Women presidential candidates: Unlikable?

Lumping together ‘most women’ is infuriating

Cue the misogyny. Again.

The latest example comes from a poll of registered voters in six states expected to play outsize roles in the 2020 presidential race. Nearly four in 10 (38%) of these potentially pivotal voters agreed with this overtly sexist statement: “Sometimes, it feels like most women who run for president just aren’t that likable.”

The very statement — posited in a recent New York Times-Siena College poll — is at once infuriating and comical, blatantly sexist and preposterous. This is, after all, the first time in U.S. history that one might reasonably ask any question involving most women. And while it is not the first time one might credibly ask whether the plethora of men who run for president are likable, the mere thought of that question is, well, not thought of.

Pollsters have long tried to assess whether voters felt comfortable with candidates. Gallup first asked whether each candidate was likable in 1976. Many polls have asked whom you’d prefer to grab a beer with. But those questions addressed each individual candidate (male and, when there was one, female) and didn’t conjoin — much less ridicule — a minority of them.

This presidential election, which comes during the centennial of women’s voting rights, has drawn a record number of women seeking a majorparty nomination (now five, after Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York ended her campaign). Yet we have one question, framed in the negative, that lumps them all together.

As Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics, told me, “This is the thing that plagues and haunts women: Are they likable enough?”

Are ‘most men’ unlikable?

Why would more than 1,400 of the 3,766 registered voters in the poll agree, either strongly or somewhat, that most of these women are unlikable?

“I’m not sure if it’s just these candidates, just these women, or a deepseated resentment,” said Meghann Crawford, a pollster for Siena College.

Let’s contemplate that. How well, exactly, do the respondents know most of the women? What traits do they think Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and self-help guru Marianne Williamson share? What could possibly make most of them unlikable? What, really, do they have in common?

And what of the dozen men vying for the Democratic nomination or the three competing on the GOP side, including Donald Trump? Are most of them unlikable? Are any of them? The poll didn’t ask.

It has long been a given that women in politics and elsewhere (read: everywhere) are held to different standards than men, particularly when they seek or attain power. They not only have to be overqualified, they also have to be assertive (not aggressive), smart (not haughty) and serious (but not too much). They also should be nurturing (but not smothering), empathetic (but not tearful) and able to laugh (but not cackle) at themselves (and at the sexist jokes that come their way). Oh, and they shouldn’t be too ambitious (read: like the men who set the standards).

If they are too (fill in the blank), they definitely will be unlikable.

But to whom? Who are these judgmental folks? The group most likely to agree that most women presidential candidates are unlikable is Republicans, at 53%. For Democrats, it’s 26%.

Sinking into stereotypes

The next largest group of womendislikers is people with a high school education or less, at 47%, followed by white people who either didn’t attend or didn’t graduate from a four-year college, at 44%. By contrast, 28% of all college graduates and white college graduates agreed that most women presidential candidates are unlikable. Notably, 43% of women said most of the women who run for president are unlikable; only 33% of men agreed.

One woman, Elysha Savarese of Florida, told The Times that Warren is “very cold” and “basically a Hillary Clinton clone.”

How fitting. Apparently, there is only one presidential candidate in all of U.S. history to whom we can compare Warren. It is not other Massachusetts senators, like John or Teddy Kennedy, Calvin Coolidge or John Kerry. It is not another academic like Woodrow Wilson, or a law professor like William Howard Taft. It’s not eggheads like Adlai Stevenson or Barack Obama. No, Warren either is or is not the new Clinton, the one woman a major party has nominated to the highest office in the land.

Let’s be clear: When we compare Warren to Clinton, we’re not comparing their policies, which are relatively dissimilar. We’re comparing their personas. Or, rather, stereotypes of women’s personas. Are they shrill? Are they nasty? Do they grate on you? Do they remind you of your first wife or your mother-in-law (to mention other stereotypically unlikable women)?

Clinton was a lightning rod whom a lot of people liked to dislike. She won the most votes anyway.

Imagine, then, what other women might do.

If only most of them were likable. WANT TO COMMENT? Have Your Say at letters@usatoday.com, @usatodayopinion on Twitter and facbook.com/usatodayopinion. Comments are edited for length and clarity. Content submitted to USA TODAY may appear in print, digital or other forms. For letters, include name, address and phone number. Letters may be mailed to 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA, 22108.