She’s said nice things about Hillary. She’s dropped the glass ceiling phrase a few times. Good, fine. But enough is enough. She needs to become more of a Margaret Thatcher type. Let the press bring up her gender. They’ll do it anyway. When she brags about it, she reinforces the tokenism issue.
More importantly, tactically it’s time to pivot. She needs to directly attack, albeit in a deft way, the feminist pinheads who are attacking her. She will never win over that crowd and no Republican would. But, most women — including female Democrats — don’t follow the self-described leaders of womankind. She would do enormous service to her campaign and the cause if she said “these self-appointed leftwing activists who claim to speak for all women are now claiming I’m somehow not a real woman….” and then list all of the ways she has more in common with working women than the talking heads on MSNBC. She needs to create a wedge between feminists and women. Don’t concede the assumption — the way the media always does — that NOW and that crowd speak for women. She shouldn’t do it in an angry way. She should do it in a lightly contemptuous or dismissive way. The conservative base would love it, but I think that kind of gendered populism would win-over a lot of women who like feminine strength and independence but reject the feminist label (there are a lot of them). This would have the added benefit of reinforcing her image as a maverick challenging the status quo.