Mediaboss Marketing

Anti-Donald Trump activism among conservatives known informally as the #NeverTrump movement started in early 2016 as a way to stop the businessman from winning the GOP nomination. It failed.

Even by the slightly broader standard of influencing Republican politics, #NeverTrump has been largely unsuccessful. Trump won around 90 percent of self-identified Republican voters in 2016, similar to past GOP presidential nominees. About 90 percent of Republicans have approved of Trump throughout his first term, similar to George W. Bushs standing in his first four years in office. And with Trump as the face of the party, Republican congressional candidates won around 90 percent of the GOP vote in the 2018 midterms, just as in recent midterm elections. There is really only one anti-Trump figure among the 249 Republicans on Capitol Hill: Sen. Mitt Romney.

Never Trumpers tried to draft a high-profile Republican like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan to run against Trump for the GOP nomination. That didnt pan out either. Facing fairly weak opponents, Trump easily won the GOP primaries that occurred earlier this year. Polls also suggest most Republicans will be strongly behind Trump this November too he is getting about 90 percent of the Republican vote in head-to-head match-ups with the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden.

But Never Trumpers are increasingly involved in the Democratic Party and have gradually shifted their tactics in that direction effectively becoming a Never Trump and Never Bernie Sanders coalition. And they appear to be having more success shaping their new party than the one that many of them had been associated with for much of their lives. Heres how that shift has happened.

By pure numbers, the anti-Trump conservative bloc is both fairly small and not that remarkable. The group of Republican voters who disapprove of Trump is similar (but slightly smaller) than Democrats who disapproved of then-President Barack Obama during his first term. Conservatives who really hate Trump probably no longer identify as Republicans 11 percent of Republicans switched their party affiliation between December 2015 and March 2017, according to Pew. But surveys suggest that the share of Democrats switching affiliation in that same period is about the same. Its hard to be precise about this: Data suggests at most 10 percent of American voters overall are anti-Trump but generally lean Republican. Thats not nothing, but between 40 and 50 percent of Americans are likely to vote for Trump in November.

But while this hard to prove conclusively, anti-Trump conservatives are arguably way overrepresented in elite media, at least compared to their numbers in the general population. The New York Times, for example, has three conservative-leaning but Trump-skeptical opinion columnists David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens and no columnists who regularly align with the president. MSNBC has programs fronted by two anti-Trump hosts once closely aligned with the GOP establishment ex-Rep. Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace, a former communications director for President George W. Bush and no explicitly pro-Trump hosts. Among the 53 Washington Post opinion writers highlighted on the papers website, seven are people who have identified with conservatives and/or the Republican Party in the past but regularly attack Trump. Just four are conservatives who regularly defend the president. Numerous anti-Trump conservatives are also featured prominently on CNN.

How did this happen? Well, from the media perspective, the prominence of Never Trump conservatives makes perfect sense. The readers and watchers of The Post, The Times and MSNBC in particular are disproportionately left-leaning. So these audiences probably dont want too much explicitly pro-Trump commentary. At the same time, news outlets usually like to present themselves as both offering a diverse set of voices and not too closely aligned with one party or the other. So by featuring, for example, George Conway, a conservative lawyer turned Never Trump leader who sharply criticizes the president in his cable news appearances and columns in The Washington Post, the press can essentially suggest, Its not just the liberal media, even Republicans were angry when Trump did X.

But its not simply as if the media has hired every Republican who says that they dont like Trump. Many of the conservatives in high-profile media slots (like Brooks) were there before Trumps rise. Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana and co-author of a new book on anti-Trump conservatives, said the kind of conservatives who get jobs at places like CNN were predisposed to dislike a Trump-style GOP politician.

Many prominent Never Trumpers, Saldin said, operate and make a living in liberal institutions. They think of their jobs as translating conservative ideas to liberals. They had invested in the idea that conservatism was respectable, he said. In particular, Saldin said, these figures had worked hard to suggest that racism was not a major feature of conservatism.

So they were particularly horrified by Trump because he embodied what they had spent their careers saying was not conservatism, he added.

In my interviews with several prominent Never Trump conservatives, they not only suggested the groups high-media profile was somewhat accidental, but were kind of defensive about it.

Tim Miller, a prominent Never Trump activist who worked on Sen. John McCain and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushs presidential campaigns, dismissed the notion that Never Trumpers are only in green rooms.

But getting into media consumed by liberals is in some ways the only game in town for anti-Trump conservatives, since Fox News is very pro-Trump and features few critics of the president. And that platform to reach Democrats has been particularly useful for Never Trump conservatives because

The core argument of Never Trump Republicans goes something like this:

This argument may not be totally true. And the Never Trump narrative is clearly self-serving of course a group of conservatives who feel like they dont fit in the current Republican Party prefer a more conservative Democratic Party that they can align with.

