Is Hillary Clinton’s enemy women?

The Financial Times advised Hillary Clinton who declared running for president for the second time on Sunday in a column titled “Why women are Hillary’s key.” As she cannot win enough votes from women with a vague declaration that she will make history by becoming the first U.S. female president, she should release practical economic policies for working women to prevent the repeat of the same mistake.

Mrs. Clinton lost to Mr. Obama in the Democratic primaries in 2008 because she did not get as many votes from women as expected. The Gallup poll back then showed that she won a 49 percent vote from the female electorate college, leading Mr. Obama only by five percentage points. Meanwhile, she lost to him by 20 percentage points among the male electorate college (37 percent vs. 57 percent.)

The Financial Times said, “Many women revile Mrs. Clinton as a manipulative figure who owes her career to her husband.” Because of such perception, she lost to Mr. Obama by 12 percentage points (42 percent versus 54 percent) among young white female voters aged between 18 and 29. African American women also cast much more votes to Mr. Obama, a black candidate, rather than Mrs. Clinton, a female candidate. Mrs. Clinton said in her biography “Living History” that she had met many angry women saying why she did not divorce her husband (who had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky) since 2000 when she was running for a Senate seat in New York.

The Financial Times said that if Mrs. Clinton wants to win, she needs to focus on the concerns of working women such as maternity leave and child care rather than traditional female issues such as abortion. Working women is an issue that can attract Republican female votes and is directly related to the biggest headaches of the U.S. economy – the crisis of the middle class and the wealth gap.

Mrs. Clinton said in an email to volunteers on Sunday, “It’s time for us to fight for people like my baby granddaughter, who deserves to grow up in a country where every single kid has the opportunity to live up to her or his potential.” Her strategy is to create an image of a “mother who is concerned about the future of daughters.” She also said in the email, “American families were still facing financial hardship at a time when the average CEO makes about 300 times what the average worker makes.” She continues to express her interest in income inequality and the widening gap – which are likely to be hottest topics in the presidential election -- by tying female and economic issues.

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