Dianne Bystrom, an Iowa State University researcher who has been studying Hillary Clinton for more than 20-years, says the Democratic presidential candidate must walk a fine line in Thursday night’s acceptance speech.
“Certainly she must come across that she can be commander-in-chief. That she’s got that experience as Secretary of State. But I think this time around-- One of the things she avoided doing in two-thousand-eight that she seems more amenable to this year is talking about herself as not only a mom, but a grandmother.”
Bystrom, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center at ISU, says Clinton's gender makes that tightrope walk harder.
"There's still just such a discrepancy in the media coverage of women running for the highest office in the land. We saw that not only with Hillary Clinton in 2008, but also with Sarah Palin. We saw that with Elizabeth Dole. [...] Hillary Clinton, even in this campaign cycle, has been subjected to much more negative media coverage than even Donald Trump."
In this Politics Day edition of River to River, host Dean Borg talks with Bystrom and with Tim Hagle, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, about the Democratic National Convention.
James Lynch of The Gazette and Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa also join the conversation to share their first-hand experiences of the convention in Philadelphia.
