Damsel in Debate Distress

Ruth Marcus:

My favorite photo of the week -- maybe my favorite photo of the presidential campaign so far -- showed Hillary Clinton, dukes up, in a pair of bright red boxing gloves. It is iconic Hillary, unafraid to take on a fight. Which is also why the almost anti-feminist subtext of the past few days -- a message emanating from the Clinton campaign and its allies -- has been so unnecessary, and so disappointing.

"Six guys against Hillary," said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as he announced the union's endorsement and presented Clinton with the gloves. "I'd call that a fair fight."

McEntee's remarks echoed the "piling on" theme the Clinton campaign adopted after Tuesday's debate in Philadelphia in which Clinton was pummeled by her competitors. The campaign was careful not to say so directly, at least not on the record, but the not-so-subtle implication was that a gang of mean, mean men was beating up on the only woman in the race.

"She is one strong woman. She came through it well. But Hillary's going to need your help," the Clinton campaign told supporters in a fundraising e-mail.

The Hill newspaper, listening in on a conference call with Clinton fundraisers, quoted chief strategist Mark Penn being even more explicit about the "backlash" he was detecting among female voters: "Those female voters are saying, 'Sen. Clinton needs our support now more than ever if we're going to see this six-on-one to try to bring her down.' "

Please. The Philadelphia debate was not exactly a mob moment to trigger the Violence Against Women Act; if anything, this has been an overly (pardon the phrase) gentlemanly campaign to date. Those other guys were beating up on Clinton, if you can call that beating up, because she is the strong front-runner, not because she is a weak woman.

And a candidate as strong as Clinton doesn't need to play the woman-as-victim card, not even in "the all-boys club of presidential politics," as Clinton called it in a speech yesterday at her all-women alma mater, Wellesley College. I have a pretty good nose for sexism, and what I detected in the air from Philadelphia was not sexism but the desperation of candidates confronting a front-runner who happens to be a woman.

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Marcus is clearly not anti Hillary. When you read the whole column you get the sense that she is rooting for her and is nudging her and her guys to get off this victim game and get back to being the strong woman candidate. Politically, she is probably right, but they have already played the victim card and it may come back to haunt them. Do you think Osama is going to be put off by the "don't pick on the woman" card? If she thinks Edwards and Obama were tough, wait until she has to face Rudy Giuliani.