But true or not, this narrative matters because it has mirrored and likely influenced the Democratic Partys post-Trump strategy. Since Trumps victory, Democrats have done a lot of soul-searching. Is the party too left? Or is it too establishment and centrist? Are Democrats ignorant of the concerns of the Americans who dont live on the coasts? Are they too focused on nonwhite voters or not focused on them enough?

Faced with these complicated questions in 2017 and 2018, Democrats took an approach that was broadly similar to the Never Trumpers attacking Trump as a uniquely dangerous threat to American democracy while resisting more liberal policy ideas and recruiting fairly centrist candidates in key congressional races. This approach led some Never Trumpers to get behind Democrats in the midterms moving beyond simply opposing Trump to fighting the Republican Party more broadly.

By at least early 2018, if not late 2017, there was general understanding that we needed to build a cross-partisan pro-democracy coalition that could prevail over Trumpism, which meant helping to unite Democrats, independents and principled conservatives, said Evan McMullin, the anti-Trump conservative who ran for president in 2016 and now runs a group called Stand Up Republic that focuses on defending democratic values.

Fortunately, Democratic leadership and many candidates in competitive districts naturally understood this opportunity and what it required, he added. Unifying candidates like Ben McAdams in Utah and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia were examples of those who attracted the support of principled conservatives and Republicans.

Its hard to quantify exactly how many anti-Trump conservatives backed Democrats in 2018 and how big a role they played in Democrats taking the House and winning many key governors races. But that temporary alliance between Never Trump Republicans and Democrats was strengthened in 2019 for two reasons. First, Never Trump Republicans found there was little appetite in the GOP for a primary challenge to Trump another illustration of their declining influence within the party. And second, in a final blow for some of them, Republicans largely stood by Trump even as details emerged about his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

I was so sure there was going to be a handful of Republicans who were going to say it was clearly wrong, said Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican strategist who was heavily involved in the effort to recruit a challenger to Trump. She added, Its been a slow realization that there isnt anybody left who is going to say anything.

In response, many of the Never Trumpers decided to get even deeper into Democratic politics, injecting themselves into the partys fractious presidential primary. And they had an obvious path to take: While Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were pushing Democrats to take more liberal policy stands, several candidates were echoing the views of the Never Trumpers. Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was arguing that a Democratic candidate with fairly moderate policy ideas could win over Republicans in a general election, emphasizing his potential appeal to future former Republicans. Sen. Amy Klobuchar made similar arguments. Biden was publicly noting how much he likes the writings of The New York Timess Brooks, who was calling for Democrats to avoid going too far left.

When Sanders did well in the early primaries and seemed like he could win the Democratic nomination, Never Trump conservatives turned into a Never Bernie coalition. The Never Trumpers argument that Sanders couldnt win the general election, in part because anti-Trump Republicans (like themselves) wouldnt vote for him was compelling, particularly for a Democratic Party obsessed with beating Trump. And the Never Trumpers were already in the ideal positions to make these arguments and reach Democratic Party elites and primary voters the web pages of The Atlantic, The New York Times and The Washington Post and on MSNBC. Miller, in an anti-Trump publication called The Bulwark, described how he and other Republicans had failed to mobilize effectively against Trump in the 2016 GOP primary and laid out a step-by-step guide for how Democrats could avoid the same fate. (The piece was widely circulated on Twitter.)

Sanderss allies noticed all of this, of course, and started to publicly complain that MSNBC, in particular, was covering his candidacy too negatively. Its hard to prove that a lot of Democratic primary voters were Never Trumpers or that Democratic voters were particularly swayed by the groups warning about Sanders. But Never Trump conservatives were thrilled with Bidens victories on Super Tuesday and think they played a part in it.

One group that really mattered in the primaries were the high-information voters, the people who watch MSNBC, listen to The Daily, said Miller, referring to a popular New York Times podcast. A lot of these people went from Harris to Warren to Buttigieg and finally landed on Biden. For these voters, it was all an assessment of who could defeat Trump. For them, we [Never Trumpers] have a unique experience and insight.

Our message before and during the early primary elections was that principled conservatives and Republicans were a winnable bloc and could provide the decisive votes in general election swing states as long as Democrats didnt nominate a divisive, far-left candidate, McMullin said. Appropriately, Democratic voters prioritized replacing Trump in 2020 above other issues.

As I explained earlier, it is possible that 5 to 10 percent of the people who will vote for Biden in November backed either Romney in 2012 or Trump in 2016 and at some point identified as conservative or Republican. So while Never Trump conservatives are a smaller and less formal constituency in the Democratic Party than black voters, for example, some of them feel exiled from a Republican Party dominated by Trump, backed Democrats in the 2018 midterms and participated in the 2020 Democratic primaries. Michael Halle, a strategist on Buttigiegs campaign, said about 50 of the campaigns county precinct captains in Iowa were former Republicans who changed their party registration to become Democrats so they could participate in the caucuses and back the former mayor.

