GENDER AND 2020 REVISITED: THREE MEN, ONE WOMAN REMAINING

One of a group of three men and one woman will likely win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Former Vice  

President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren maintain the leads they’ve held for months in national and state polls. South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg surged recently in Iowa, so we’re including him. We know late runs happen, like John Kerry’s in 2004 when he came from far behind, won Iowa and rolled to the nomination.  Something

unexpected could occur, but a betting person would pick Biden, Sanders, Warren, or Buttigieg.

Note that only one woman, Warren, retains much of a chance at getting nominated, despite the fact six women entered the race. We pointed out their presence in a February 2019 post on the possibility the United States in 2020 might finally elect a woman president or vice president.  The vice presidency remains in play, but Warren now seems the only realistic possibility for a female president. So, what’s happened with the other women candidates? 

The Hillary Effect

We recognize perhaps Americans “aren’t ready” for a woman president, a quaint notion in 2019, but worth discussing until the country

elects a woman. In February, we cited generic polling suggesting five percent of the electorate won’t ever vote for a woman. We questioned that, noting pollsters asked the question in the abstract, eliminating nuances and quirks of individual candidates and races. 

No one can say if that five percent, or whatever number of never-a-woman voters live out there, doomed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Because of Clinton’s loss, some Democrats believe the party shouldn't nominate a woman in 2020. Clinton exhibited definite weakness with male voters, losing 52-41 (62-32 among white men). She won the overall women’s vote, 52-41, because black and Hispanic women gave her 98% and 67% of their votes respectively. White women supported Donald Trump, 47-45, despite his bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

Hillary Clinton carried lots of baggage, from anger over Wall Street speeches to suspicions about her role in the Clinton Foundation to the e-mail saga. How much each of those things, and the actions of former FBI Director James Comey, played in the outcome no one can say. Clinton won the popular vote, 48-46, but gender could have cost her the election. 

A Story with Every Candidate

A football coach we know often says there’s a story with every recruit he gets close on but doesn’t sign. So, is there a story, beyond gender, with every female 2020 candidate who won’t get nominated? Take New York Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, who began with a  big war chest and bright prospects, but went nowhere. Was it gender?  Or, did resentment in Democratic circles over her aggressive role in forcing Minnesota’s Al Franken out of the U.S. Senate on sexual harassment charges

torpedo her campaign?  Or was it her high-pitched voice that sometimes made her sound like former Vermont Governor Howard Dean in his 2004 scream?

California Senator Kamala Harris remains in the race but has faded since a summer high generated by her calculated first debate attack on Biden. As we’ve wondered, has her sometimes snarky verbal style worn thing? Does her history as a prosecutor who put many black people in jail keep her from catching on with black voters?

Spiritualist author Mary Ann Williamson got laughs and had a few good applause lines in the early debates, but never was a serious candidate. Obscure Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard always was a long shot and her campaign now seems on its last leg.  Are there people on the mainland who don’t fully grasp Hawaii’s status as a state?  

 

We find harder explaining what’s happened with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. She too remains in the race and has qualified for the December debate. Her last debate performance generated an infusion of cash 

and excellent press. Still, she lags in the polls and hasn’t broken through in Iowa, the state next door to her Minnesota home base and a place where her reach-out-to-the-other side history should play well among centrist Democrats.

 

We wonder if Klobuchar ever really recovered from early stories alleging she mistreated her staff. That returns us to whether women receive different scrutiny in politics than men. Would a male candidate accused of bad behavior toward his staff get roasted the way Klobuchar did? Might instead he get credit for toughness and efficiency?

It’s possible the reaction to Klobuchar’s alleged bad acts demonstrates a fundamental

truth about American politics. At the highest levels, women don’t do as well in seeking executive offices as they do in running for legislative seats. While 25 women serve in the U.S. Senate, only nine currently hold governorships. Maybe Americans now accept women as legislators since, in Congress, a woman doesn’t run anything except her own office (with apologies to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). When women “crack the whip” as executives, perhaps people recoil.

                                            

What About Warren?

The difficulty 2020 women candidates have had naturally makes us ask why Warren has done so well. Her detailed policy proposals and a disciplined campaign

that has never gotten distracted from its message offer possible explanations. Her age-defying energy on the stump hasn’t hurt. Maybe it’s no more than what one CNN commentator observed after the second debate – as a campaigner, she’s just the best athlete on the field, regardless of gender. In spite of all that works

against female candidates in 2020, her unique qualities might mean the country finally break the glass ceiling and puts a person with two X chromosomes in the oval office.        

