This has been a big week for women in politics. Nancy Pelosi was again elected speaker of the House. Additionally, there are far more women in the incoming Congress than in any previous one in our history, by a long shot. And most of them are Democrats. Also, the first woman announced that she’s running for president against Donald Trump. That woman is Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Some people may be basing their presidential vote on the gender of the candidate. Although this post is focused on the Democratic nomination contest, let’s be clear that, when it comes to the general election, plenty of people base their vote on gender, and many of them are Republicans. In any case, I am not one of those voters.
I think it is important that we have a woman president, just as I’d like to see greater diversity in general at the highest levels of our government. Nevertheless, I will not say that I would vote only to nominate a woman, or, on a related note, only to nominate a candidate of color, or a non-Christian candidate, etc. I won’t even say that “if all else is equal,” because all else is never truly equal. There are no two candidates who believe the exact same things, who bring the same quality of experience, leadership potential, or skills as a candidate. In theory, if that was really the case, then yes, I would favor a candidate that would break a barrier. But that’s not the reality.
So, even though I don’t accept the argument that Democrats must nominate, for example, a woman, I very much want the Democrats to nominate a particular woman. That woman is Sen. Elizabeth Warren. From what I’ve seen so far (obviously, I won’t be casting my vote for more than a year), I believe that she is the person best suited to lead our party, and, more importantly, to lead our country.
Although I want to focus mostly on Warren’s video announcing her run, Krugman’s point above about the CFPB is right on. I’ve written in the past about the Republican War on Consumers, and the clash between a party that recognizes the need for government to protect consumers and the party that instead looks to protect big corporations’ ability to take advantage of them. No one can make that argument more effectively than Sen. Warren.
In her video, Warren diagnosed a fundamental problem in our society and our politics: “Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice." But her campaign is not only about economics. Yes, she comprehends the importance of reversing economic inequality and significantly reducing corporate power, but she also emphasized that we must achieve true racial justice and equal rights for Americans of every background. Furthermore, she recognizes the connectedness of these struggles. For example, Warren tied the specific economic hardships faced by African Americans to the continued effects of historic discrimination in the housing market—showing that she understands that civil rights is an economic issue.
Warren also pointed out that Republicans are the ones who use divisive rhetoric, with the aim of getting middle- and working-class whites to vote against their interests by scaring them about “anyone who looks, thinks, prays, or loves differently than they do.” This is exactly what Democrats need to talk about.
Saying that Republicans are racist isn’t enough, we need to emphasize that they are using racism to distract voters from the fact that GOP policies are designed to help the 1% at the expense of the rest of us. Presumably, Warren won’t be the only candidate making this point, but the fact that she included it in her relatively short announcement video means that it will be central to her campaign. Recent research shows that this kind of approach will pay dividends for Democrats, winning over more voters of all races:
The race-class message describes racism as a strategy that the reactionary rich are using against all people. By moving away from conversations about racial prejudice that implicitly pit whites against others, the race-class message makes clear how strategic racism hurts everyone, of every race. It signals to whites that they have more to gain from coming together across racial lines to tackle racial and economic injustice than from siding with politicians who distract the country with racial broadsides. “The politicians,” a white guy in our Ohio focus group said, are “telling us you have to hate the black man because he does all the bad stuff . . . They’re dividing us so they can conquer.” A white woman in the group responded, “If we would all come together, the politicians wouldn’t have the strength they have.”
Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats, declared: Warren’s “message of multiracial populism is exactly the right way to take on Trump’s divide-and-conquer agenda.”
Warren’s video closed with an uplifting section centered on justice, opportunity, and inclusion (along with that one verb with which she has been associated since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell foolishly sought to use it while attempting to silence her):
“We can make our democracy work for all of us. We can make our economy work for all of us. We can rebuild America’s middle class, but this time we gotta build it for everyone. No matter where you live in America, and no matter where your family came from in the world, you deserve a path to opportunity . . . . Most of us want the same thing: to be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules, and take care of the people you love. That’s the America I’m fighting for. . . . If we organize together, if we fight together, if we persist together, we can win. We can, and we will.”
I’ve thought very highly of Elizabeth Warren for a long time. I wanted her to run in 2016. I believed that our party’s nomination contest in that year would be defined by a clash over how far to the left we should stand, in particular on economic issues. I wrote then:
It would be terrific to have that debate without the two wings of the party being represented by candidates of a different gender. It would be especially terrific for more progressive Democrats to be free of the conflict over whether to vote for an obviously well-qualified woman in Hillary Clinton in order to break the ultimate glass ceiling, or for a male candidate with whom they agree more often on the issues. Democrats would benefit from avoiding that kind of gut-wrenching decision . . . . A race that included both Warren and Clinton would render such a conflict moot.
Without rehashing the 2016 primary in too much detail, there’s certainly no evidence that female Democratic primary voters are to the right, relatively speaking, of their male counterparts on economic issues. Although, as I wrote at the time, I liked both candidates very much, I ultimately supported Sanders. I was undecided until just before I had to cast my vote. (I’ll add that I voted to nominate Obama in 2008, largely because of his Iraq stance and, more broadly, the way he conceived of the concept of pluralism and American national identity).
I suspect that had Warren run, Sanders either have would not have run or, if he had, he’d have been eliminated relatively quickly given Warren’s far greater stature at the time. I firmly believe that in a Warren-Clinton contest, virtually all Sanders supporters (yes, including the men) would have supported Warren on policy grounds.
As a comprehensive study of the data showed, only about 10 percent of Democratic primary voters expressed strongly sexist attitudes, for what it’s worth. Conjecture aside, whoever won such a contest, Democrats would presumably have avoided a good deal of the anger and vitriol generated in 2016 over the matter of sexism in the nominating contest. Thankfully, Democrats will have multiple women (whole binders of them, one might say) running in 2020, so my hope is that we can avoid a similar dynamic this time around.
Of course, as I said at the outset, I’m not voting for Sen. Warren because she’s a woman, or because I believe a woman, by definition, should be our nominee and our president (I’m not even entertaining the thought of another four years under the current president). She has laid out a compelling vision for reforming our society, and she will fight the fights that need fighting.
I’m with her because of what she believes, what she has accomplished, and what I know she can do to make America a stronger, fairer, and more just society for every one of us.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).