Those exiled Republicans are already mobilizing behind Biden in the general election. They are urging fellow conservatives not to support Rep. Justin Amash, who left the GOP in 2019 and last week announced an exploratory committee for a presidential run as the Libertarian candidate. They argue Amashs candidacy might increase Trumps chances of reelection.

So Never Trump conservatives can probably make some demands of Biden, just like any other constituency in the party, and he might feel some need to court them.

And that seems to be happening. The former vice president hinted recently that he might name some Republicans to his cabinet or transition team. Rumors of his consideration of Klobuchar for vice president is no doubt largely about her potential appeal to voters in the Midwest, but her more centrist politics also make her a favorite of some moderate Republicans.

I dont know that Biden needs a message for Never Trumpers most Never Trumpers are going to vote for Biden, Miller said. But, he added, I do think eventually the campaign should have a message for them.

Mostly, Never Trumpers simply want Biden to run a general election campaign similar to his primary run, emphasizing more moderate policies and appealing to more centrist voters.

I dont want him to make crazy sacrifices to the left that he doesnt need to make, Miller said.

The extent to which Never Trumpers become card-carrying members of the Democratic Party might have broad implications for the partys future. Are we seeing the birth of a new, ex-conservative faction in the Democratic Party or the resurgence of an existing one, with Never Trump conservatives joining with longtime Democratic moderates? Could that wing of the party become as strong as it was in the 1990s? The 2018 general elections and the 2020 primaries suggest more centrist Democratic candidates are winning among white, college-educated voters in the suburbs against both Trump Republicans but also Sanders Democrats. Thats an opportunity for Democrats to expand their coalition after all, white voters are the majority of American voters. Its also likely to be a challenge: The more liberal bloc of the Democratic Party increasingly favors big, transformative policies on economic issues that longtime moderate Democrats and ex-Republicans are unlikely to ever embrace.

On the other hand, the alliance between Never Trump conservatives and Democrats could be a fleeting one. If Trump loses badly in November, perhaps anti-Trump Republicans can regain influence in the party many of them still want to be in.

If he loses, there is a lot of room for a fight over the soul of the party, Longwell said.

If he wins, then its pretty definitive.

The rest is here:
How Never Trumpers Crashed The Democratic Party - FiveThirtyEight

Four Democrats running for Ernst's seat in the Senate give their view on COVID-19 outbreak

Updated: 11:27 PM CDT May 10, 2020

Hide TranscriptShow Transcript

CYNTHIA: SENATOR JONI ERNST IS RUNNING UNOPPOSED ON THE REPUBLICAN TICKET. SHE SAYS ONE OF THE GREATEST CHALLENGES WITH THE CORONAVIRUS RIGHT NOW IS TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF OUR WORKERS AND OUR FOOD SUPPLY. SEN. ERNST: WERE WORKING WITH A NUMBER OF MEATPACKING FACILITIES IN THE STATE OF IOWA, OUR PORK PRODUCERS, TRYING TO FIND RELIEF FOR THEM, AS WELL. WE DO BELIEVE THAT AS WE MOVE FORWARD TO MY SHOULD THERE BE A PHASE 4, AND I THINK THERE WILL BE, WE MAY NEED TO MAKE SURE AGRICULTURE IS SUPPORTED IN THOSE EFFORTS AS WELL. CERTAINLY, WE ARE SEEING A LOT OF HARDSHIP ACROSS THE STATE OF IOWA BECAUSE OF COVID-19. CYNTHIA: THE 4 DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES VYING FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION TO TAKE ON ERNST IN THE FALL BELIEVE THE APPROACH IN DEALING WITH THE SPREAD OF THE VIRUS HAS BEEN HAPHAZARD. MR. FRANKEN: WEVE GOT TO RAMP UP THE AMOUNT OF TESTING. WE NEED TO ENSURE AND MANDATE THAT EMPLOYERS BRING ABOUT THE NECESSARY PPE AND CHANGE THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY ARE PRODUCING THEIR PRODUCTS OR SERVING THEIR CUSTOMERS TO ENSURE THAT WE PUT THE KABBALAH SEAN -- THE KIBOSH ON THIS DISEASE TO THE BEST OF OUR ABILITIES. MS. GRAHAM: TO ORDER THESE PLANTS TO STAY OPEN WHEN WE DONT HAVE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS FOR WORKERS IS ESSENTIALLY SAYING TO THEM, YOU CAN CHOOSE TO GET VERY ILL AND POTENTIALLY LOSE YOUR LIFE, OR YOU CAN GO TO WORK. YOU CAN CHOOSE POVERTY OR DEATH, I GUESS, IS YOUR CHOICE. I MEAN, ITS JUST RIDICULOUS. MS. GREENFIELD: IT STARTS WITH FOCUSING ON WORKERS AND FAMILIES. WE NEED MORE DIRECT PAYMENTS TO WORKERS WHO HAVE BEEN LAID OFF, OR LOST THEIR HOURS, SO THEY CAN PAY THE RENT, PUT MILK IN THE REFRIGERATOR, THE KINDS OF THINGS WE KNOW MOTHERS OF 4 NEED TO DO. MR. MAURO: AT THE STATE LEVEL, GOVERNOR REYNOLDS DOING HER BEST. I THINK SHE IS MISGUIDED IN THE SPEED OF TRYING TO OPEN THE STATE. AS SOMEONE WHO DEALS WITH HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN ASSETS AND AGGREGATES, I WORRY ABOUT THE ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF OPENING TOO SOON. CYNTHIA: STILL, MOST SAY WE NEED TO PUT POLITICS ASIDE TO PUSH THROUGH THIS PANDEMIC. SEN. ERNST: STAY SAFE AND STAY STRONG, AND WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER. CYNTHIA: CYNTHIA FODOR, KC

