Can We Handle More Than One "Woman Candidate"?
As Warren's star rises and Kamala's sinks, it looks like the answer is no.
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What I’m Writing
CNN - Trump Team’s Disgusting Smear of Alexander Vindman
The Guardian - Adoption of separated migrant kids shows “pro-life” groups’ disrespect of maternity
Medium - Revenge Porn Comes to Congress -- And Every Woman Should Pay Attention
The View From Here
Is there room for more than one leading woman in the Democratic race for the presidency?
The polls suggest the answer is no. As Elizabeth Warren’s star has risen, Kamala Harris’s has fallen. In February, Harris was a leading candidate, trailing Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, but outperforming the rest of her rivals. By July, Warren and Harris, along with Sanders, were neck and neck. Now, Warren has pulled far ahead of Harris. And it’s not just because Warren’s popularity has skyrocketed, although it has. It’s that Harris’s support is the inverse, intersecting with Warren’s this summer and then dropping off precipitously and Warren’s climbed. No other two candidates have seen their paths so starkly diverge.
This presidential primary has been a thrilling one for women’s rights advocates, particularly in the hangover of Hillary Clinton’s loss. We thought we would see the first female president elected in 2016; instead, we ended up with the most misogynist president in living memory, a man who has appointed fewer women to positions of power than any president I’ve been old enough to vote for.
This primary, though, offered something new: Not just the novelty of a woman competing with men for power, but of women competing with other women across a broad field. The list of politically experienced women to pick from was long: Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard. And we even got a bizarre vanity campaign, something previously reserved for wealthy and self-involved men, in self-help guru Marianne Williamson. A greater number of women in the race suggested we might see a competition focused more on ideas than identities. It meant a more even distribution of sexism: If no single woman has to shoulder all of the assumptions and biases of the press, the public, and her opponents, it might just allow all of the women in the race greater latitude to compete as people, not as stand-ins for womanhood writ large. In theory, a larger number of women would also mean that the public would see a diversity of ways to be a woman in politics, normalizing female competition for political power more generally and diluting the narrow expectations we continue to hang on any one woman who achieves prominence.
But maybe the real lesson is that we still don’t have the attention span for two female frontrunners.
The Democratic race has very clearly diverged into a top tier of candidates polling above 15 percent – Biden, Warren, Sanders – a low middle polling just above five percent (Buttigieg and Harris), and the rest at the bottom, all below three percent. There are women at every level, which I suppose is its own sort of equality. But the women in the race, all but two of whom are U.S. senators – plus Gillibrand, who has dropped out of it – are more qualified and recognizable than several of the men who are still hanging on.
Experience and recognition aren’t everything – although Biden’s dominance suggests both may be particularly relevant this year. But perhaps the dramatic winnowing down of the many women in the race to a single one, while the men enjoy both greater dominance in the top tiers and a more even ebb and flow, is more about what the feminist writer Katha Pollitt long ago identified as the Smurfette Principle: “Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.” There may be room for a single exceptional woman in a man’s world, but the world remains male by default. And if there are multiple exceptional women, the public perception is less that they’re competing with the men, and more that they’re competing with each other for that single coveted female spot.
The stereotype of intra-female competition is the catfight. But this election cycle has been far from it. The women in the field have challenged each other on substance, policy and priorities the same way they’ve challenged their male opponents. It’s the media and the public that seem to have a tougher time.
This primary has indeed been a positive one for women, and we may soon see our first female president. That will be feminist progress indeed. Even better, though, will be when multiple women running for office is the norm, and when those women are seen as people competing across a wide field – and not just for a single coveted spot, primarily with each other.
(Vote for women!)
xx Jill