their lifetimes, and who believe that younger women think they will see a female president at some point and that Hillary Clinton might just not be the one for them,” wrote CNN’s Kelly Wallace in her article, “Why the female generational divide for Hillary Clinton?”
In other words, millennial women don’t feel a strong sense of urgency to elect Hillary Clinton as the first female president because they feel confident that they’ll see a woman president during their lifetime. Unlike many of their predecessors, who have been waiting for decades to witness such a milestone, they would rather wait until a more desirable female candidate decides to run, which could be part of the reason why Bernie Sanders continues to poll better among this demographic.
“Feminism has changed, especially on campus, and among the left-leaning,” said Molly Roberts in a Politico Magazine article on why young women aren’t buying into Hillary’s gender campaign. “The fact is, among certain segments of the liberal millennial population, Clinton’s gender is simply not enough to make her a groundbreaker.”
