Just Stop...It’s Not Because She Was A Woman

    So, it’s been 3 months since the election. Somehow it seems like a year. I do my best to stay away from writing about presidential politics because our recent choices for that office have been, how do I put this diplomatically, lacking. But I took some notes that night, figuring that I would write something about it at some point. Anyway, after letting a decent amount of time pass by, that point has arrived (lucky you) and I thought I’d opine on something that has been, at least for me, mildly annoying. 

    There was a moment that night, shortly before some of the major news networks begrudgingly (which is a huge understatement) announced that Donald Trump had won the state of Pennsylvania, when the journalists mynning, I mean, manning (See what I did there? Reminded you of a previous essay! Pretty good, huh?) MSNBC’s and CNN’s election desks began looking a bit uneasy. In fact, if I remember correctly, they looked quite ill as I channel surfed between all the networks. The writing was on the wall: Kamala Harris was not only failing to win in crucial swing states but hemorrhaging voters in areas that Joe Biden had won by double-digit margins four years earlier. The camera panned from one commentator to the next, as if in search of an explanation; and this was when we all received a preview of the coping strategy to come. 

    “I think it’s important to say, anyone who has experienced this country’s history, and knows it, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of color,” said a grim-looking Joy Reid. “I mean, this was really a historic, flawlessly run campaign.” With that last statement, Joy Reid will go down as one of the dumbest people to ever speak into a camera.

    And there it was. 

    There were always signs that her supporters were ready to invoke the specter of sexism in the event of her defeat. The idea even got a high-profile test run in the month before the election, courtesy of the Democratic Party’s Godfather, Barack Obama, who scolded black male voters for failing to support Harris in the same numbers as they had supported his presidency in 2008. “You just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” he naggingly hectored. “I’ve got a problem with that.” Based on the exit polls that told us an increasing number of black men not only voted for Trump, but for Republicans up and down the ticket, it seems that these black males were feeling the idea that Obama could kiss their collective asses.

    And in the hours, days, and weeks, since the race was officially called for Trump, the media has continued to double down on the notion that it was sexism that did it.

    “I’m not sold on this idea that oh, it was the cost of eggs,” said liberal pundit Juan Williams on Fox News. “I worry that it was, ‘Well, I’m not voting for this woman.’ ”

    On MSNBC, Joe Scarborough said the Democrats need to confront some hard truths about their party: “Yes, there’s misogyny. And it’s not just misogyny from white men. It’s misogyny from Hispanic men. It’s misogyny from black men, who do not want a woman leading them.” As I sat there listening to all of this, I was almost embarrassed to be a man. I mean, in addition to the usual reasons!

    A fretful report from The Washington Post around that time, described Harris’s defeat as a blow less to the candidate than to feminism at large; after this, one source declared, things will be “so much worse for future generations of aspiring female politicians.” Oh, please. Talk about glass half-empty!

    It’s not hard to see the appeal of this narrative. It displaces blame for Harris’s failure onto everyone but the candidate herself and allows her supporters to claim the moral high ground, in the face of abject defeat. The idea that voters dismissed Harris on the basis of sex rather than the substance, or lack thereof, of her policies means there is no need to consider the campaign’s missteps or how it could do better next time. In this paradigm, Harris was perfect; it’s America that is wrong. And so she lost, yes, but only because the country itself is so full of losers.

    To be fair to Harris: Though she campaigned hard for the women’s vote, emphasizing her pro-choice credentials and trying to drum up secret support among the wives of MAGA men, she also successfully—and smartly—avoided the kind of identity politics rhetoric that surrounded her ascendancy to the VP slot. (Biden explicitly said he’d choose a woman to be his running mate.) And it’s worth noting that as of this writing, Harris has not fallen into the Clintonian trap of blaming sexism for her loss at the ballot box. This is to her credit, and I hope she stays the course. 

    And let’s be honest. The excuses that candidates lose because the country doesn’t get them, or because the message was not communicated to the electorate in a proper way, or worse yet, that the electorate is stupid, are excuses that have been used going back to Adams vs. Jefferson.

    To suggest that Americans balk at the notion of putting women in power is absurd. Hillary Clinton won the nation’s popular vote by a margin of three million just eight short years ago; an elderly Biden easily won the presidency in 2020 despite the very real possibility of his female VP, Ms. Harris, ascending to the Oval Office in the event of his death, or his overwhelming cognitive decline, which was already on full display and was only getting worse. I’ll go even further and surmise that (and I’m dating myself here) if Jeanne Kirkpatrick had run for President against Jimmy Carter in 1976, she would have won...easily. And if Condoleezza Rice had run against Barak Obama in 2008, at the very least it would not have been the rout that it was, and she just might have won. 

    But even more importantly, fitness for office isn’t just about being charismatic and competent enough to win; it’s also about accepting defeat gracefully, without claiming that the system was rigged against you. And much like Donald Trump’s moronic insistence that he would have won the 2020 election if not for widespread cheating by Democrats, the idea that Kamala would have been victorious if not for the moral failings of a misogynist electorate is a lie, and a cope, that has no place in presidential politics. If you want to become President of the United States of America, then you have to convince Americans to vote for you. It’s that simple.

    The truth is, Harris was not a perfect candidate, and she did not run a flawless campaign. We know this because the strength of a campaign is measured in votes throughout the entire country, not just in New York and California (thank the gods for the electoral college vote) and she did not get enough of them. And the many, many Americans who are willing to vote for a woman, including your intrepid reporter—who are excited, even, by the idea of one day seeing a woman ascend to the nation’s highest office—should probably be grateful. Had Harris won, the historic moment would have been tainted by the undeniable sense that her victory wasn’t truly earned. That the first woman to hold our country’s highest office was not fairly chosen as a candidate, but installed (like so many totalitarian regimes around the world) by a party that bypassed the normal primary process to fast-track her to the highest office in the land—a job she would have won for no other reason than that she was less incompetent than the dope with the bad hair.

    When we elect a woman president—and I am almost certain this will happen in my lifetime—let it be on the strength of her character, the wisdom of her policies, the courage of her convictions. Let it be because we chose her to lead us on her own merit. America, and women, deserve nothing less.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com