Four Democrats running for Ernst's seat in the Senate give their view on COVID-19 outbreak

Updated: 11:27 PM CDT May 10, 2020

Four democrats are competing for the chance to take on Sen. Joni Ernst in the fall election. KCCI's chief political reporter Cynthia Fodor interviewed Mike Franken, Kimberly Graham, Theresa Greenfield and Eddie Mauro on their view of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Four democrats are competing for the chance to take on Sen. Joni Ernst in the fall election. KCCI's chief political reporter Cynthia Fodor interviewed Mike Franken, Kimberly Graham, Theresa Greenfield and Eddie Mauro on their view of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Originally posted here:
Four Democrats running for Ernst's seat in the Senate give their view on COVID-19 outbreak - KCCI Des Moines

Addressing the inequalities in the United States exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic served as a major motivational force for Democrats running for Congress in central Virginia.

Political campaigns have had to adjust how they get the word out to voters while maintaining social distancing. So instead of a forum held at a high school or community center before a crowd of voters, the four Democrats participated in an online forum on Saturday.

The candidates all brought the issues they discussed, from health care to voting rights, back to the coronavirus pandemic as a reason to make bold improvements to policy at the federal level.

Voters will choose their nominee June 23. The Democrat will face Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Nelson) or Bob Good, who are competing in a heated convention that will take place in the next several weeks at a date still to be determined. While the district is favorable to Republicans, House Democrats are targeting the seat.

The 5th Congressional District is Virginias largest district, stretching from Fauquier County to the North Carolina border and including the eastern slice of Henry County, Danville and Pittsylvania County, Franklin County and part of Bedford County.

Health care and economic inequality emerged as two of the most pressing issues during the forum, moderated by Del. Elizabeth Guzman, D-Prince William.

This coronavirus pandemic has told us one thing: 2020 will be the health care election, said Webb, who has made fixing the health care system the main focus of his campaign.

Webb, an internal medicine doctor, said making sure people can access affordable health care is more complicated than a three-word slogan. He worked on a White House health care team during the Obama administration to help implement the Affordable Care Act. He said the country can do better than having health insurance tied to employers, and there should be a public option.

Weve got to fix private insurance so were putting people over profits, Webb said.

Huffstetler and Russo both supported a proposal U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has reintroduced before called Medicare X, which would create a new public option for health insurance. Lesinksi also supported a public option.

This pandemic has clearly demonstrated to all of us that every American must have access to health care, Russo said.

The candidates said the pandemic has fueled a large growth in telemedicine. But Lesinski said people in rural areas dont have that same access because they lack broadband.

He said that as the country emerges from the coronavirus crisis and tries to rebuild its economy, rural America will fall behind unless it has the broadband needed to attract employers and to allow for people to work from home.

Its the rural electrification issue of our time, Lesinski said.

Huffstetler emphasized his familys working class roots and said his campaign is focused addressing economic inequality. He said the economy has been changing, and people dont always keep the same job for more than 30 years, and workers need to upgrade their skills. Hed like to work on developing a program so community colleges and industries partner together to maintain a skilled workforce.

My legislative priorities are making sure that when people work hard in this country, the country has their back, Huffstetler said.

Russo said the federal government did not prepare for the pandemic as it should have done. Citing her own background as a Marine officer training Marines and an intelligence officer learning lessons from past wars and applying them to the future, she said shes equipped to work on steering the country out of the crisis and preparing for future ones.

Its never been more clear that its going to take bold leadership to guide this country out of this crisis in a fair and just manner, Russo said.

