While guest hosting Inside Politics on Friday, CNN's Dana Bash took a break from the busy news cycle to look back at the Trump era with leftist Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin. Together, the two of them explored how far-left women activists supposedly fought back against sexism and "saved democracy."
Rubin was on to promote her new book Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump, which Bash began by reading from: "You write about the reason women were so shell-shocked by Hillary Clinton's loss, and I want to read a bit of your book. You wrote 'millions of women found it infuriating that the archetypal example of a more qualified woman losing to a less qualified man-- no, make that an utterly and obviously unqualified man-- prevailed.'"
With such a pretentious title, it is easy to see how Rubin missed that while "millions of women" did lament Trump's elections, "millions of women" also supported it. Ignoring that, Rubin declared:
Exactly. And I think it was not only an unqualified man but one who was openly misogynistic who insulted women, who had a long list of women who had complained about sexual assault or sexual harassment, so I think women woke up that morning and they couldn't believe that their country had elected this guy, and their initial reaction was shock but then they rolled up their sleeves and started getting going.
Bash then credited these women who "made a difference on some key issues. You talk about reaching John McCain, for example, who famously voted against the Obamacare repeal. They did it by getting everyday citizens to lobby him on rural hospitals."
Rubin, who before Trump at least pretended to be a conservative, agreed: "Exactly, and it was really an all hands on deck moment." She then highlighted all the women who:
Decided to get up off the couch, go out there and try to save Obamacare, but more importantly to rack up a win against Donald Trump and you're exactly right that women went from a group of six or eight or 10 or 20 in their living room to putting together networks of 2 - 3,000 people, some of them running for office, some of them volunteering.
In 2020, a record number of GOP women would get elected to Congress, but Bash ignored that and instead focused on talking "about women candidates and how they do their homework and they get punished for it, specifically the women running for the Democratic nomination in 2020."
Rubin agreed, claiming "women, on the other hand, tend to need an origin story. Why was it that I came into politics and to do all of their homework. Good grief, between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, there must have been 3,000 white papers that were generated in those two election cycles."
Of course, that's not true. Men get questioned on their plans all the time and will also commonly give origin stories in attempts to relate to voters, but acknowledging that would not allow Rubin sell books.
This segment was sponsored by Lexus.
Here is a transcript for the October 1 show:
CNN
Inside Politics with John King
12:50 PM ET
DANA BASH: So the story start, of course, in 2016, and you write about the reason women were so shell-shocked by Hillary Clinton's loss, and I want to read a bit of your book. You wrote “millions of women found it infuriating that the archetypal example of a more qualified woman losing to a less qualified man-- no, make that an utterly and obviously unqualified man-- prevailed.”
JENNIFER RUBIN: Exactly. And I think it was not only an unqualified man but one who was openly misogynistic who insulted women, who had a long list of women who had complained about sexual assault or sexual harassment, so I think women woke up that morning and they couldn't believe that their country had elected this guy, and their initial reaction was shock but then they rolled up their sleeves and started getting going.
BASH: And you write about that, how women organically organized. It was kind of old-fashioned, grassroots movements that happened across the country, and they did it in a way to get the attention of lawmakers and made a difference on some key issues. You talk about reaching John McCain, for example, who famously vote against the ObamaCare repeal. They did it by getting everyday citizens to lobby him on rural hospitals.
RUBIN: Exactly, and it was really an all hands on deck moment. There were women in positions of authority, either in Congress, in the Senate, in Washington think tanks and then there were women out on the street. Most of your viewers have heard of Indivisible, which was hundreds of thousands of people, about 75% of those were women who decided to get up off the couch, go out there and try to save Obamacare, but more importantly to rack up a win against Donald Trump and you're exactly right that women went from a group of six or eight or 10 or 20 in their living room to putting together networks of 2, 3,000 people, some of them running for office, some of them volunteering. Others becoming advocates, and it really was a complete change in many of these women's lives that they became politically engaged for the first time.
BASH: You also talk about women candidate and how they do their homework and they get punished for it, specifically the women running for the Democratic nomination in 2020. You write “The more policy papers the women generated the more scrutiny they got. Meanwhile only among men only Joe Biden seemed to have make an effort to generate anything close to the policy specificity that the women senators had come up with.” I have to tell you, I'm going to hold this up, you can’t see it, but our viewers can. I was laughing because as I was reading that I looked down at my book and all the dog ears that I was doing my homework for this interview and I thought, okay, that's kind of classic. What does that tell you?
RUBIN: I think it tells me that women have an uphill climb. Men assume as Stacey Abrams said to me in an interview, they roll out of bed, have a good hair day and decide they’re going run for president. They don't have to justify themselves. They don't have to have a track record. They just have things to say and they are going to get out there and do that and women, on the other hand, tend to need an origin story. Why was it that I came into politics and to do all of their homework. Good grief, between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren,
there must have been 3,000 white papers that were generated in those two election cycles, and sometimes that works to get over the hurdle of credibility and sometimes it doesn't, and I think having to compete against men who not only didn't have any policies but didn't have any experience to speak of was quite a contrast for many of these women running in 2020.
