Yesterday, Hillary Clinton endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the New York Governor’s race. Cuomo, who claimed for years that he had no power over the turncoat IDC Democrats, but was still somehow able to convince them to disband a couple of months ago when faced with a new Leftwing primary challenger. I guess he just magically found the power to do so at the most convenient time. Cuomo, who has argued for tax cuts for the rich, charter schools, Wall Street deregulation, keeping wages at no higher than $9 an hour (in New York!!!), and capping property tax increases. Cuomo, who has less than 1% of his donations from $250-or-less contributors, and 60% of his donations from $10,000-or-more contributors. Well, what can we do, though, right? I mean he’s the Governor of Utah, we can’t have an actual Progressive in Utah or else he won’t get any crossover support, so we instead have to elect a Right-leaning Democrat because that’s all the populace will vote f…. Oh, no, wait, he’s Governor of New York. If that’s not a safe state for a Democrat to act like a real Democrat, there aren’t many safer places.
Who is he running against? A really unacceptable Republican. You know, a bully, a racist, someone that will enable Trump and gut our safety n… Nope. A Progressive. A woman. A feminist activist, a breast cancer survivor, a lesbian. For Pete’s sake, someone who has portrayed Emily Dickinson in a movie. Was this that rare case where Democrats were poised to make a hideous mistake, a la Alvin Greene in South Carolina, and it was coming down to the wire, and Hillary needed to step in front of the tracks in desperation? Nope, Cuomo has a fairly healthy lead, at least right now. Does Cuomo just need a little extra boost of money? Name recognition? A nod of needed gravitas from the Democratic Party? Of course not. He has a giant fundraising lead, and the party has backed him since Day 1. One could get frostbite in the shade that the Cuomo family shadow has cast within the Democratic Party (and within New York) for 50 years. Heck, he has a national TV journalist brother to boot. But Hillary felt the need to jump in anyway. Against Nixon. Hashtag-Resistance!
Am I upset with Secretary Clinton because she is female? No. I’m upset with her because this is the Democratic Establishment circling its own wagons and stymieing yet more Progressive voices for absolutely no good reason. It’s a big club, and we’re not in it. Am I only pointing this out because she is a woman, and I wouldn’t say this about a man? No. President Obama did the same thing. Where has Obama been over these last 2 years, while Trump has been engaging in deeply un-Constitutional abuses of power? Obama is a Constitutional scholar, after all, this is his wheelhouse. But next to nothing from him. Occasionally he gives a speech, or writes an op-ed, but he mostly stays silent while Rome burns. Has Obama been participating in and promoting the teacher’s strikes? After all, he was a teacher. Nope. Any projects designed to change our system so that Democrats have a fairer playing field in the future? Any calls for direct action, or boycotts, or attempts to heal the cultural divide? Attempts to go over Trump’s head and try to keep the peace around the world? Not really. He has pretty much stayed out of the fray, which I guess is his right.
Conor Lamb did barely win, but still could have used Obama’s endorsement in that razor thin election against a hideous Republican. Ossoff could have used Obama’s help, but no. Marie Newman was running in Obama’s own hometown of Chicago. Principled, strong woman, a human rights advocate, anti-bullying advocate, an author, a small business owner, fighting against corruption, against discrimination…. She lost by only 1000 votes or so, she could definitely have used Obama’s help against one of the most Rightwing Democrats in all of government--the 13th most Trump-friendly Democrat in Congress. Trump-friendly. In Chicago. Not Louisville, KY, but Chicago. But no. Obama instead ended his political quasi-hibernation to endorse Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein’s record does include some good Leftwing things over her career (as does Cuomo’s), but she’s also a warhawk, she voted for the Estate Tax repeal, for the Bush tax cuts, for Gramm-Leach-Bliley, for fracking, for private prisons, for the Death Penalty, supports for-profit colleges, voted for the NSA spying and the NDAA indefinite detention, for drone strikes, she supports the Israeli settlements, she is against Single Payer, against legalizing marijuana, once flew the Confederate Flag. I mean it’s ok, since she’s a Senator from Arkansas, so she has to lean Rightwar…. Nope, California. Did Feinstein need the extra money? The extra fame? The extra “frontrunner” status? An extra nod from the party’s power brokers? Nope.
Who is her opponent? In this case, we really have no idea (it’s a Jungle Primary), but she might well not even end up facing a Republican in the general election. So Obama’s one endorsement was for a Rightwing Democrat whose opponent might be another Democrat. That’s not even Hashtag-Resistance or the “Red to Blue” movement, it’s simply slapping other Democrats in the face. In a primary! In what every pundit sees as a safe Dem state, so there’s no realistic, urgent fear of losing the general to a Republican. When Bernie Sanders endorses candidates, they’re usually fighting a serious uphill fight, are being outspent quite a bit, and are getting very little media coverage—they really do need the help. Obama could have waited another month, seen Feinstein’s general election opponent (presuming she gets that far, which is nearly certain), then endorsed her if he saw fit. The primary and the general elections are 5 months apart in California—he had plenty of time. But he didn’t wait. There are 32 candidates in the race, including several EXCELLENT Progressives. What are the odds that Obama looked carefully through the positions of every Dem in the race, considered how much help the country needed, how Progressive the voters of California are, or even how important it might have been to endorse a Dem other than Feinstein, so that no Republican got into the Top 2 at all? I’m guessing he didn’t. Mr. Hope and Change threw his considerable heft behind the safest and easiest choice, a Blue Dog (who people wrongfully don’t think of as a Blue Dog) Senator trying to enter her 5th term, with a worldview still stuck in the 90’s. Wow, that’s really “change,” huh.
