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By Perry Bacon Jr.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign famously asked Democratic voters who they trusted to answer the White House phone amid a crisis at 3 a.m. -- her bid to highlight experience over an untested challenger.

Now, as she campaigns around the country for Democratic candidates, Clinton is increasingly highlighting issues like child care, abortion rights and the role of women in society, potentially previewing a different kind of presidential run than in 2008.

Why are we one of only a few countries left in the world that dont provide paid family leave? she said at a rally earlier this month in Pennsylvania. Why is it women that still get paid less than men for doing the same work? she asked at event in Michigan a few days later. Then, campaigning in Colorado last week for Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Udall, who has been criticized for speaking about abortion rights too much in his campaign, Clinton gave a strong, unprompted defense of Udall, saying whens hes fighting for womens rights, he is fighting on the frontier of freedom.

Clintons shift, say both scholars and political operatives, is part of a larger movement in politics, as the importance of the female vote and womens issues have vaulted to the top of Americans political conversation over the last few years. And that heightened attention on gender, these experts say, will likely make it easier than in 2008 for Clinton or another female candidate to campaign on issues like child care and to combat criticism they face that might be rooted in sexism.

We never talk about John McCains cleavage, or what he does with his hair, or his wrinkles

Its a very different cultural environment. You have a rise in the prominence of figures like [New York Senator Kirstin] Gillibrand, a growth in feminist media, you have more people who are writing as feminists. This is a far friendlier environment to be talking about women-friendly social policy, said Rebecca Traister, a liberal writer who wrote a 2011 book called Big Girls Dont Cry that examined some of the challenges female politicians, including Clinton, have faced.

Not only has the number of female senators increased from 16 to 20 since 2008, but politicians such as Gillibrand have emerged as leaders in Washington, speaking frequently and frankly about gender and the challenges women face in American society. Issues of balancing work and family, which Clinton wrote about during the 1990s, were not a major feature of her last presidential campaign. Now, they're so prominent that male politicians in both parties are talking about them.

A group of unabashedly feminist and mostly liberal media figures like Traister are using both traditional publications and social media, which was in its infancy in 2008, to attack media coverage they view as sexist, a development that could help Clinton.

Demographics are shifting as well, as women are voting at higher percentages than men and unmarried women have become an increasingly key electoral bloc. With those unmarried women in mind, the Democratic Party, in 2012 and 2014, has put womens pay and abortion rights at the forefront of its policy agenda.

See original here:
Why Hillary Clinton Is Doubling Down on Women's Rights