With Warren out, the next US president will almost certainly be a man in his 70s
It’s the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote, which means conditions were perfect, in a sense of moral justice, to send a woman to the White House this year.
But it ain’t happening. (Yes, even though Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is still in the race.)
We still don’t know who will be on the general election ballot in November, but we do know it’ll almost certainly be one of two white men approaching their late 70s against President Donald Trump, also a white man and in his early 70s.
From a historically diverse field, the two Democrats left standing are Joe Biden, a Catholic who personally opposes abortion rights, and Bernie Sanders, who tends to do better with male voters, according to exit polls.
One of those guys will take up the banner of a party that will certainly build its case in 2020 around the political priorities of progressive women — including access to health care and to abortion.
What happened? If a majority of Democratic primary voters are women, why did a woman did not do better than third in any of the primaries so far? Warren even trailed Biden and Sanders among female voters in her home state of Massachusetts. Why, according to exit polls, did female voters not vote for female candidates?
Elizabeth Warren’s perfect comments on sexism and politics
As Warren suspended her campaign in the driveway of her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was asked if sexism played a role in her failure as a presidential candidate. Here’s how she replied:
Gender in this race?
You know, that is the trap question for every woman.
If you say, yeah, there was sexism in this race, everyone says, “Whiner.”
And if you say, no, there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, “What planet do you live on?”
She added that she plans to tackle this subject in the future. Read CNN’s Maeve Reston on how Warren’s departure from the 2020 race resonated on Thursday.
Americans say they’re comfortable with female candidates
Polls don’t do very much to explain what’s going on here, since the polls suggest far fewer voters are comfortable with someone over 75 (Biden and Sanders) or someone who has had a heart attack in the last year (Sanders).
When you look only at Democratic primary voters, a majority said they would be full-on enthusiastic about a female candidate.
Comfortable with a woman on the ballot. In a February NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 33% of Americans said they would be enthusiastic about having a woman run and 51% said they would be comfortable with it. Just 9% said they would have some reservations and 5% said they would be very uncomfortable.
More and more women in office. The number of women on Capitol Hill and in the Senate continues to grow. About a quarter of Congress and the Senate is composed of women. Nine of the nation’s 50 governors are women. So are 15 lieutenant governors, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
Having a woman in the Oval Office is a priority. Not the top priority.
In a January poll, NBC News/WSJ asked voters what, on a scale of 1-10, was most important to them with their primary ballots: defeating Trump, picking someone with big policy ideas, choosing a candidate who would continue the Obama agenda or electing the first female president.
Seventy-three percent gave defeating Trump a 9 or a 10. Just 21% said the same of electing the first female president.
And we know from 2016 that Trump could beat Hillary Clinton. Voters who don’t like him appear to have determined that means he could beat any woman.
There are two lanes. That’s it.
While the polls suggest enthusiasm for (or at least comfort with) a female candidate, the reality is this: Women did not vote that way for Warren or Amy Klobuchar. Other women who ran campaigns — Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Marianne Williamson — did not make it to the primaries.
Progressives chose Sanders. Moderates chose Biden.
“You know, I was told at the beginning of this whole undertaking that there are two lanes — a progressive lane that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent for, and a moderate lane that Joe Biden is the incumbent for, and there’s no room for anyone else in this,” Warren said Thursday. “I thought that wasn’t right, but evidently, I was wrong.”
That does not speak to major policy differences. Sanders’ and Warren’s policy proposals were near carbon copies. In fact, you can trace her decline in polling directly to her inability to explain during a CNN debate how to pay for the “Medicare for All” plan she borrowed from him. (That may be former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s lasting legacy on the trajectory of the race, along with his decision to get out before Super Tuesday to clear the path for Biden.) Sanders, by the way, borrowed the idea of a wealth tax from her. He also borrowed elements of a free child care program from her.
Warren’s 2020 legacy
Warren’s 2020 campaign may be most remembered for the way she took out the billionaire Michael Bloomberg, stomping on his rise in the polls during a debate in Las Vegas with a fierce line of questioning about nondisclosure agreements signed by former employees of his Bloomberg LP financial-data and media company.
That moment could have been evidence that she’d slice and dice Trump on a debate stage in the general election. Instead, it cleared a path for Biden.
Read: This VOX piece on how Warren’s support was always concentrated among affluent white professionals — who are not a majority of any political party.
It’s been a long month since Trump’s acquittal
Hard to believe that it was just a month ago that Senate Republicans acquitted Trump at his impeachment trial. (Yup. It was February 5.) In the meantime, the Democratic race has consolidated to two leading candidates and the coronavirus has become a full-fledged global public health crisis, blotting out the political drama that came with the Ukraine scandal.
But it’s clear that Republicans are preparing to bring back their Ukraine obsession in a big way. Reminder: Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, his potential 2020 general election rival, were at the center of the President’s impeachment trial. Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that Biden or his son, Hunter, acted corruptly in Ukraine.
If you’re wondering whether the Senate Republicans’ Biden and Burisma investigation is political, consider that they put it on hold while Biden was floundering. Now that he could be the Democratic nominee, they’ve resurrected it.
Trump said this to Sean Hannity about Burisma on Fox News: “That will be a major issue in the campaign. I will bring that up all the time, because I don’t see any way out. I don’t see any way — for them, I don’t see how they can answer those questions.”
Here are 27 odd lines from Trump’s Fox News interview Wednesday night.
What are we doing here?
The American system of government has been challenged to deal with a singular President and a divided country that will decide whether he should get another four years in the White House.
Stay tuned to this newsletter as we keep watch over the Trump administration, the 2020 presidential campaign and other issues of critical interest.
