THE WOMAN QUESTION… AGAIN: How soon will we elect a female president?

The departure of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren from the presidential race

assures that The United States will not, in 2020, elect its first female president. Her exit leaves a two-man Democratic contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, with the winner facing incumbent Republican President Donald Trump in November. Many lamented the fact the country passed up a chance at joining the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, and other democratic nations in electing a female leader. A diverse Democratic field that began with six women candidates, including four sitting U.S. Senators, ended up reduced to two white men.

          

Voters and pundits asked why. How much did

raw,  pure and simple sexism account for the fact all the female candidates flamed out? How does the United States elect a female president?

We care about the question and we’ve previously written on the subject. In February 2019 we examined whether some people won’t vote for a woman under any circumstances. In February 2020, we wondered how much the last two surviving women in this year’s Democratic race – Warren and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar—were being penalized for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. Warren’s departure forced a new look at the issue, one we found we approach differently:

Woodson: Leaving the Best Player on the Sidelines

Elizabeth Warren improved the 2020 race as a political exercise and deserved a better

fate. She remains, in my view, the most intelligent candidate who ran. She offered detailed plans for solving a plethora of problems. She succinctly explained the  benefits and shortcomings of capitalism

and how she would corral its destructive aspects, yet make capitalism work for ordinary Americans.

Warren offered a compelling personal story, complete with Republican brothers and a painful recitation of repossession of her family’s car as she grew up in Oklahoma. Her path from public school teacher to professor at elite law schools is the stuff of inspirational movies and novels.  Successfully leading the fight for creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that fights predatory business practices confirms her grit, determination, and dedication to helping ordinary working people.

Why didn’t Warren get nominated? I see only two reasons, given her political talent and

the fact she presented a scandal-free personal and political history: (1) because of her commitment not to take money from special business interests, she couldn’t raise enough money and (2) sexism. Because of her belief that disproportionate corporate influence in

politics harms democracy, she wouldn't take Super Pac money until early this year, when it was probably too late.  As for sexism, her gender was not her choice.  That's something America must face and fix. Elizabeth Warren and America deserved better. 

Henry: The Electorate’s Fears Got the Best of Warren and Us

I share Woodson’s enthusiasm for Elizabeth Warren as a potential president and his disappointment about the gender bias that

helped  keep her out of the White House. She was the best candidate in the 2020 field. I always suspected the public couldn’t overcome sexist impulses that might impede her. I knew many voters would question her

electability for no reason other than gender. Too many people became amateur political prognosticators, speculating that others wouldn’t vote for Warren in light of Clinton’s defeat. 

I agreed with the CNN analyst who, after one debate last summer, called Warren “the best athlete on the field.” In many of the debates she was. Her destruction of former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg in the Nevada debate left her permanent mark on the 2020 race.

A win for Warren, however, wasn’t in the cards. Fear, much of it irrational, that Trump would intimidate any woman opponent made voters overemphasize her missteps, like her slightly clumsy handling of Medicare-for-All. At the end, my distrust of the electorate returned, and that distrust was confirmed. Voters thought she couldn’t win and that spelled the end of her candidacy. It shouldn’t have.   

Rob: A Broader View

Warren’s departure is symbolically important, but  I believe too many people

learned the wrong lesson from 2016 and from the failure of this year’s female candidates. America isn’t so sexist it won’t elect a woman president. We just need to give the right woman a chance.

I offer two simple propositions: (1) in 2016 Hillary Clinton got more votes than her male opponent and (2) the fact she didn’t win in the electoral college falls as much or more on her as on the electorate’s alleged inherent gender bias.

The first point just states an undeniable fact. The second requires that people like me who supported Secretary Clinton face inconvenient truths. As a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton was an outlier and not because of her gender. Few presidential nominees in American history, and none of the women running this time, brought with them the baggage or intense dislike among voters  Clinton did. None of them made Wall Street speeches for thousands of dollars in fees. None of them used a private e-mail server for government business, then couldn’t explain it and only half-heartedly apologized. None of them, I’m confident, would have run a general election campaign without once landing their plane in Wisconsin.

We began this blog in July 2016 writing about sports teams afraid of hiring black coaches and executives after a previous black occupant of the job failed. That one-and-done philosophy in sports isn’t right and it’s not right in politics. Clinton’s flawed candidacy shouldn’t doom all women.

Neither Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tulsi Gabbard, nor even Marianne Williamson lost because America won’t elect a woman president. They lost because too many people learned the wrong lesson from 2016. America will elect a female president. No reason exists for projecting the sins of a past female candidate onto this year’s women candidates. We’ve elected male presidents after other men failed in the job. What’s the difference?                   

 

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE 2.0: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, AUTOCRACY, PLUTOCRACY, OR FACISM?

