DOGMA SPREADS: Did misogyny defeat Candidate Warren?

MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2020

Maddow's weird lament: Was Candidate Warren forced from the race by misogyny and sexism?

Misogyny and sexism on the part of the press? On the part of Democratic voters?

Except in the realm where dogma spreads, those are hard questions to answer. Presumably, some people undervalued or even disregarded Warren on the basis of gender. It's also true that some people favored her on that basis.

On balance, how did all these judgments shake out? There's no real way to know that. That said, Candidate Warren didn't lose by a couple of votes. She ended up losing to Candidates Biden and Sanders by a large number of votes, even in her home state.

Candidate Warren didn't come close, as Candidate Gore and Candidate Clinton did in recent general elections. Despite this fact, Warren's departure from the race has occasioned a wave of keening and wailing which draws back the curtain on the highly irrational our liberal thought leaders perform.

How irrational has the keening and wailing been? We plan to explore that question during the bulk of the week.

For today, consider what happened when Warren was interviewed by Rachel Maddow. Warren did the full hour last Thursday night. At one point, Maddow made this strange presentation:

MADDOW (3/5/20): I would like to ask you about the elephant in the room, which is a conversation you've had a number of different ways, and you talked about it eloquently today, and I thought in pretty blunt terms today.

I think that a lot of women around the country right now feel differently about you dropping out. Whether or not they were supporting you specifically for president, you leaving the race feels different.

If Hillary Clinton can't win when she gets the nomination, and then you can't get the nomination, and neither can Kamala Harris and neither can Amy Klobuchar and neither can Kirsten Gillibrand, I mean, I think part of what's going on today is that women around the country are like, "OK, honestly, you know? If it's not, if it's not going to be any of them, let's get real."

Is it just, is it just that it can't be any woman ever? Are we just going to run, you know, white men in their late 70s against each other, both parties, and that's all we can agree to do?

I think there's a feeling that your campaign ending is very specific to you and it also feels a little bit like a death knell in terms of the prospects of having a woman for president in our lifetimes.

To watch this presentation, click here.

Maddow's presentation makes little apparent sense. And Maddow was sold to us, by the network, as Our Own Rhodes Scholar!

In her presentation, Maddow is looking back on a nomination race in which six women and something like three million men took part. Judged by traditional standards, only four of the women were fundamentally qualified—the four women Maddow named.

(How many of the men? Ignoring issues of age, we'd say more than a dozen.)

Four women battled six million men. When it turns out that the last two candidates standing are men, Maddow makes a bizarre suggestion. She suggests this means that "it can't be any woman ever!"

She suggests this means that the two parties are just going to run "two white men...against each other" until the end of time. This is a very strange thing to say, especially if you consider the history of recent presidential elections.

In fact, the two parties haven't run "two white men...against each other" since Campaign 2004 (Bush v. Kerry). The last three White House campaign have demographed like this:

Demographics of last four White House elections
2004: White man versus white man
2008: Black man versus white man
2012: Black man versus white man
2016: White man versus white woman

If this campaign continues as now seems inevitable, it will be the first time in sixteen years that we've had "two white men...against each other." Yet there was Maddow, suggesting this somehow means that no one but white men will ever be nominated again.

(For the record, Candidate Trump won't be "in his late 70s." When our sachems start keening and wailing, they tend to embellish at will.)

Why in the world would Rachel Maddow make such a strange presentation? Does she actually think what she and others seem to think:

Does she actually think that if four women run, and none of them wins, this means the whole thing has somehow been rigged, with women denied their rights as part of some ongoing scam?

Surely, Maddow can't think that. And yet, this is the attitude which has poured forth from many of our tribal tribunes, driven along by the apparent belief that Warren was the greatest candidate who ever appeared on a stage.

In fact, Warren was an awful candidate, in a wide array of ways. Or at least, so it seems to us, for reasons we'll explain later in the week.

It doesn't seem to occur to our tribal tribunes that, just because Warren appealed to them, she wasn't necessarily going to appeal to everyone else. That is the essence of solipsism, an attribute our hapless leaders have long possessed in spades.

In what ways was Warren an awful candidate? Let's set that aside for later. For today, let's focus on the oddness of Maddow's presentation.

Maddow's lament made little sense, but neither did Warren's reaction. Here's the way that went:

MADDOW: Is it just, is it just that it can't be any woman ever? Are we just going to run, you know, white men in their late 70s against each other, both parties, and that's all we can agree to do?

I think there's a feeling that your campaign ending is very specific to you and it also feels a little bit like a death knell in terms of the prospects of having a woman for president in our lifetimes.

WARREN: Oh God, please no. That can't be right.

MADDOW: You know what I'm talking about.

WARREN: I know exactly what you're talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. This cannot be the right answer.

Warren was worried too.

Like a virus, a pleasingly self-pitying dogma can spread all through a community. On the leadership level, our liberal tribe is utterly hapless. We're in the hands of the infirm, infected and lame.

That said, as people like Maddow start spreading this virus; as a sense of hopelessness infects our tribe; the keening and wailing of these professional victims points the way to a possible future:

In this highly possible future, we will "have a woman for president in our lifetimes." That woman's name will be President Mikki Haley, and tribunes like Maddow will be selling us new sets of dogma when that day arrives.

Viruses kill, but so does cant. Our leadership is hopelessly daft. We liberals need to grasp this fact, but there's little chance that we will.

Tomorrow: BREAKING NEWS! Most candidates don't win!