The Other McCain

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Elizabeth Warren Is Doomed, and Feminists Can’t Understand Why (And a BONUS Bidenfreude Update)

Posted on | February 12, 2020 | 2 Comments

 

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren placed fourth in yesterday’s New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary with less than 10% of the vote, as she was eclipsed by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who more than doubled Warren’s vote total. Dana Pico at First Street Journal called attention to feminist Amanda Marcotte’s “hot take” on Warren. “If Warren was a man, this would be over already,” Marcotte wrote Tuesday:

Warren is a rock star. Crowds love her and she tends to get bigger cheers than anyone, even Sanders. She always takes her analysis to the next level, but manages to explain complex topics without dissembling. The ideas that sound radical in Bernie’s mouth (probably by design, to be fair) sound like common sense coming from Warren. She’s probably the single most popular candidate in the field, with people talking about her positively, even if they support someone else.
It’s clear, however, after months of cable news seeding the idea that the public is too sexist to elect a woman, that voters aren’t backing her. This created a weird dynamic in New Hampshire, where Warren drew big crowds, often due in large part to political tourists from other states who came to see the hottest act in town, not because she was actually rallying local voters here. So because of sexism, the most popular politician in the field will probably falter in the actual primary.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is crazy.

Marcotte credits “cable news” with creating the (false) belief “that the public is too sexist to elect a woman,” which scarcely explains why Klobuchar (who, last time I checked, was also a woman) should have zoomed up from obscurity to finish third in New Hampshire.

Of course, to her devoted admirers, Warren is a “rock star,” but you know who’s an even bigger rock star? President Trump, who consistently draws overflow crowds to gigantic rallies in sports arenas. The fact that Marcotte can’t put this in a realistic perspective — she is incapable of viewing Warren objectively — is testimony to the solipsistic nature of the feminist worldview. Staunch conservative that I am, my profession as a journalist requires me to summon the mental focus necessary to step back from my personal prejudice, to think about what the political spectacle looks like to, say, a housewife in the Philly suburbs or a truck driver in Michigan. Like most other observers, I underestimated the strength of Trump’s populist appeal in 2016, but unlike feminists, my miscalculation wasn’t due to an ax-grinding personal bias.

Here is what Amanda Marcotte can’t understand: Elizabeth Warren is not losing because of cable news creating a sexist narrative. Elizabeth Warren is losing because she’s a transparent phony. When Trump calls her “Pocahontas,” this is not merely a personal insult, it’s a reminder that Warren falsified her own identity, claiming Native American ancestry in order to get affirmative action status in hiring at Harvard.

Moreover, Warren is losing because ordinary people (i.e., those who are not feminist fanatics) dislike her self-righteous persona. Politics is not merely about who advocates policies that are popular, it’s also about whose personality voters find most appealing. We may wish that this were not so, desiring politics to be an intellectual exercise, but that’s just the nature of the game, especially in terms of a national presidential campaign, where most people form their judgments of candidates based on television coverage. Many people (including some Republicans) dislike Donald Trump because he comes across on TV as an arrogant bully. People who know Trump personally might claim that Trump is really just a lovable teddy bear who wouldn’t hurt anybody, but his televised persona reminds many people of every blustering bully they ever knew.

If I, a conservative who voted for Trump and who plans to vote for him again in November, can acknowledge the perception problem that Trump faces in attempting to win over more moderate voters, why can’t Amanda Marcotte accept that Warren has a similar problem? Warren reminds me of certain middle-school teachers who couldn’t tolerate mischievous boys, sending me to the principal’s office whenever I made a wisecrack in class.

Amy Klobuchar, by contrast, seems like the nice kindergarten teacher who gave me punch and cookies. She is personally likable, even though she is a Democrat, and I would never vote for a Democrat. In that way, Klobuchar is quite Obama. A lot of white people who can’t stand the Jesse Jackson-style “civil rights” race-hustler politician found Obama much more likable, and so Obama won where Jesse never could have won.

Why isn’t Amanda Marcotte encouraged by Klobuchar’s success? One would think that the Minnesota senator’s popularity would give hope to feminists, but feminists like Marcotte aren’t pro-woman so much as they are anti-male. They want to send wisecracking mischievous boys to the principal’s office, long after we have finished middle school.

UPDATE: Jonathan Chait sticks the fork in Uncle Joe:

Biden has run for president three times. He has not yet managed to finish higher than fourth in any primary or caucus. Biden may, or may not, have been a good enough politician to win a presidential campaign in his prime. He is now well past his prime. . . .
If not for Biden, a mainstream liberal Democrat might well have begun to consolidate support of a party establishment that is not looking for a candidate who will embrace wildly unpopular policies and a wildly unpopular socialist label while emphasizing transformative economic change in the midst of the best economy in a generation. . . .
Biden’s campaigns in 1988 and 2008 ended in disaster for Biden. His 2020 campaign is going to end in a disaster for the whole party.

Hat-tip to Stephen Green at Instapundit, who calls this “a nice shot of schadenfreude in my coffee.” No, it’s Bidenfreude, and it’s delicious.




 

Category: Elizabeth Warren, Feminism, New Hampshire

Comments

2 Responses to “Elizabeth Warren Is Doomed, and Feminists Can’t Understand Why (And a BONUS Bidenfreude Update)”

  1. The New Hampshire Primary: the ‘progressives’ lost – The First Street Journal.
    February 12th, 2020 @ 12:27 pm

    […] Stacy McCain, in a kind article referencing mine of last night, noted that Miss Marcotte’s blaming Mrs Warren’s […]

  2. If All You See… » Pirate's Cove
    February 13th, 2020 @ 2:00 pm

    […] blog of the day is The Other McCain, with a post on Liz Warren being doomed and Feministas not understanding […]