American intelligence agencies have confirmed Russian interference in the 2020 United States presidential election. They recently advised the House Intelligence Committee of their conclusion Russia wants to do again what most believe it did in 2016 - help tip the scales in President Donald Trump’s favor. A consensus exists that Russian social media activity, other forms of disinformation, and computer hacking helped Trump in 2016.   By talking with Congress, the intelligence briefers provoked Trump’s ire. He reacted by firing Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. Trump reportedly raged that Democrats will use the reports of meddling against him.  The interference disturbs us, especially since the nation was warned this was coming, and precious few precautions have been taken against its possible effects. In his congressional testimony during the summer of 2019, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller emphasized his belief the Russians were meddling, “as we speak.” With it now established the Russians are at it again, the question of why we should care arises. American Elections for Americans We wouldn’t have thought we’d need a rationale for eliminating foreign interference in our elections. Sanctity of the ballot enjoys a treasured place in American democracy. Having the ballot means much less if citizens can’t depend on a secure electoral system and campaigns free of foreign meddling. In many contexts, American history shows the value democracy places on voting. Much of the civil rights movement concerned voting rights. Lyndon Johnson  thought giving blacks the vote would level the playing field in the South where they suffered under the spell of Jim Crow. Before he ran for president, Barack Obama expressed the view that advocates for social progress should focus on elections as a way of winning rights and power, not litigation, reasoning that what courts can give, they can take away. Once a majority of Americans have spoken through their ballots, elected officials are less likely to go a different direction.   From the beginning, the nation’s leaders took steps against foreign interference in America’s internal affairs. The constitution’s framers, for example, included an emoluments clause that keeps foreigners from buying influence with U.S. officeholders. Congress enacted legislation, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and a the ban on foreign campaign contributions, aimed at limiting outside influence on the American government. Managing our own affairs, including voting and elections, without foreign interference occupies a sacred place in American democracy.       Results v. Process Despite this seemingly obvious rationale for elections decided without fake Facebook ads Fake Facebook ads posted by Russians per Intelligence Committee and flyers containing falsehoods composed by Russian operatives, we know some Trump supporters who accept such interference because the 2016 meddling produced the right outcome. The result, they say, justifies the means.   They note the strong economy, Trump’s immigration policies, his judicial appointments, and other aspects of the incumbent’s tenure they like. They can overlook the process, so long as they get their desired result. The three of us view process as imperative. Are American campaigns and elections run fairly and on a playing field that gives everyone a fair chance? Has an unseen force, like Russian operatives, placed a thumb on the scale, corrupting the process? With campaigns and elections run fairly and without interference from outside our borders, we think democratic principles have prevailed and we can live with whatever outcomes such elections produce. With a fair process, Americans more likely trust results that ensue. What Goes Around Comes Around We’d prefer believing no Democratic president would behave as Trump has or accept foreign help in getting elected. Sadly, we could no more guarantee that than we can perform magic tricks. Of course, a future Democratic president could engage in his or her own set of deplorable acts. Take Lyndon Johnson, the 36th President, to whom we referred earlier. Johnson’s most 36th US President Lyndon Johnson significant biographer, Robert Caro, wrote in the preface to his 1982 book, The Path to Power, the first volume in his series, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, that the more one follows Johnson’slife, “the more  apparent it becomes that alongside the thread of achievement running through it runs another thread, as dark as the other is bright, and as fraught with consequences for history: a hunger for power in its most naked form, for power not to improve the lives of others, but to manipulate and dominate them, to bend them to his will.”   Caro further argued that “if during the long evolution from a ‘constitutional’ to an ‘imperial’ [p]residency there was a single administration in which the balance tipped decisively, it was the [p]residency of Lyndon Johnson.”  Caro’s observations on Johnson make chillingly clear a Democrat capable of Donald Trump’s excesses is quite possible. It’s so possible, it’s already happened. Perhaps only the details differ. So, we remind Trump supporters who see results they’re getting from the current presidency and, therefore, support anything that keeps it in place, that American politics runs in cycles. A president you don’t like will hold the office someday, perhaps a president who advocates forced abortions or wants confiscation of firearms. Are you really comfortable with THAT president getting help from foreign governments?     America stands at a crossroads. Do we stay with democracy  and keep working out its imperfections or do we toss it onto the scrap heap of history and try fascism, autocracy, plutocracy, or some other form of government? The current occupant of The White House shows little interest in strengthening democracy and its institutions. Rather than take our word for it, we again recommend former State Secretary Madeleine Albright’s  insightful Fascism: A Warning. She makes the compelling case that our current president takes his cues from a long line of leaders who were popularly elected but turned their countries into autocracies, plutocracies, or fascist states. We feel compelled to sound the alarm.