WASHINGTON: One of them has been dubbed “NoFilterNeera“ for her unvarnished candor, including an epic observation that Bill and
Hillary Clinton, her political mentors, “have the worst judgment.“
The other is called Hillary Clinton's “body woman,“ for her physical proximity and her unswerving loyalty to the Democratic prima donna.
Neera Tanden
and
Huma Abedin
, two women of Indian-origin and of contrasting personality, are in the center of a political maelstrom this week as Hillary Clinton's prospect of becoming the first woman to win the White House runs up against deep-rooted male prejudice.
The notion that men can literally get away with murder in politics was colorfully articulated by a Louisiana politician who is said to have jokingly boasted to reporters one time that the only way he could lose this election is “if I'm caught in bed either with a dead girl or a live boy.“ The bar is higher for women -in fact so high that if they overcome it, they inevitably crash through the glass ceiling. As President Obama observed in his endorsement of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic Convention, “She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backward in heels,“ -and yet he beat her to the nomination in 2008. In the ten days remaining for election day , dancing her way to the White House is out of question -Hillary Clinton has to navigate the pitfalls resulting from the purported indiscretions of her female assistants that would have hardly mattered in a male world.
Abedin, already under the gun for her alleged -and unproven -Islamist affiliation and loyalty to a dodgy husband, has been damned for potentially having shared a laptop that could potentially contain emails that could potentially show Hillary Clinton being careless with security or otherwise potentially contain potentially damning material.
Tanden's tart observations in emails published by
Wikileaks showing her critical of Hillary and her staff -including terming Hillary's instincts “sub-optimal“ and suggesting whoever had let her use a private email address for her state department correspondence should be “drawn and quartered“ and the “whole thing is f***ing insane“ -has put her political future in doubt. She was considered a likely cabinet-level nominee in a Hillary administration. Both women have repaired to minister to self-inflicted wounds from minor infractions exaggerated in the male-dominated political world. Abedin was relieved from her attachment to Clinton and spent the weekend at her home in Manhattan her glum face captured by paparazzi's telephoto lens -as the candidate campaigned in Florida. Tanden told the NYT that the email leaks had been “a profoundly painful experience“ but her “personal efforts have been to help her (Hillary) be successful.“ The controversies highlight how difficult it is for women to ascend in public life, particularly in the light of the disdain with which
Donald Trump is able to brush off allegations. Several analysts have pointed out that if Hillary Clinton had been married thrice and had five kids from three men and faced as many charges of inappropriate behavior she might not even been able to run for a school board, forget the White House.
With Trump Republicans going high and ballistic over the Clinton email fiasco, Hillary Clinton on Saturday went “lo“ Jlo, to be exact. Drafting another powerful female ally as her campaign shuddered under the weight of ceaseless battles in her quest for the Oval Office, she shook a leg with Jennifer Lopez in a free concert for her supporters in Miami, Florida, arguably the most important among the battleground states. At a packed outdoor concert on a rain-soaked night, Lopez belted out songs interspersed with huge images of Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama, yet another solid female ally who has turbo-charged the Democratic base.
Various polls have showed that if only women voted, Hillary would coast to victory, as would Trump if only men voted. With more female voters (53%) than male, turnout could well determine the result, regardless of the fallout from the overblown controversies generated by the two Indian-American women.
Two other women of Indian-origin who are running for elected office and are tipped to win are from the Democratic Party, but are not counted as Clinton admirers. In California, the state's attorney general Kamala Harris, who is fighting to fill the seat vacated by Barbara Boxer (who was Clinton's relative) and is leading by 22 points against her, is known to be an Obama acolyte.
And in Washington state, state senator Pramila Jayapal, running for the House of Representative from the state's 7th district against state rep Brady Walkinshaw, is a Bernie camp follower, one of the few candidates endorsed by the Vermont Senator.