Lesinski connected the poor planning for a viral outbreak to the lack of bold action on climate change. Climate change is a legislative priority for Lesinski, who said reducing the countrys carbon footprint and shifting to renewable energy will create new jobs.

Its a canary in the coal mine for fighting climate change, because if we dont get on this now, were going to lose a lot more lives, he said.

The candidates all agreed that the pandemic has highlighted the need to expand voting rights. Huffstetler said there should be automatic voter registration when people get their drivers license. He said working people cant always make it to the polls on Election Day, so he said being able to vote absentee without providing an excuse is essential.

There is no reason under the sun we should be making it harder to vote, Huffstetler said.

Lesinki said that even though states are making progress in expanding voting rights, more needs to be done at the federal level. He referenced the federal court decision this week to waive the witness requirement to cast absentee ballots in the June primaries in Virginia.

Republicans tried to retain the witness requirement, citing the risk of voter fraud. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud with voting by mail.

The strategy here clearly is voter suppression, voter suppression of those individuals the Republican Party feels is going to be a continued threat to them winning or gaining a majority, Lesinski said.

During the last election, Riggleman defeated Democrat Leslie Cockburn by about 20,000 votes. Webb raised the issue of 38,000 black residents who arent registered to vote in the district, and more than 30,000 registered black voters didnt vote in the last election.

I think when we field the full team as Democrats, when we expand the electorate, we win, Webb said.

Originally posted here:
Addressing inequities worsened by pandemic main issue for 5th Congressional District Democratic candidates - Martinsville Bulletin

Ousted Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Lau Siu-lai challenged an electoral officers decision to bar her from running in the 2018 Legislative Council Kowloon West by-election last Thursday.

In October 2018, Returning Officer Franco Kwok Wai-fun said Laus by-election nomination was invalid, arguing that she had backed calls for self-determination and thus would not genuinely uphold the Basic Law.

Lau had hoped to salvage her seat in the legislature, after being stripped of her status in 2017 following a row over protests she staged during her oath-taking. Five other opposition legislators were also disqualified. The controversy later led to Beijing interpreting Article 104 of the Basic Law, which requires lawmakers to swear allegiance to the HKSAR solemnly.

During the High Court hearing last Thursday, Laus counsel Paul Shieh argued that a persons political standpoint was subject to change, but the returning officer never enquired as to whether Laus stance had evolved. Shieh also cited another ousted legislator Edward Yiu, who was allowed to enter the by-election after clarifying his stance with the officer.

Justice Anderson Chow observed that Lau was denied a chance to explain her stance. Johnny Mok, representing the electoral officer, argued that there had not been evidence to suggest that Lau had changed her stance within a short period of time. He added Lau had the responsibility to inform the returning officer should there be a change, instead of the officer making an enquiry.

The court had adjourned the case to another date for verdict.

On Friday, Lau announced on Facebook that she would not be running in the upcoming Legislative Council election, which is tentatively set to take place on September 6.

202058

She said she wanted to reserve more time to serve her affiliated party the Labour Party and other parts of civil society, as well as to coordinate with the pro-democracy camps plan to secure more than half of the seats in the legislature.

Fighting for democracy is the common aspiration of every Hongkonger I hope everyone can be united, Lau wrote.

Another two democrats who were thrown out of the legislature Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung were ordered by a court last Tuesday to each repay HK$930,000 they received in advance as wages and subsidies before their disqualification.

The court had ruled in favour of the Legislative Council Commission after the former Youngspiration legislators failed to appear at the hearings. According to local media, the commission said Leung and Yau submitted their defence in 2018, but did not respond to the commissions request to provide further information.

Last year, the commission asked to combine Leung and Yaus cases but the duo did not attend the hearing. They also did not provide an explanation for their absence as required by the court. The commission argued that the ousted lawmakers had not actively fought their claims and the Registar decided to reject Leung and Yaus defence.

Leung told local media that the commission had refused to accept his return of the supplies he bought and later pursued to recover his salary and subsidies. He slammed the authorities as shifting the goalposts to disqualify legislators and using procedural tricks to suppress them.

If I still waste time and effort to respond to this, I think it is unreasonable, Leung said, adding that he has owed more than HK$4 million legal fees. He said: So for a small creditor like the Legislative Council Commission, [they] may have to wait in line.

Read the original post:
Disqualified Hong Kong democrat challenges 2018 by-election ban as two other ousted lawmakers told to repay wages - Hong Kong Free Press

Democratic presidential rivals Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar say goodbye to each other after Warren's speech at a Martin Luther King Day rally on Jan. 20 in Columbia, S.C. Both women dropped out of the race in early March. Meg Kinnard/AP hide caption

Democratic presidential rivals Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar say goodbye to each other after Warren's speech at a Martin Luther King Day rally on Jan. 20 in Columbia, S.C. Both women dropped out of the race in early March.