IMPEACHMENT: IT’S THE REAL DEAL NOW

Impeaching President Donald J. Trump now seems inevitable.  On a party-line vote, the House of Representatives last week endorsed a resolution opening a formal impeachment inquiry. The vote never would have

been taken if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn't confident she has the votes for impeachment. Soon public hearings will begin, followed by approval of at least one article of impeachment in the judiciary committee. If the full House supports

at least one article, action would shift to the Senate for a trial. There, conviction and removal from office require a two-thirds vote, admittedly an unlikely prospect now.   

Mounting evidence Trump abused his office by withholding aid from a beleaguered ally while demanding help from that foreign government in digging up dirt on a political opponent has persuaded about half the country Congress should remove him. Though

Trump’s sins as described in the report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller didn’t produce widespread support for impeachment, shake-down of a foreign leader for personal domestic political advantage appears to have broken through.

The story isn’t complicated. A White House  summary of a call between Trump and the Ukrainian president

told most people all they needed to know. When House investigators began taking testimony from people involved in U.S. – Ukrainian relations the doubts about Trump’s constitutionally prohibited behavior fell away.  A host of credible witnesses, like Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor and a decorated National Security Council official, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, have given the Ukraine scandal gravitas and staying power with the public. House leaders, like intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, indicate Taylor, Lt. Col. Vindman, and perhaps even former National Security Advisor John Bolton may testify in the public hearing phase. History suggests increasing public support for impeachment would likely result from public hearings.

Our Say

We return to impeachment now because it’s real. In four previous posts we looked at it under abstract circumstances. This isn’t hypothetical anymore. This will happen.

We began writing about impeaching Trump in March 2017, just two months into his presidency. Early signs of corruption  produced Woodson’s prediction that impeachment proceedings against the President would begin “in the next year.”  It took a little longer, but even then the road pointed in the direction we’re now headed.

                   

Three months later, in June 2017, Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey induced from us a piece on the history of the Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings. We speculated about what might happen politically if Trump were impeached and removed. As things move forward in 2019, we realize we’ll have to revisit the political calculus.  It’s different now that we’re on the cusp of an election, but no less important in developing an understanding of what all this means for American politics.

In July 2018, we briefly revisited impeachment in the wake of Trump’s shameful performance in Helsinki alongside Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. With former State Secretary Madeleine Albright’s

book Fascism as a backdrop and organizing principle, we asked if impeachment “could reign in Trump’s behavior,” even if the Senate didn’t remove him from office.

Finally, in April 2019, evidence of Trump’s scandalous behavior became clearer and clearer. We learned of so many sins, we asked, “Impeachment Anyone?” We addressed the issue in terms of political reality versus the country’s need for a moral response, in the process revealing our own varied views on the issue.

Ukraine Changes the Game

Throughout the now nearly three years of the Trump presidency, as the specter of impeachment lurked beneath the surface and the bad acts piled up, there has always been the idea of relying on the 2020 election as the best way of ridding the nation of Trump disease. Wait, counseled people like Rob, who for most of that time, thought the political price of impeaching Trump wasn’t worth it. We could tough it out until the election in the belief limiting Trump to one term wouldn’t permanently damage the country. Trump’s behavior in connection with Ukraine calls the morality of that view into serious question.

Woodson and Henry now offer compelling

observations about why leaving it to the election isn’t a good idea. Woodson notes the possibility of tampering with the 2020 election. Mueller told Congress he was sure the Russians were, as he spoke, readying their next attack. Trump, by saying he’d welcome dirt on his opponent from foreign sources, invited just such interference. It happened in 2016. It could happen again.   

Henry, a former federal magistrate judge who says perhaps the best part of his job was swearing in new citizens, reminds us morality commands we not betray the brave citizens like Ambassador Taylor, Lt. Col. Vindman, and the original

whistleblower who stepped forward and told what they knew, sometimes at great personal cost. Trump and his allies vilified these men and women for doing nothing more than honoring their duty under the constitution.

 

All three of us learned in law school the venerable principle that the law is entitled to every person’s evidence. People like

Ambassador Taylor and Lt. Col. Vindman followed that principle with their closed-door testimony and probably will again when the hearings go public. In the absence of impeaching Trump, we will have done those individuals and the principle they followed a great disservice. We cannot afford the price of doing that.   

