Jaicee said:
I was part of the campaign petitioning Elizabeth Warren to run in 2016. She was my first choice back then too. She was considered the de facto leader of the progressive movement in the Congress at the time. She was leading the fight against the TPP that Obama was hawking and just before that had galvanized resistance to a proposed budget deal reducing public welfare spending in a number of areas. Those were her two latest projects at the time, both of which notably involved standing up not to an unpopular Republican president (which is usually pretty easy for a member of the opposing party who holds a safe seat in the Senate to do), but to a fairly popular Democratic one, which I found particularly audacious and brave. I wound up voting for Bernie Sanders because she didn't run. I think there are a lot of people who thought like me about that out there and that's what you're seeing bear fruit now that they're both running. That's much of the reason I think that Warren is faring as well as she is (i.e. she always would have, I believe) and much of the reason why, in turn, Sanders is the first choice of only about one-third as many people as in 2016 so far this time around. It captures what I mean to highlight that the most shared remark at Thursday's LGBTQ+ town hall broadcast on CNN was this one (perhaps the only non-PC comment of the whole evening), and also that simply using female pronouns to describe a hypothetical future president was good enough to win cheers and applause in the room by itself. There are a lot of women in this country who would very much like to live to see the day when it becomes possible for a woman to be president. I'm one of them. Many feel very strongly about that. I think it would bring a significantly different perspective than has yet been there to bear, and also encourage more women to run to public office in the future, including for the presidency, to set the precedent. Elizabeth Warren affirmatively scratches that itch not just by being female, but by tacitly reminding you she is from time to time in these sorts of ways. That adds something to a progressive policy recipe that Bernie Sanders by definition cannot offer, and it's something that's in much higher demand in the real world than it is here on this basically all-male message board that couldn't understand if it collectively tried. |
Yeah, Warren definitely did awesome at that town hall, and that was quite the zinger. And I do get the appeal of a female president, as much as it obviously isn't as important to me as it is to you. It still is appealing to me too. Call me sexist, but the perspective of many, if not most, males in politics, and their collective effect on the discourse, is toxic in general and especially to females. I don't believe Bernie adds to that toxicity, but I do understand how having a woman of any kind that has a politics of inclusivity of women and the female perspective fundamentally changes not only the narrative and the discourse, but the very way the culture thinks about women in power. It can't not cause such a change. And that change, in my mind, represents a very good one, and I understand that it's one change Bernie can't bring. It's really frustrating to me sometimes, because love them both, and wish they could both be president, but we're out of time. If only they weren't both so old (not that I have a problem with age, but objectively both their time is running out). If only Warren had run in 2016, I really think she'd have won the primary, and the general (I mean if Bernie went from a 3% unknown to 45% nearly beating the entire establishment united behind one person, Warren could have gotten the extra 5% and beat Hillary, and wouldn't have lost to Trump because people actually like her). But it just isn't so, and I'm forced to make a painful choice. I choose what I saw as the strongest act of class revolution that I feel Bernie represents, over the strongest cultural revolution that Warren certainly represents. But I understand why you choose Warren, why the revolution she represents means so much to you, and yes, she does still represent pretty strong class-based action as well.
I won't even get started on our all-male status, it's probably beyond fixing. Suffice to say I'm glad you're here, and even though I don't always agree with you, you provide a perspective that I value and am grateful to have here.