Elizabeth Warren has now fully thrown her support behind former Vice President Joe Biden in the presidential race. She has even said, without question, that she would serve as his vice president.

It has been a little over a month since Warren dropped out of the race. At the time, only Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, two older white men, were left as the viable candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, highlighting that the Democratic Party would not diversify the top of the ticket this year.

The party had had its most diverse set of candidates of all time this cycle, including the largest group of women ever. That six-woman wave of candidates came after four years of buildup years that featured Democratic women getting mad, getting organized, getting on the ballot and getting elected in record numbers in 2018.

And Democrats sure seemed excited about women in the abstract: As of November, 83% of Democrats said they were "enthusiastic" about voting for a woman. Only 53% said they were "enthusiastic" about white men.

But then, it was never assured, or even widely assumed, that a woman would win the nomination. Biden and Sanders went into the race with high name recognition among Democrats and with significant bases of support, whether among party activists or the establishment.

And as it turned out, the race came down to those two white men. So ... what happened? Gender was definitely a factor in this year's Democratic primaries. How could it not be after what the party has seen over the past four years? But the ways in which attitudes about gender impacted the outcome are varied and, of course, more than a bit complicated.

What we know: Democrats' electability "freakout"

When Warren bowed out, she was explicit in calling out sexism.

"If you say, 'Yeah, there was sexism in this race,' everyone says, 'Whiner!' " Warren said. "If you say, 'No, there was no sexism,' about a bazillion women think, 'What planet do you live on?' "

I've spent more than a year asking voters about gender and sexism in this presidential race, and I can say with confidence that Democratic voters who don't want to vote for a woman (or, at least, who will say such a thing out loud) are rare to nonexistent.

In a January Ipsos/USA Today poll, 84% of people who planned to vote in Democratic primaries said they agreed with the statement that they would be "comfortable with a woman president."

But that leaves 1 in 6 potential voters in another category. That group includes the 5% who said they disagreed.

Perhaps 5% is a sliver, but especially in tight primaries, it is meaningful if 1 in 20 voters are biased against the female candidates. (Furthermore, there is the question of what the other 11% of voters meant when they said they "neither agree nor disagree.")

And then there's this: Only 33% of likely voters of any party said they thought their neighbors would be comfortable with a female president.

A woman dressed as Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the annual Village Halloween parade in 2019 in New York City. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A woman dressed as Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the annual Village Halloween parade in 2019 in New York City.

This is something that many journalists (myself included) heard over and over in interviews with voters not sexism itself driving voters' choices, but fears about other people's sexism.

"I have a friend at work she's like, 'You're not progressive.' She thinks that I don't want a woman president," Anita Burgess told NPR in March 2019. "I do! But I don't think they're going to do it! And so I can't waste my vote either, because we have to get the orange man out. I'm sorry orange man got to go," she said, mocking President Trump's appearance.

And that feeling persisted in the Democratic electorate through the primaries.

"I really like Elizabeth Warren, but I just don't think a woman is going to win this election, unfortunately," UCLA student Brook Rosenberg told NPR as she stood in line to vote in California's primary. "Also, I don't want Trump to tear her down."

Polling showed how widespread this fear was. In that January poll, 50% of people who planned to vote in the Democratic primaries said they agreed that a woman would have a tougher time running against Trump than a man. Half as many 24% disagreed.

It's important to keep in mind that while a wide field of female candidates is a relatively new phenomenon, this kind of amateur political strategizing is nothing new.

"The Democrats always freak out about electability," former presidential contender and Democratic Rep. Pat Schroeder told me (with a heavy sigh) in December. "I mean, I remember every single primary, everybody starts, [gasp] 'Who are we going to get?'"

"Of course," she added, "this year, we're having a bigger freakout than normal just because people are so obsessed about, 'How do we get rid of Trump?'"

It's not just that Democrats desperately want to unseat Trump, though. For some voters, the very fact not just that a woman lost in 2016, but that this man won someone with a track record of insulting and objectifying women, who also has a long list of sexual misconduct claims against him (all of which he denies) is a sign of how much sexism their fellow voters are willing to put up with.

"I don't think it's right, but I think that the fact that we have the person in the White House that we do, it is evidence that the country is not quite totally ready for a woman," New Hampshire voter Patti Rutka told me in March 2019.

Or as Mother Jones' Pema Levy more pithily opined, "Trump's greatest trick was convincing voters women can't win elections."

And so, as Democratic organizer Karine Jean-Pierre explains it, voters thought about who seemed like they could be president.

"They're thinking, 'We have to beat Donald Trump. What's the best way to do it?'" she said. "OK. Maybe someone who is of his age, someone who has been the closest to being presidential, if you think about being a vice president, being the No. 2 to the president being in the Oval Office, having all of those visuals."