LOOKING AT 2020 BEYOND CANDIDATES: WHAT’S REALLY AT STAKE

A clear distinction has emerged among the three of us in terms of our preferences in the race for the 2020 Democratic

presidential         nomination. We’ve realized the reasons for those differences go beyond merely liking one candidate’s health plan over another’s. What each of us wants in a 2020 Democratic standard bearer reflects our view of where this country should go politically and culturally in the next few years and what the 2020 election stands for as a marker in our politics. Here we offer a first look at that dichotomy (or perhaps, in our case, a trichotomy). We recognize explaining all this may require more than one 980-word blog post.

Woodson:  A Time for Bold Action

The problems we face require more than snip-around-the-edges incrementalism. We need reform of our immigration laws – specifically a change to our family separation policy; a health care system that makes health care affordable to all. The Trump tax cuts for

multi-millionaires must be rolled back. Those revenues should be devoted to development of our roads, bridges, and schools. Our children should have an opportunity for a vocational or college education, similar to how all Americans are now afforded a public primary and secondary education. The criminal justice system  should

be reformed so that charges and sentences are not influenced by the defendant’s ethnicity or economic status.

In convincing some Caucasian Americans their enemies are undeserving black and brown people, President Trump lowered the taxes of the rich and further divided the nation on the basis of race, national origin, and social strata. It is time to address the concerns of all Americans.  These objectives are not inconsistent with Rob’s desires for the nation. 

The interests to which I refer should not wait. Incrementalism has historically meant that the

needs of people of color - namely African Americans - must wait. Roosevelt’s New Deal was good for most white Americans, but in too many instances came at the expense of blacks. Roosevelt even refused to support an anti-lynching bill because he wanted southern white congressman to sup-

port his New Deal legislation. It is time to look out for all our citizens. The country’s leadership must be bold and “walk and chew gum at the same time”.  I do not agree with Rob’s notion that moving forward with a progressive agenda will make the fight for President’s Obama Affordable Care Act look like a “sixth-grade playgroud skirmis". The grade playground skirmish”. The legislation to make these changes has already been passed in the House of Representatives. It just needs to be passed in the Senate and signed by the President. In any case some goals are worth the skirmishes.  

Rob: Get Back to Normal First

While I share most (not all) of Woodson’s policy objectives, I believe the next president has a more pressing obligation. She or he must reinstate normalcy after the disaster of the Trump presidency. I see three things as essential: (1) restore respect for the rule of law; (2) operate the federal government without scandal and daily turmoil; and (3) repair our alliances around the world, thereby protecting our national security in a way consistent with our values and those of our allies.

Woodson’s agenda comes with two significant risks. First, a president seeking enactment of many of these proposals will embroil the nation in bitter partisan wrangling that will make the conflict over President Obama’s effort at passing the Affordable Care Act seem like a sixth-grade playground skirmish. Second, the political

backlash will likely consume that president and make him or her a one termer. Keeping a Democrat in the White House for at least eight years so we can flip the Supreme Court is much too important to sacrifice for the possibility of pipe dream policy proposals that will likely never become law.  For the most part, I’m with my brother Walker on where he wants to go, but first things first.   

Henry: Oh, I See What you’re Saying

Rob likes telling the story of one his first-year law professors who had the admirable quality of patiently listening to mostly incorrect answers given by students called on in class by gently telling them, “Oh, I see what you’re saying.” Professor Smith then steered the class to the right answer by picking out a few things the erring student said and weaving the correct answer into his response. I feel that’s the appropriate reaction to my colleagues. I fear they’re both right and both wrong and I should guide them both to a better place.

I wonder if where Woodson thinks America should go now and where Rob wants to go are that different. Will, fifty years from now,

America look that different under one vision than the other? Rob acknowledges he shares most of Woodson’s policy prescriptions (as do I). He just thinks we have more pressing problems now, that the house is burning down and putting out the fire takes precedence over building a new house.  But, he admits, the new house he’d build looks much like the house Woodson thinks we should start on now. 

 

The danger in Woodson’s do-it-now approach

lies in the risks Rob identifies – turmoil and potential backlash. The danger in Rob’s incrementalism lies in the injustice of putting off things that keep get-

ting put off.  As Martin Luther King, Jr told white ministers in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, the well-meaning moderate advocating patience often poses the greatest obstacle to justice. Civil rights couldn’t wait and some of the things Woodson thinks we should tackle now shouldn’t wait either.

 

Endless Conversation

We’ve only scratched the surface of this topic. Exploring ideas and differences like this forms the rationale for why we do this each week. Our masthead says “Endless Conversation.” The need for exploring topics like this demonstrates why that’s more than a slogan.