Warren: Did sexism doom her campaign?
“Maybe next time, ladies,” said Michelle Cottle in The New York Times. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren suspended her presidential campaign last week, it formalized the collapse of “the most diverse presidential field in history” to a pair of 70-something white men, and delivered a depressing reminder of “the challenges women candidates still confront in their quest to shatter the presidential glass ceiling.” By any measure, the eloquent and passionate Warren dominated the Democratic debates. Her policy proposals put her rivals’ to shame, both in number and in detail. Most valuably, she had an Obama-like gift for translating complex problems into clear moral choices that could electrify a crowd. Inevitably, she was dismissed as too “shrill,” “strident,” and “hectoring,” even as many voters fell back on the familiar protestation “Of course, I’d support a woman for president; just not that woman.” All voters demand of a woman running for president, said Elie Mystal in TheNation.com, is that she be “strong, sweet, tough, flexible, brilliant, accessible, fiery, motherly, and attractive, but not distractingly so, all at the same time.” It’s undeniable: “Sexism sank Elizabeth Warren.”
That’s strange, said Katie Herzog in Reason.com. I could have sworn Democrats nominated a woman as recently as 2016, and that she famously beat her opponent by 3 million votes in the general election. Warren actually shot past Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to the top of the polls in October, but then she made a catastrophic “series of political miscalculations,” the most damaging being an egregious flip-flop on Medicare for All. That tortured attempt to win over Bernie Sanders supporters without losing the moderates alienated both moderates and progressives in one fell swoop. It also made Warren seem inauthentic. Warren is no doubt brilliant, said Jill Lawrence in USA Today, but most Democrats aren’t looking for a farleft “disrupter” who would “shake things up.” They’re “weary, anxious, and looking for salve” after four years of President Trump.
Warren’s fans find her terrible performance in the primaries incomprehensible, said Christine Rosen in CommentaryMagazine .com. To “well-educated, progressive-leaning white people”— a demographic that happens to include many women opinion writers—a passionate, articulate Harvard professor with stacks of policy proposals was a “fever dream of a presidential candidate” come to life. But those very same traits were a turnoff to the “nonwhite, non–college educated” Democrats who dominate the primary electorate. Warren’s haughty academic demeanor and her “scolding” manner turned off voters outside the coastal elites, said Joanna Weiss in Politico.com. Yes, there may be some sexism in that reaction, but American politics is having “an anti-elitist moment.” Warren’s attempts to sound “folksy” came off as fake and condescending.