Come What May, We Go Down Voting
Nursing Clio Editorial CollectiveEight years ago, the Nursing Clio Editorial Collective prepared the post below, anticipating that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election and become the next President – the first woman President of the United States.
You know how that went. It’s preserved there in our blog archives in big, red, painful letters: WordPress version deleted. The original was made obsolete when our layout editor put it into WordPress and labeled the Google Doc “deprecated.” But that technical webdesign term came to mean so much more: It is obsolete. Our collective joy became a dream deferred.
In 2016, the US and the world —and, for that matter, Nursing Clio—were different. We had different leaders, rights, wars, and hopes for the future.
Today, as millions stand in long lines to vote, we’re on another precipice. This time, we haven’t drafted a celebratory post. Instead, we focus on the fight. Eight years ago, we didn’t get the future we hoped for, but perhaps this time we can. For months, we’ve been doing the work: making calls, writing postcards, sending texts, knocking on doors trying to make this vision a reality. It all comes down to today.
And yet, we know that this vision is still flawed. We acknowledge that regardless of who wins this election, it will be an uphill battle toward justice with conservative-leaning courts and hard-right state governments bent on controlling the bodies and minds of the American people. Our country wasn’t a perfect union in 2016 when we thought Hillary Clinton would take the Oval Office, and it’s much worse now.
But the state of the country isn’t the only flaw in this election. For many, we know this election feels like choosing between for a candidate who will continue to support genocide and a different candidate who will likely also continue to support genocide – while hopefully also sending humanitarian aid to Palestine. And that doesn’t feel like much of a choice.
Yet we are still faced with the difficult choice of making one. Only one candidate will institute abortion bans that will result in more preventable, needless deaths. Only one candidate has promised to strip the right to bodily autonomy from trans people and roll back hard-won civil liberties from queer Americans. Only one candidate has promised to enact mass deportation of Brown and Black immigrants; has stoked the fires of xenophobia and racism; has been found liable for rape; has been twice impeached; has been convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records; has mocked disabled Americans and denigrated veterans and Gold Star families.
We need to have hope for a better future, for a democracy where we can critique and pressure our government to make better choices. And so yes, we do have a choice to make. Every vote matters. Every. Single. Vote.
Let’s fight for the world we wanted in 2016, and the world we still anxiously hope for in 2024. If you were thinking of staying home today: please don’t.
Hillary Clinton, the Next President of the United States
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Post planned for November 9, 2016
Throughout the late summer and fall, we have published an essay series called “Run Like a Girl,” profiling the women who have pursued America’s highest office. From Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president in 1872, to Carol Moseley Braun’s primary campaign in 2004, our editors, writers, and guest contributors have shown the different approaches to “Running Like a Girl.” From conservative women like Margaret Chase Smith and Agnes Waters to liberals like Shirley Chisholm and Pat Schroeder, we showed the range of life experience, policy agendas, and political beliefs that female presidential candidates have had over nearly 150 years of running for president. But today we finally know what it looks like for a woman to WIN. Our editors wanted to opportunity to say what it means to us to see the first woman elected as President of the United States.
Jacqueline Antonovich
During our “Run Like a Girl” series, there was a bit of a Twitter kerfuffle over who actually was the first woman to run for POTUS. We at Nursing Clio maintain it was Victoria Woodhull in 1872, while others argued that since Woodhull didn’t meet the Constitutional age requirement at the time, the honor must go to Belva Lockwood in 1884. But if we are taking Constitutional requirements into consideration, both Woodhull and Lockwood would have faced extensive legal challenges had they won, due to the fact they they were both running for President well before the 19th Amendment granted full political rights to women. So to me, using the Constitution to judge who was the authentic “first woman candidate for President” is a bit disingenuous. But the whole conversation got me thinking about the through line between Woodhull and Clinton. 144 years has passed between the two campaigns and taking the long view, it becomes painfully clear why it took so long to elect our first woman President of the United States:
- Woodhull and Lockwood ran for POTUS pre-19th Amendment. Had either of them won, they would have faced Constitutional challenges and in all likelihood, the election results would probably have been ruled invalid.
- Looking at who could legally win office without a Constitutional challenge, we would have to wait till 1920, when Laura Clay ran and failed to get the Democratic nomination.
- It wouldn’t be till the 1950s (Gracie Allen’s joke candidacy aside) when we would finally see a woman candidate head a party ticket. In 1952, Ellen Jensen ran on the Washington Peace Party ticket, Mary Kennery on the American Party ticket, and Agnes Waters ran for the American Woman’s Party. These three women ran as candidates for fringe political parties that had no chance of winning the White House; nonetheless, their nominations ushered in an age of women candidates heading third-party tickets, including the 2016 Green Party candidate, Jill Stein.
- Beginning in the 1960s, women regularly appeared in the nomination process for our two main parties. Women like Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, and Patsy Takimoto Mink all tried and failed to secure the Democratic or Republican nomination for POTUS.
