One thing I found fascinating in watching the TV coverage of last night's Iowa results was how mystified many of the pundits got over the fact that Obama did better than Hillary among young women and single women than Hillary did according to the data of the results out of Iowa.
Me? Well, as a 25-year-old woman who has been firmly in the Obama camp from the beginning, I can't say I'm surprised at all.
Here's what the Times had on this:
Overall, Mr. Obama won 35 percent of women, while Mrs. Clinton won 30 percent and Mr. Edwards 23 percent.
She did well only with women over 65. While older women tend to vote in higher numbers than younger women, that’s still devastating news for her, since women were supposedly the backbone of her candidacy.
This weakness was forecast in the Des Moines Register poll, which showed Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton drawing equal numbers of women, at 32 percent each.
Here’s the breakdown from the entrance polls. Bear in mind that these percentages do not take into account the second ballots.
Mrs. Clinton did the worst with youngest women, getting only 11 percent of those under 24 years old; Mr. Obama won 51 percent of them. Mr. Edwards did better than she did among that age group, with 19 percent.
They all three split the votes of women between 45 and 59.
But Mr. Edwards did best with women between 60 and 64, winning 36 percent of them compared with Mrs. Clinton’s 34 percent and Mr. Obama’s 19 percent.
Mrs. Clinton did best with women over 65, winning 48 percent of them, compared with 21 percent for Mr. Edwards and 20 percent for Mr. Obama.
Back in March I wrote about a new strategy being launched by Hillary's camp and wondered whether it would be effective in Because of Hillary, I can be president?.
As a woman under 30 never living in an America without the benefits of Title IX and all other achievements of the women's rights movement, I suppose I bring a more post-feminist perspective to my politics and I am loathe to vote for a president solely because she shares my gender, though that's not to say I haven't voted for women for office before as I certainly have. But I think I just don't feel the same feeling someone of the baby boomer generation gets when thinking about the possibility of a woman president. Unlike my mother, I didn't have teachers in school taking a ruler to my skirt to measure whether it was too short. I played Little League alongside boys when I was 6-years-old and it wasn't a big deal for me or any of the other girls on the team. I never felt my gender held me back academically or from any opportunity honestly. When I was 10 years old I did want to be president, but while I've stopped wanting that for myself as a personal ambition it had nothing to do with me thinking a woman couldn't do it.
So for me, the fact that Hillary shared my gender wasn't enough for me and at no point in this campaign to this point have I felt like Hillary has connected with me in any real way beyond the surface of us sharing the same gender.
I also think as a single woman, a demographic of which more went for Obama than Hillary in Iowa, that a part of me resents how much Hillary's candidacy is tied into her husband's accomplishments and I wonder if other single women feel the same way.
Finally, there is the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton wariness among young people and that can't be ignored. I think the support for Obama and Edwards among young women shows that a desire for newness is greater than whatever excitement exists for a woman being president.
But that's just my opinion.
What do you guys, no matter what candidate you support, think about the generational gender gap from last night's results and what it means for the future of feminism and the Democratic party?