The Election of Pocohontas

There is a new book out, by Ali Vitali, called "Electable: Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House … Yet". Its premise is that sexism is a major driving force behind the bypassing and/or non-election of femlae presidential candidates. Vitali is a liberal journalist who was embedded in the Warren campaign in 2019-2020.  She relied on "lengthy academic analysis based on Ivy League studies of "gender dynamics" and "sexist undercurrents"". Is her conclusion, and analysis, right?

This review is from the more conservative Andrew Stiles.  He presents the book without editorial comment, a remarkable accomplishment in today's media and politics. Warren claims that plenty of people came up to her and said "I would vote for you if you had a penis" (sure they did....Few would have the guts, and fewer still would refer to a penis instead of cock or dick. Another Warren BS story, but I digress). Stiles, in summarizing Vitali, notes "(She) describes feeling "pressure" to maintain a "level playing field and uniform metric of assessment" for female candidates attempting to "topple the patriarchy." She pounds the shift key for added emphasis to call out the "White Men of Political Media" who always ruin things," Stiles does not mention any solutions proposed by Vitali, but does note she repeats variations on "We think of them (women candidates) as different,' 

The Washington Post opined on why Elizabeth Warren got favorable press but less enthusiasm from voters, their conclusion being that Warren, like reporters is white, college educated, and high income. Reporters had 'one of their own' to report on, someone they could understand. They lament that most of America isn't of this demographic, so that reportage may not match public perception. Vox reported in more detail Warren's demographic problem. College-educated whites loved her. Everyone else didn't.

There is a revealing quote from Vitali's interview with NPR- 

"they had seen Hillary Clinton lose an election that everyone thought she was going to win but then also the way that Trump was looming over this field. I mean, you and I were talking to voters all the time, and everyone was trying to figure out .....how you could beat Trump.

"And look. This answer is unknowable. But for the women, it stuck with them in such a hard and fast way that they could never ultimately answer the electability question because really, the only way that a candidate can answer the electability question in a full and satisfactory way is to win. And for women, when they couldn't answer that question, voters then went in circles. And there have been studies done that showed that that little bit of doubt of having never seen a woman win in that way before made them actually switch their vote sometimes."

Vitali's book, her interviews, and her articles all seem like circular reasoning to me. She asserts sexism is the basis for rejecting female candidates and then magically finds tthat very thing.

Vitali starts with Ivy League studies of "gender dynamics" and "sexist undercurrents". Do you wonder what she 'found'? Notable to me is that Vitali says women haven't found the answer yet because the public has doubt in their ability to lead. Yet the public is quite comfortable with a woman president. 53% are ready for one, which is more than the proportion of voters comfortable with a Catholic president in 1960.

Evaluating a presidential candidate is not uni-factorial. It is multi-factorial, and includes issues such as likeability, trustworthiness, physical appearance (the taller candidate has won all but a tiny number of races since 1950, for example). Vitali focuses only an sex, and many other Democratic analyses focus on policy. Meanhile these same people lament the socio-political realities on the ground, rather than accepting what is and acting upon it. This quote is just crushing in its arrogance and detachment-

"Warren stands head and shoulders above her colleagues in Congress in part because her achievements are impressive.....

"....the overall level of educational attainment in the United States is simply lower than many college graduates seem to realize.

"Validated data from the 2016 election... suggests that only about one-third of 2016 voters had college degrees. The share among Hillary Clinton voters was higher, at 43 percent..... And among college graduates, about 75 percent attend schools that accept more than half of applicants, rather than the kind of state university flagships or elite private universities whose graduates dominate the media. In my friend group, it’s not unusual for someone to be a lawyer or a doctor or to have a master’s degree in something or other. As a policy journalist, I speak to a lot of experts in academia or the think tank world who have advanced degrees.

"But in the actual American population distribution, there are more high school dropouts than people with master’s degrees. The median American under the age of 30 has $0 in student loan debt, not because the median young person is superrich but because most people didn’t attend expensive higher education institutions in the first place."

This reads as "we're so smart and educated that dumb pigs like you people can't understand us." Oh, that will play well with the 70+% of Americans without college degrees!

It seems to me the essence of the failure of female presidential candidates is they were all flawed. Warren lied about her ethnicity, which may have made it easier for her to get into Penn and Harvard. She was listed as minority faculty, indicating she did list herself as 'Native American'. She was too liberal for most midwestern voters. Her popularity in the northeast corridor was a liability everywhere else. Kamala Harris has a pathetically thin resume for president. Her gaffes as both a prosecutor and a person made her a joke rather than a candidate. And Hillary Clinton was a liar, detroyed records and evidence, arranged meetings in airplanes, and while very bright, knowledgeable, and capable is also cold, stern, and aloof, swears like a sailor, and is dismissive of staff.

Vitali whines about the differential treatment given Kamala Harris when she went shopping in South Carolina. She was there, in Vitali's words, to visit women-owned businesses. She was covered by an almost exclusively female press, which Vitali attributes to sexism. In one boutique, woman-owned, she tried on a glittering, sequined jacket, a choice that made the news for days. Vitali says this is sexist, as plenty of male candidates have gone shopping without any attention at all.

Oh please.

A Black woman visits the South (race barriers) and visits only women-owned businesses, covered by a female-only press, and the bad coverage is because of sexism? No- a candidate pandering shamelessly to race and sex puts on a racially stereotyped garment that is far from professional, and gets fried for it, and rightly so. Imagine a gay candidate (Pete Buttigieg, eg) walking into a carefully selected store owned by a gay couple, and then trying on Elton John glasses and yellow platform shoes. That would be in the news for days as well, for exactly the same reasons. You weren't pilloried for being a woman. You were pilloried for being an idiot.

All these candaidates are more than just flawed. They have deliberately used sexual and racial stereotypes in trying to get elected. But politics is about far more than policy, and being a lying, insulting, presumptive person makes you a bad candidate regardless of your gender.

The more we dwell on race and sex the more they remain a topic. I don't care about my candidates' sex. For me they could all be Barbie and Ken dolls. But I do care when a candidate claims to be an Indian, or another makes her campaign about women's victory and empowerment, or another about race and women. You make it about women, and many men won't vote for you, and neither will anyone else whose politics rises above symbolism to the merely pragmatic, let alone those interested in larger themes. Every female candidate has failed of her own merits, not from sexism. Vitali, in emphasizing this single issue, exposes more of her own limitations than those of society.

Ted