- In 2008, Hillary Clinton came closer than any other woman to securing a major party nomination for President. Ultimately, the “Yes, We Can” enthusiasm, hope, and excitement of the Barack Obama candidacy prevailed.
Finally in 2016. Finally. Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected the first woman President of the United States. She stands on the shoulders of giants.
Carrie Adkins
First, the obvious (or at least, the obvious to most readers of Nursing Clio): the election of Hillary Clinton as the President of the United States is an incredibly important historical moment. Despite the fascinating achievement of the many women we’ve profiled in the “Run Like a Girl” series — and the thousands and thousands of other women who have devoted themselves to politics, government, and public service — in 2016, Hillary Clinton is finally the first one to do this. Finally. It’s wonderful. But. Allow me to be the huge downer in the room (on the blog?) for a second and say: brace yourselves, people. We are about to see a whole new wave of sexism and misogyny unleashed. Trump supporters will continue to do shitty things like call our new President a “cunt” and imply that she’s too ugly to run a country; that’s no surprise. In addition, though, we’re about to see every choice Hillary Clinton makes filtered through the lens of gender. We’re about to see her shortcomings (real or perceived) attributed to her lady parts. And, just as we saw with racism in the aftermath of Obama’s election, people will now feel totally justified in saying whatever horrible things they can think of about women “because look, one is President now, what more do you want?” So I’m celebrating the victory and feeling the significance of the moment, and yes, my feminist heart is warm. But I’m also dreading these developments and worried about what they will mean for women and for the country. It’s going to get ugly out there.
Sarah Handley-Cousins
For decades — maybe even centuries — it’s been something of a cute joke to say to strong-willed, independent-minded little girls, “You’re going to be the first woman President!” And while I’m sure some of the people who say that mean it, the saying has always held, at its heart, an element of impossibility. We say it because it has always been so absurdly unlikely that it was almost laughable. Sure, woman president! Right! But from this point onward, the irony in that old joke is dead. As of today, I can look at my three little girls and tell them that women are capable of anything they put their minds to, that women can — and have — achieved the highest office in the land. Sure, I worry about the backlash, and the culture of misogyny my girls will have to face as the wounded Patriarchy fights to stay alive. I think they’ll still experience sexism when they raise their hands in the classroom but are drowned out by boys, and I think they’ll still grow up in a culture that facilitates rape. But to echo Hillary Clinton’s words about cracking the glass ceiling in 2008, that sexism might still be alive but I think it’s been dealt a fatal blow. All those worries are for the future, though. Today, I’m going to focus on the fact that I will sit with my girls and watch the inauguration of our Madame President.
Lauren MacIvor Thompson
Mary Ware Dennett, this one is for you. As I work to transform my dissertation into a book, I want to reach back through time and tell one of the women I’m writing about that we’ve finally done it. Dennett not only worked tirelessly for the national suffrage movement, but was instrumental in transforming American attitudes about sex and birth control. I am thankful that Dennett’s dedicated work, which she did at great personal cost, has culminated in a female Presidential candidate who, like Dennett, is practical, productive, and effective at keeping women’s issues at the forefront of our society. Hillary Clinton continues to make the personal political. She is vocal about her respect for women’s right to control their own bodies, she is committed to maintaining our Constitutional right to access abortion, and she can do all that while simultaneously balancing foreign relations, the economy, and the numerous social and political issues that make up today’s United States. Thanks for doing it all, Madam President, and doing it so well. I know, somewhere, Dennett is cheering you on. I am too, as are my two daughters. Ignore the haters and go get ‘em. We’re behind you all the way.
Adam Turner
First, celebrate. Hillary’s Clinton’s election is more than symbolic. It’s a powerful counterweight for every girl, every young woman told they can’t or they shouldn’t just because “girls aren’t ______.” Of course the election of the first woman President of the United States [woot!] won’t “solve” gender discrimination — any more than the first African American President ended racism. But celebrate nonetheless. We still have a lot of work to do. And I believe (hope) that most of the aggressive bile produced in this election came from a small minority of people who are hopefully learning that they don’t represent the vast “silent majority” they think they speak for. I generally like my history to stay in the past, and I intend to keep pushing for a community further and further away from that past. The future will look different, and it will require compromise. For those who preferred not to support Clinton because she wasn’t their “ideal,” remember that in a country of nearly 324,000,000 the only truly representative leaders must compromise. It isn’t a bad word. Many of us agree on the goals; we need to work harder to debate the methods without tearing into each other, and to share power more equitably. These are things to keep working toward, and we’ll only make progress by not villainizing those who disagree with us or disengaging from them; by talking with, not at them. For now, get yourself a glass of your preferred fizzy beverage and take a breather.
If this has been a hard read, we’re right there with you. But as historians, we see the importance in documenting our own hopes and feelings as they were eight years ago. This post is history now, a primary source that may offer some insight into one particular moment in the fall of 2016. Let us hope again – though perhaps with guarded, wearied hearts – that this time will be different.
