Kylie Cheung of Rantt has written a problematic piece, "Ambitious, Overprepared, Opportunistic: America's Problem With Female Politicians," but while tackling any such problem would theoretically be a worthy venture, Cheung mostly just uses her article as an opportunity to recycle some of the tired, weaponized gender attacks of Hillary Clinton and her cult. Cheung:
"And as for Warren, despite how neatly she fits the mold of an economic progressive who's been fighting the same fight for years, the same likability politics that haunted Clinton are arguably in play here. A widely held belief among many Democrats is that Warren shouldn't run because she's too polarizing to be electable.
"Despite how Sanders and Warren are, in many ways, just the male and female versions of each other, 2017 polling shows Sanders is decently liked across the aisle while Warren is passionately despised by everyone outside of her general base of supporters. In other words, it's not her stances and candor--which she shares with the notably male Bernie Sanders--that render her 'unelectable.' It's her gender."
The poll you're citing (but perhaps didn't bother to read) measures the popularity of U.S. Senators in their home states, not, as you've suggested there, nationally. In the nearly-year-old poll, Warren has--or had--only 38% disapproval, placing her on the upper half of the popularity scale. Hardly "passionately despised."
It's also the case that no one of any note--no one--has made any case for Warren being "unelectable." It's a fact that she's a weak campaigner and that this would likely be a problem for her in a high-pressure presidential race but few have made any note of even this.[1] Warren is widely perceived as a presidential prospect and has received remarkably little flak for this so far, even from right-wing quarters where she is despised.
The reaction to Kamala Harris didn't, as you would have it, happen in a vacuum, nor did her gender play any part in it. Harris took a trip to the Hamptons to meet some bigshot oligarchs and Democratic Establishment types immediately began hitting the press to declare her the next Democratic presidential nominee. On most of the policies that matter to progressives, Harris was--and still is--a complete unknown and the rush by those who just lost the last election to publicly coronate her just because she'd shown some early signs of being willing to prostitute her future administration to the money-men was a toxic combination that immediately generated pushback, exactly as could be expected. Pretending this had anything to do with her gender (or, as also became popular on the Clintonite right, her race) is sheer demagoguery.
You note that Hillary Clinton was widely perceived as unlikable, unrelatable, inauthentic and put this down to sexism and misogyny. You don't like that "accusations of inauthenticity, establishment ties, corruption and coziness with donors" were thrown at Hillary Clinton but Clinton wasn't, as you would have it, seen as "inauthentic" because she was a woman; people saw her that way because she was, in fact, utterly inauthentic. In all her years in the public spotlight, she's never projected a single image of herself that didn't feel like some cynical, focus-group-tested put-on. In addition to coming off as heavily-scripted in public--because she is, in fact, heavily scripted in public--Clinton holds a master's degree in mendacity and she's been on every side of every important issue--blows with the political wind and seems to have no overriding political convictions other than those she's paid by her donors to hold. Her presidential campaign had no rationale beyond a narcissistic drive to be president for its own sake. Her attacks on Sanders and progressives were relentlessly disingenuous, slanderous and sickening and the personality-cult that gathered around her only amplified them, making the situation worse. Clinton and her husband had been central figures in driving the Democratic party to the right and into the arms of the same donor class that already owned the Republican party. They are Corruption Inc., and noting this historical fact entails not even a whiff of gender bias.
Your article jousts with phantoms. "The idea that we should not back women for office because they won't win," you write, is "harmful" and is "sexism." It would be if anyone made such an argument but, of course, no one has. While you falsely tar progressives as "sexists," you write things like this:
"The election of pro-choice Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in Alabama proved to Democrats that the key to winning in red states isn't compromising on fundamental values..."
In his very brief time in the U.S. Senate, Doug Jones has voted against the Dreamers and in favor of granting Trump expanded wireless surveillance powers. If that's the kind of "winning" you want to do, well, it pretty much speaks for itself. The progressives you attack with the accusation of sexism--an accusation you, of course, knew to be false before you made it--are, in fact, presently fielding a large and growing army of Berniecrat candidates around the U.S. intent on taking back the congress this year and they're disproportionately women (and people of color). The future of the Democratic party isn't in the tired, corrupt rightist Clintons and Doug Joneses and Kirsten Gillibrands; it's in people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running in New York, Paula Jean Swearengin in West Virginia, Jenny Marshall in North Carolina and Sarah Smith in Washington. Progressives aren't some sexist obstacle to be overcome in the fight for that future; they're the ones leading it.
Rather than address progressives' genuine concerns about overly conservative and corrupt candidates, you parrot the deflection of the Clinton cult about "the far-left Sanders wing" of the Democratic party and how it's unreasonably obsessed with "ideological purity." Here's a fact about Bernie Sanders: his positions on the major issues represent the views of the broad center of political opinion in the U.S., including, often, even majorities of Republicans. He's not "far-left"; he is the center. The real center. And his policies are overwhelmingly popular within the Democratic party. In trying to marginalize those views, you only succeed in marginalizing yourself.[2]
I'm sure many will continue to harp on this tired--so tired--theme of Clinton as the crucified martyr to a a sexist America, but as so many women rise through the political ranks, those harpists are, at some point, simply gong to have to come to grips with the fact that Clinton didn't lose because she was a woman, she lost because she was a terrible candidate and people don't like her. Those of you enthralled by Clinton draw some sort of comfort from pretending this was all down to her girl-parts but the world is passing you by; the longer you cling to your myth, the further behind you will fall.
--j.
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[1] It's also the case that in the national polling on Warren, she still has pretty high unknowns.
[2] And while you accuse Sanders of furnishing Trump with his anti-Clinton playbook, you link to another Rantt rant where another Rantt clown is using Trump's phrase "alt-left" to slander progressives.
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