Lessons for future women candidates from Warren v. Clinton
12/22/2014

Make no mistake, Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton are both running right now. Even if neither is a declared candidate for any office, each is running hard to be in the best position to do just that, if and when that time arrives. And the fact is: the (mere) running of Hillary Clinton and Sen. Warren (D-Mass.)—along with its requisite issue and message positioning— reveals how women candidates are no longer running on platforms that emphasize their gender.

So what lessons can women politicians, political operatives and voters—and the men who also care—draw from these two historic races? What do Clinton's and Warren's current moves portend for other women who now seek high public office and big political power? What appears paramount in this first-ever contest in American history?

For one, women candidates are also no longer primarily proponents of women's and children's issues. Neither Warren nor Clinton asks us to choose her because she is a woman with prototypical female experiences: motherhood -- and grandmother-hood! -- are (only) a bonus play. Instead, in her current campaign, Clinton stresses her prototypical-for-a-president political and government experience, while Warren emphasizes a message of economic inequality and the need to break-up the Wall Street-D.C. marriage.

...Women candidates are also no longer characterized as outside players. They are inside, part of the establishment, with all the ups and downs that go with that status. And, importantly, there are now women candidates with differing degrees of insider-ness, yielding different points of access to cash, power, and influence. Will Clinton, Inc. be a winning play for voters who have never seen a woman, much less one with such business power and important personal ties, run for the presidency? Or, will voters prefer a woman who allies herself with the working family and distances herself from Wall Street? Either way – the gender of the candidate does not determine insider status.

...Clinton's and Warren's campaigns make it clear that a woman can both advocate for women and become among the most powerful people in the world, and there isn't just one way to do it.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/227713-lessons-for-future-women-candidates-from-warren-v-clinton