The Bitch Card

Howard Kurtz tiptoes up to the line but won't put his foot on it. He stops just short of articulating fully the meaning of the RNC's recent characterization of Hillary Clinton as too angry to get elected.

It began when Ken Mehlman told George Stephanopoulos that Hillary "seems to have a lot of anger" and Americans don't elect angry candidates. This, of course, prompted a round of Is-She-Angry stories and cable debates. (How do you deny being angry without sounding, well, teed off? And is a woman in politics more vulnerable to the charge that, as Barbara Bush once said of Geraldine Ferraro, she rhymes with rich?)

My initial reaction was that the Republicans--who haven't been able to find a credible candidate to challenge Clinton in New York--must be pretty worried about her in '08.

As we noted in an earlier post, this is clearly the beginning of a strategy to frame Sen. Clinton as unelectable in 2008. The word "angry" is merely a euphemism for the word most Republicans will choose not to use. In fact, it would not surprise me if the word they use in RNC strategy sessions rhymes not with "rich," but with "runt."

Plainly, Ken Mehlman is counting on the fact that a woman is more vulnerable to the charge of being angry, especially among Republicans. The problem they have is that the people who hate her the most, Republican men, already think of her that way. The people who like her aren't buying it. All that effort will result in no net loss of popularity for Clinton and might have the unintended consequence of increasing her sympathy factor.