We have a problem here
Last night I published an article spelling out the political ideology and delegate math involved in why Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy failed. In short, progressive voters stubbornly stuck with their longtime favorite Sanders, even though Warren was the only progressive that mainstream liberal voters would have been willing to get behind. Some of you have (correctly) pointed out that my article omitted a key factor: Warren is a woman.
I’ve pointed out several times in the past that due to the inherently sexist nature of society, a woman candidate has to be demonstrably better than a male candidate just to be considered at all. I should have mentioned this again in my article last night about Elizabeth Warren. The sad reality is that sexism is so pervasive, it’s easy to take it as a given. It’s also a lot easier for man to take it as a given and forget to keep mentioning it, just as it’s a lot easier for a white person to take racism as a given.
The reality is this. Six women ran for president in 2020. Four of them were strong candidates. Yet all six of them were out of contention by Super Tuesday. That’s absurd, and it’s telling. Yes, there were too many women running. But there were only six of them, out of twenty-something total candidates. Less than one-third of the candidates were women, and that was “too many” women? Just how sexist are we?
At this point the 2020 primary race is what it is. There’s no going back and doing it over again. Donald Trump is the most notorious sexist out there and a dangerously deranged criminal, and now we all have to unite behind a good man in Joe Biden, in order to get Trump out of power. But somewhere along the way, we’ve got to have a serious discussion about the fact that all of the women who ran for president in 2020 – some of whom were extremely qualified – got bounced from contention this quickly. That just can’t keep happening.
