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By HOLLYN
HAMPTON,
With her credentials, persistence, and drive for change, Democratic candidate U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has many asking that she and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. battle it out for the 2008 Democratic nomination.
Clinton, who has backing from U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters D-Calif., actor Jack Nicholson, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has recently won straw polls in Prince William and Fairfax counties.
An advocate for affordable and accessible health care, improving the school system, ending the war in Iraq and reforming America’s immigration system, Clinton has addressed issues most Americans are concerned about.
Competing with industrialized countries like Britain, India, and Germany and the developing nations of Liberia and Argentina, which are years ahead of the United States with elections of female heads of state, many on the Hampton University campus can only wonder if America is next.
Anne Breneman, a professor
of Sociology and co-author with Rebecca Mbuh of “Women in the New
Millennium: The Global Revolution,” thinks so: “Our country should be
ready after over a century and a half of struggle towards gender
equality in a patriarchal society,” said Breneman. “We can give some
credit to the United Nations for helping to empower women since the
first U.N.-sponsored international women’s conference held in
However, there are those
that still have some doubt about whether the
other Clinton can be the next
president. “I don’t think
America’s resistance to
change is the reason some people give for why we, an industrialized
superpower, have not had our first female president. “We are a
gender-biased country, where our biased is institutionalized,” said Lois
Benjamin a sociology professor at
The country talks about
change; however, there are still those issues that plague us. Some have
criticized
Clinton was asked how she keeps going, and became misty eyed while giving the response. To some voters this was seen as a way of relating to the people. To others, it was interpreted as being unstable.
Besides keeping her emotions together, Clinton might find it hard to win in the relatively conservative commonwealth of Virginia. Gov. Tim Kaine endorsed Obama, during last year’s annual Virginia Democratic Party fundraiser.
Having voted Republican in the last 10 presidential races, is the state ready for a change?
On Tuesday, the people of Virginia will speak their voice.
Hollyn Randolph is a junior print journalism major at the Hampton University Scripps Howard School of Journalism and Communications.