At the 2019 Iowa State Fair, a woman takes a selfie near Sen. Kamala Harris and former Iowa Democratic Party chair Sue Dvorsky. Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

At the 2019 Iowa State Fair, a woman takes a selfie near Sen. Kamala Harris and former Iowa Democratic Party chair Sue Dvorsky.

On the Democratic side, Biden has grappled with gender in ways that have disappointed some feminists. Early in his campaign, multiple women accused him of invading their personal space. He eventually apologized ... around the same time that he joked about the matter onstage at a campaign event.

In addition, some news outlets have reported more recently about a more serious allegation against the former vice president.

Biden also reported early in 2019 that he had apologized to Anita Hill for her treatment when she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in his Senate confirmation hearings. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Biden chaired those hearings.

Hill told The New York Times that she didn't feel Biden had apologized to her for his own role in her treatment.

"I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, 'I'm sorry for what happened to you,' " she said. "I will be satisfied when I know that there is real change and real accountability and real purpose."

The "hostile sexism" factor

Here's one more thing we know: that higher levels of sexism were associated with a greater likelihood of supporting Biden and Sanders, as well as a lower likelihood of supporting Warren.

Political scientist Brian Schaffner attempted to measure sexism by having pollsters ask Democrats if they agreed with phrases including "women are too easily offended" and "most women fail to appreciate fully all that men do for them." In a separate interview, pollsters asked those same people whom they preferred in the primary.

Kirsten Gillibrand waits to speak during the official kickoff rally of her campaign for president in March 2019 in New York. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Kirsten Gillibrand waits to speak during the official kickoff rally of her campaign for president in March 2019 in New York.

"There is a very strong relationship between how people responded to the questions that are meant to measure sexism and whether they were likely to vote for Elizabeth Warren," Schaffner said. "And it was the least-sexist Democratic voters who supported her the most. But her support dropped off very quickly among those who registered higher levels of sexism."

Schaffner found something similar in the 2016 general election that there was an association between sexism, as he defined it, as well as racism and voting for Trump. But he says that these associations mean something different in a Democratic primary.

"In a primary election, you take party out of the equation," he said. "You have a bunch of candidates who have very similar positions who are running against each other. And people tend to rely on what they can, that differentiates these candidates who otherwise look fairly similar to them. And gender is definitely one of those things."

Furthermore, while Schaffner found this correlation and, to be clear, attempted to control for a range of factors, like ideology his study doesn't mean that a bunch of voters walked into the voting booth with straightforwardly sexist ideas driving their votes. He recognizes that the relationship is subtler.

"I think a lot of this plays at a subconscious level for voters," he said. "They may not be really aware that the things that they think grate on them about Warren are actually things that wouldn't bother them if it was a man doing the same things."

The presidency may be different

But then, hold on. We do know that female candidates often do just fine at winning races in fact, studies show that female congressional candidates win at roughly the same rates as men do. ("When women run, they win" is a common refrain among groups that work to elect more women.)

One possibility, as Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told NPR last year, is that voters treat the presidency different from other offices.

"Voters are very, very willing to send women, younger candidates, people of color, LGBTQ candidates to Congress," she said. "But for president or executive office in general, we know from the data that people are much, much more cautious and tend to second-guess themselves much more."

In addition, there's evidence that women face a "performance premium" in running for office that, yes, they may win at similar rates to men at the congressional level, but that they have to be better candidates to do it.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said something to this effect at the November debate, contrasting the female candidates to the then-37-year-old South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg: "Do I think that we would be standing on that stage if we had the experience that he had? No, I don't. Maybe we're held to a different standard."

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg participate in the November Democratic primary debate in Atlanta. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg participate in the November Democratic primary debate in Atlanta.

Of course, it's impossible to know on an individual basis whether any particular candidate is more successful because they're a man (or less so because they're a woman).

But there was another memorable debate line, this one from Warren, that threw this into relief. At a January debate, Warren noted that she and Klobuchar were the only two candidates onstage who had never lost a race.

In addition, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and California Sen. Kamala Harris had never lost an election until this year's primaries, either.

It is, of course, possible to become president with a loss or two on one's record. But this cycle, America only saw competitive female candidates with long resumes and perfect down-ballot records.

Unanswered questions

Knowing exactly how much gender played into voters' decisions this year may never be possible because it's so deeply mixed into how people think.

"We know that what's really happening in most cases is gender is informing a lot of the different aspects or predictors of a candidate's success," says Kelly Dittmar, professor at Rutgers University's Center on American Women and Politics. "And so to try to pinpoint how much sexism mattered becomes much more difficult. Instead, I try to think about it as, 'What are the ways in which gender shapes the dynamics of the race?' "

Dittmar uses Kamala Harris as an example: When she dropped out, the California senator said one reason was that she didn't have enough money to carry on.

