When Hillary Clinton received a flood of 4,360 questions on Facebook during a live Q&A Monday afternoon, she knew exactly which one she wanted to answer. It was a moment her campaign was waiting for.

“Senator Mitch McConnell said about you today: ‘The gender card alone isn’t enough,’” posted Huffington Post reporter Laura Bassett. “How do you respond to an attack like that?”


Clinton’s response — a riposte that the gender card is being played “every time Republicans vote against giving women equal pay, deny families access to affordable child care or family leave, refuse to let women make decisions about their health or have access to free contraception” — was a forthright appeal for women’s votes — and the latest signal that, yes, Clinton’s gender will be front and center in her campaign this time around.

Eight years ago, her first presidential campaign downplayed any focus on running as a woman. But Democrats say gender is not only a plus this time, but also crucial to Clinton’s strategy for winning a general election where she will need to boost the turnout of female voters, who are more likely to vote Democratic.

The campaign followed up on on the Facebook chat Tuesday, releasing a slick video replaying McConnell’s remark and then featuring the records of some of the GOP candidates when it comes to issues that affect women: Sens. Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz voted against paid sick leave; Gov. Scott Walker repealed an equal pay law in his state; and Jeb Bush made a comment offensive to poor women back in 1994, saying, “women on welfare should get their life together and find a husband.”

“There she goes again with the women’s issues,” Clinton says in a clip featured in the video, pulled from an appearance in Iowa last week. “Well, I’m not going to stop, so get ready for a long campaign.”

The stance — and the air of assurance that accompanied it — played well with her supporters, even as Republicans accused her of doing precisely what McConnell warned against: campaigning on her gender rather than her record.

“Hillary Clinton has a habit of contradicting pro-women words with anti-women actions. Not only did Clinton pay women less in her own Senate office, but her foundation gladly accepts money from foreign countries that don’t respect women’s rights,” said Allison Moore, Republican National Committee spokeswoman. (BuzzFeed reported earlier this year that, according to internal data, men and women from Clinton’s Senate office and three political committees were paid equally.)

But Jess McIntosh, a spokeswoman for the pro-Clinton PAC EMILY’s List, insisted that Republicans’ criticisms of the “gender card” will only remind voters of their own record on women’s issues.

“The Republicans have given her a huge opening,” she said. “They have been so tone-deaf on women’s issues that they’ve changed the game on people realizing how far we have to go to get women to equal economic opportunity.” She noted that the 2012 election had a historic 20-point gender gap in President Barack Obama’s favor.

Tracy Sefl, a consultant close to the campaign, added: “Women’s issues aren’t add-ons. They’re central. The potential first woman president is well aware of this. The more the GOP talks their talk, the more it helps her. Bring it on.”

Clinton’s focus on economic issues that resonate with women also marks a shift from 2008, when the campaign was more concerned with proving a junior senator from New York and former first lady was tough enough to be president.

“I am not running as a woman,” she said on the trail eight years ago. “I am running because I believe I am the best-qualified and -experienced person.” By the time she successfully acknowledged her gender — in a rousing speech thanking her supporters for helping to put “18 million cracks” in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling” — she was already conceding to Obama.

Both Clinton and the country have changed since then. A recent New York Times/CBS poll showed that nearly 80 percent of voters said they believe the country is ready to elect a woman president. Clinton served four years as secretary of state, and her campaign is not focused on establishing her as someone capable of serving as commander in chief — in fact, Clinton rarely talks about foreign policy at all.

Instead, she is concentrating on an economic pitch with a strong appeal to women: that equal pay, paid family leave, affordable child care and universal pre-K help grow the economy and that when women are held back, America is held back.

“Fair pay and fair scheduling, paid family leave and earned sick days, child care are essential to our competitiveness and growth,” she said at her first major economic speech in New York earlier this month. “It’s time to recognize that quality, affordable child care is not a luxury — it’s a growth strategy.”

And: “We should be making it easier for Americans to be both good workers and good parents and caregivers. Women who want to work should be able to do so without worrying every day about how they’re going to take care of their children or what will happen if a family member gets sick.”

“She understands that what she did on gender eight years ago was too little, too late,” said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor emeritus at Hunter College. “In retrospect, whenever she talked about gender it helped her. For the Democrats to win next year, there has to be elevated turnout among women, and to mobilize women properly is [to] run on things like health care, family leave and things like good schools.”

Clinton is also embracing her own role as a female politician this time around, not just in pushing for women-friendly policies.

In Iowa, she’s talked about her healthy “grandmother glow.” In New Hampshire, she’s tried showing off a more personal side, recalling her first visit to Hanover as a college student going on a blind date. “Ohhhh, I have memories,” she joked with a July 4 crowd at Amherst College.

Another question she zoomed in on in during her Facebook Q&A: “how you manage getting ready each morning” while trying to stay focused on her work.

“Amen, sister — you’re preaching to the choir,” Clinton responded. “It’s a daily challenge. I do the best I can — and as you may have noticed, some days are better than others!”

In her campaign kickoff speech last month, she earned one of her biggest applause lines acknowledging that she could make history: “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race, but I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States,” she said, a line campaign aides were quick to point out she ad-libbed on the spot. And part of her stump speech is telling the story of what she learned from her own mother, who suffered a childhood that included abandonment and abuse.

But supporters say more important than her own acknowledgement of running while female is pushing policies that will generate enthusiasm for her campaign among women.

“Women know it’s beyond time for a woman in the White House,” McIntosh said. “When [Clinton] makes clever comments about not going gray in the White House, that reminds people we haven’t had that perspective before. But couching her candidacy in what she wants to do for women and families is more true to her résumé and resonates more with voters.”