So here’s the problem. When I say “I can’t believe Hillary endorsed Cuomo” (I of course CAN believe it, I’m just appalled at it, but that’s a different story), the knee-jerk reaction by a ton of Hillary’s fans is “You sexist!,” even though that’s not the point I’m making. Sexism has become a convenient excuse for Democrats that don’t want members of the party to be criticized on economic (and other) policy grounds. When people criticize Chuck Schumer for inevitably endorsing Cuomo also soon, we won’t hear that those criticisms are directed at Schumer because the Left is anti-Semitic (probably, I mean, who knows), but saying that Gillibrand is wrong for endorsing Cuomo (as she has done already) is going to be met with several raised eyebrows. It is probably the third most overused defense mechanism for the Democrats behind “Russian stooge!!!!” and “Purist!!!!!!,” the three pillars of hippie-punching going on today. Let’s make a deal—I’ll happily root for Mueller to indict every member of Trump’s family and inside circle on a total of 380 counts of conspiracy with Russia, and celebrate alongside everyone here, even though Pence is still not going to do a thing to give people clean water or raise anyone’s wages or restore power to Puerto Rico. You know, the actual things that affect people’s lives. In exchange, can we get ONE f*cking Democrat from the Clinton-Obama wing of the party to endorse one f*cking Progressive candidate in a primary, in between the times when they’re all claiming to be such relentless Progressives with the same basic policy preferences as Bernie has?
I have not seen the evidence that Hillary Clinton lost her race because of sexism, and certainly not because of “sexism on the Left.” Has anyone shown the numbers of how many people voted for Hillary specifically BECAUSE she was female, i.e., because it would be a historic glass-ceiling shattering? Do we know that those numbers are fewer than the number of people who voted AGAINST her because she was female? Much like Hillary sent Claire McCaskill on TV to complain that the media wasn’t covering Bernie as a Socialist enough (i.e., they were giving him too much of a free ride for a country that would never accept a Socialist), and then she recently complained that “I guess I lost because I was not enough of a Socialist, I couldn’t please all of the Socialists I was running into!!,” there is a strong tendency from her camp to use whatever data happens to be convenient in order to deflect all blame. We hear a lot of “Some of my so-called allies weren’t ready for a female president,” but we don’t hear anything about how her gender may have helped her, because that’s not a good narrative to explain her real shortcomings as a candidate (suboptimal record, authenticity, charisma, strategy, etc.)
So there were some Bernie Boys (whoops, that’s “Obama Boys” from the previous campaign, these were “Bernie Bros,” apparently the Left’s “sexism” is always a campaign favorite) who would call Hillary a b*tch or the C-word in internet comments sections about Hillary stories. This is unfortunate, and I don’t defend those terms, but they also used comparable terms to describe men (Chris Matthews, for example, might be called a d*ck, or an a**hole, which is the generally analogous lingo that internet commenters use to negatively comment on men). Hillary was also called things like Killary and Shillary, and these were mis-diagnosed as “sexist” terms by people who feel that Hillary is actually a really principled Leftwing Progressive, so obviously all criticism in the form of a disparaging portmanteau must be a different category of disrespectful, and thus disrespectful of her gender. Nope. As evil as Donald Trump is, this does not by reserve-osmosis absolve Hillary’s support of our hideous drone program. It doesn’t excuse her saying “Cut it Out” to the banks she’d later give incredibly expensive speeches to, rather than trying to actually force them to “cut it out” by promoting policy. She was never singled out by the Left because she was a woman “and no man has ever been called on his corruption,” she ran for president at a time when the Left had simply had enough of the Establishment, and ANY Establishment Democrat would have been (and was) criticized, and she was the most glaring example of the Establishment there was. If a poll was done today about the Left’s feelings of Bill Clinton, a man, it wouldn’t be complimentary either. If a poll is done today about the Left’s feelings of Nina Turner, or Elizabeth Warren, my guess is that suddenly all the “sexism” would melt away in those poll numbers. Heck, many on the Left that didn’t like Hillary voted for Jill Stein. (Who is also a woman.)
Emily’s List has a goal of electing pro-choice women and electing Democrats. But do they? Kara Eastman was a pro-choice woman running against an abortion-restrictive man in a competitive primary. They found the money to quash the Progressive bid of Greg Edwards this past Tuesday and nominate a woman in that district, but somehow, for the same night, they couldn’t find any money for Eastman. We’ll see—she’s now the nominee, and so the opportunity to turn that seat Blue will rest in the support she gets. Will Emily’s List donate to her? My prediction (and we’ll see) is “no.” Because I don’t think it’s really about empowering women, I think it’s about empowering the corporate Establishment when it happens to be represented by either gender. I think that groups like this get funding in order to push corporate candidates that the party likes (the party donors like, I should clarify), and then treat opposition as sexism. As much as I would be very happy to see a wave of strong, powerful women entering office, in a wonderful “f*ck you” to Trump, the sexually-abusive piece of garbage in the White House, just upping the number of total X chromosomes in our Congress is not by itself a substitute for a Progressive agenda. If it were, we’d all be rooting for Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee, and we aren’t. And it isn’t sexist to say so.