"Was that solely because she was a woman or because she was a black woman? No. There were other challenges at play, in terms of the strength of support for her candidacy," Dittmar said. "But were gender and race and the interaction of those things probably a factor in how much she was able to gain support, interaction with donors? That's very likely."

Jean-Pierre also evidence of a higher standard in Harris' rise and fall.

"She started off with 20,000 people at her at her rally in Oakland. She raised tons of money very early on, and she never made it to Iowa. She never made it to certain early states," Jean-Pierre said. "I do believe that there is just a different way that women are treated. There is a different way that women of color are treated. And there are these barriers that are so much higher that they have to jump over and cross."

Of course, no candidate lost purely because of their identity (just as Biden didn't win purely because of his). Voters raised substantive questions of all of the female candidates in this race: Harris' record as a prosecutor angered some progressives. Klobuchar was too moderate for some progressives, and she also faced allegations that she was abusive to her staff. Gillibrand has swung from moderate positions to progressive ones during her career. Warren's early answers on how she would pay for "Medicare for All" struck some as evasive.

But it's possible that women were punished more for these things than men would have been.

"I think it's compatible to think both that it was sexist and that there's really some substance to those criticisms," says Kate Manne, Cornell University philosophy professor and author of Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny. "And here, it's not that the criticism is illegitimate because it's sexist. It's that we're soft-pedaling the criticism, albeit unwittingly, when it comes to a male counterpart who's done something very, very similar."

The comparison between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on paying for Medicare for All is an excellent example of just how difficult it is to tell what was driving voter attitudes and expectations.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at the unveiling of Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" legislation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in September 2017. AFP Contributor/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at the unveiling of Sen. Bernie Sanders' "Medicare for All" legislation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in September 2017.

On the one hand, Sanders put forth a list of funding options, but never came out with an exact way to pay for his own Medicare for All plan. Warren, meanwhile, faced heavy scrutiny over how she would pay for his plan, which she backed. To Manne, that is plainly unfair.

"Reasonable minds can disagree about whether her plan for implementing Medicare for All was a good plan," she said. "[But] it's kind of remarkable that she got lambasted for the content of her plan while his non-plan played much better."

Then again, Warren had made "having a plan for that" her brand. So one could also argue that she naturally had additional expectations here.

But on top of that, there's another potential layer: Was Warren forced to run as the hypercompetent, plan-for-everything candidate because she's a woman? Or, put another way: Could a woman candidate run as a revolutionary, the way Sanders did, and get as far as he did?

Gender still matters

The presidential race will be one white, straight man versus another white, straight man. But that doesn't mean gender, as well as other parts of a candidate's identity, is no longer a factor, Dittmar points out.

"The more that you see candidates move away from simply masculinity as the sort of measure by which presidentiality is determined or valued, we see that then leads to hopefully some progress in which women don't have a distinct set of challenges," she said.

She points to a 2006 memo strategist Mark Penn wrote for Hillary Clinton's first presidential run, in which he warned her against being seen as too soft and nurturing: "[Voters] do not want someone who would be the first mama... But there is a yearning for a kind of tough single parent."

These conversations have largely centered on the Democratic Party, which has had more and more successful female presidential candidates than Republicans have.

And when Republicans do have another opportunity to nominate a woman, those women might run differently than Democratic women. That's because Democratic voters tend to be more receptive than Republican voters to identity-based campaigning.

In 2018, and again in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, women ran more firmly as women, with more overtly feminist messages tailored to speak to women's experiences. Warren's story of struggling to find child care as a law student was a standby on the stump. Similarly, Klobuchar told voters the story of being kicked out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth.

However, Republican strategist Alice Stewart, who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns, including Michele Bachmann's in 2012, says that it's nevertheless telling that her party has yet to nominate a woman.

"I truly believe Republicans will say gender doesn't matter: 'I would vote for the person based on their qualifications, whereas others might say gender is a factor.' But they evidently are not following through with that," she said.

Even though a woman will not win the presidency this year, the 2020 field represented progress, with a diverse range of female candidates finding a range of ways to be themselves on the trail.

And progress could still come from the men in the race, Dittmar adds.

"I think it's just important to remember that the gender dynamics of the race are still very much at play," she said. "And so in terms of the value we place on masculinity, it's something for us all to be continually evaluating with the men who are left. How do they navigate gender?"

The question is doubly relevant considering that Biden's opponent is someone who weaponizes masculinity in his campaigning. Biden has done so himself on occasion "If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," he said of Trump in 2018.

Female candidates also aren't out of this campaign yet: Biden has promised to put a woman on the ticket with him. Were Biden to win the presidency, that woman would be the highest-ranking female elected official in American history.

It would be progress. Just slower than some Democrats would have hoped.

Excerpt from:
Did Gender Keep Democratic Women From Winning The Presidential Primary? - NPR