OPINION:
At the beginning of 2019, half the Democratic candidates for the presidency were women. After Elizabeth Warren dropped out Thursday, only Tulsi Gabbard remains, and she has just two delegates.
Where has all the momentum from the 2018 midterms gone, shortly after millions flooded the nation’s streets on behalf of women, and women in Congress surged to a record high?
It may be tempting in these tribal times to blame it on old-fashioned sexism, and no doubt sexism has historically shaped our politics. But as Ms. Warren told MSNBC last month, “Since 2016 women in competitive races have actually outperformed men … all because women got in those races and women, and friends of women, also known as men, showed up to support them.”
In other words, sexism can’t fully explain it. We might then conclude that it has something to do with platforms or likability, but arguably all of this year’s crop of women are no less polarizing than Hillary Clinton (who took the popular vote by 3 million), and their platforms have ranged from moderate (Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand) to progressive (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris).
What none of these explanations account for is the state of the female brand, and yes womanhood has become a brand in recent years, attaching itself to everything from hashtags (#MeToo) and awards ceremonies like the Oscars to TV and print ads, T-shirts (“The Future is Female”) and even colors — all white for female lawmakers at the State of the Union and pink pussyhats for female protesters.
We may call it a movement, but every movement is in its own way a brand. And brand identity of course is not static; its relationship with its customers, in this case the general voting public, can generate varying degrees of trust, affection, skepticism and resentment over time.
So what is the current state of the female brand?
The Women’s March and #MeToo movement have been pivotal in awakening us to the pervasiveness of sexual violence and the double standards women still face. (Ms. Klobuchar, for example, was probably correct in claiming that a woman with Pete Buttigieg’s lack of political experience would face more scrutiny.) And the performance by female candidates in 2018 suggested that the brand was in fine shape, if not unstoppable.
But more recently, Americans have watched as the leaders of the Women’s March became linked to anti-Semitism; as the #MeToo Movement seemed to stop making a distinction between predators and males in general, calling on people to believe women who accuse men of wrongdoing instead of respecting due process; as mainstream companies incorporated stringent new sexual harassment policies that seemed to stretch the definition of sexual harassment.
(Netflix reportedly barred employees from staring at someone for more than five seconds, and asking coworkers for their phone numbers.)
Last summer, Megan Rapinoe and the women’s national soccer team divided rather than united the country, and it has become common in key institutions like the media and universities to vilify “the white, male patriarchy” for discrepancies in outcomes for women, like income and representation in the tech sector.
The movement has at times appeared more intent to grab power than merely level the playing field. More damaging still, it’s become synonymous with the “woke” left wing of the Democratic Party, much maligned for its emphasis on tribalism and outrage, so that even a pluralistic female candidate runs the risk of being conflated with the social justice set, and losing votes accordingly.
Ms. Warren, for instance, who detailed how she planned to empower all Americans perhaps more than any other Democratic candidate but was also busy playing up her gender — her team going so far as to hand out nail polish on the campaign trail — saw her support among men in New Hampshire drop from 13 percent in November to 4 percent in January, according to two Suffolk University/Boston Globe Polls.
Meanwhile, Republican support for female House candidates has declined since 2014, and white women, the largest group of female voters by race, favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.
Failing to ignite support among key demographics inevitably raises questions of electability, which may lead even women to turn against female candidates who stridently champion their interests. In a CNN/SSRS poll last month, 20 percent of women — more than double men — said they didn’t think a woman could win the presidency. While the total number of women in the House rose from 83 to 102 from 2016 to 2018, the number of Republican winners dropped from 21 to 13, further complicating a woman’s path to the presidency.
With the left’s brand of identity politicking so palpably helping fuel our political divide, it’s vital that female candidates convince the electorate that they are running more as people than women, just as Barack Obama ran less as a black man than as a candidate of “hope” for all Americans, and Bernie Sanders has galvanized the left without pandering much to race or gender.
Instead, most of the women on the debate stage have drawn attention to their gender early and often, with Ms. Klobuchar in the Las Vegas debate claiming that the way to stop sexism on the Internet is to “nominate a female candidate for president of the United States” and Ms. Warren relentlessly pounding Mike Bloomberg on his history of sexism. Ms. Klobuchar ended her bid Monday, and Ms. Warren actually got fewer votes on Super Tuesday than Mr. Bloomberg.
Ms. Gillibrand, who ran the most unabashedly feminist campaign of all the major female candidates, was also the first female candidate to concede defeat. And Kamala Harris, who tried to frame Joe Biden as “an old white guy” with a questionable track record on race, is watching from the sidelines as Mr. Biden has become the party frontrunner, with strong African-American support.
Playing the gender card alone can’t account for their defeats, but in each case — at a minimum — it didn’t help.
Sound presidential leadership requires fighting for gender equality, and these women have been right not to shy away from that struggle, but no woman is likely to get the chance to do so as president if she pledges her allegiance to a brand that has frittered away much of the public trust.
• Ioannis Gatsiounis is a writer in Arizona.
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