Catfight over Hillary

Maureen Dowd at the NYTimes — who I find to be rather, well, cranky much of the time — sees an age gap between supporters of Obama and the Hillaryites:

Some women in their 30s, 40s and early-50s who favor Barack Obama have a phrase to describe what they don’t like about Hillary Clinton: Shoulder-pad feminism.
They feel that women have moved past that men-are-pigs, woe-is-me, sisters-must-stick-together, pantsuits-are-powerful era that Hillary’s campaign has lately revived with a vengeance.
And they don’t like Gloria Steinem and other old-school feminists trying to impose gender discipline and a call to order on the sisters.

Senator Clinton is unapologetic:

“For those of us that are part of ‘a woman need not apply’ generation that goes back to the time I went out to get my first job following college and a year of graduate work, this is an extraordinarily critical race,” the senator said.

“Many shoulder-pad feminists are growing more fierce in charging that women who let Obama leapfrog over Hillary are traitors,” Dowd adds. This would seem to be more evidence of a gender gap in the women’s movement. Are younger women more attracted by Obama’s youth and charisma? Are older women seeing in Hillary’s campaign a fulfillment of all their own “deferred dreams?”

I graduated from college several years after the Clintons did, but I remember how thrilled I was to finally have someone from my generation in the White House. (Imagine my disappointment when I discovered, through what he did, what he really thought of women.) And how about the promise of a woman in the White House? I’m standing back and waiting for the dust to settle, trying not to get my hopes up.