On the front page of Monday’s New York Times, political reporters Astead Herndon and Lisa Lerer were given room to celebrate Democratic female candidates under the pseudo-clever headline: “Women Who Won Are Asked if They Can Win.” (Why are they trailing so badly in the polls then?) The text box on the jump page: “The misogyny Clinton faced in 2016 resurfaces for 2020.” (So that’s why they’re trailing so badly: Misogyny!)
Rather than question her, Herndon and Lerer set the table for Gillibrand to make her case:
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York had a request: Before anyone mocked her claim that she was the Democratic presidential candidate best positioned to take on President Trump, at least listen to the evidence.
Ms. Gillibrand won her first House race in an upstate conservative district that had “more cows than Democrats,” as she likes to say. She ran on Medicaid expansion as early as 2006, long before it had become a litmus test for the progressive flank of the Democratic Party, which often derides her as inauthentic.
And was heavily criticized by the New York Times for her “conservatism” (!) at the time.
Then The Times makes a 12-year time jump:
In her 2018 Senate re-election campaign, she flipped 18 counties that had voted for Mr. Trump just two years earlier, and in 2012 she received a higher share of the vote in New York than any statewide candidate before or since -- better than Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, better than former Senator Hillary Clinton, better than former President Barack Obama.
You would examine this story in vain for any hint that Gillibrand was initially appointed to her Senate seat in 2009 by New York’s governor after Hillary Clinton vacated her seat to become Secretary of State in the Obama administration.
She won a special election in 2010 and was reelected in 2012 and 2018, but it was certainly a major boost to inherit the seat, an advantage in “electability” the paper totally skipped. Clinton herself is mentioned several times, including by Gillibrand herself, giving the reporters every chance to make the connection:
While many voters don’t know much about Ms. Gillibrand yet, she also sees a set of assumptions about male and females leaders at work.
“The first-blush analysis is inadequate,” Ms. Gillibrand said in an interview. “This is what makes me the best person to take on Trump -- electability. Experience. Track record.”
Speaking of “electability,” The Times skipped Gillibrand’s awful polling so far: RealClearPolitics poll average shows less than 1% favor her candidacy (click “expand”):
As they now campaign for president, they are encountering some of the same misogyny that Mrs. Clinton faced when she ran in 2016. They are running up against assumptions voters and pundits have about what presidential leadership looks like, battling a presidential archetype where men are the only touchstones.
(....)
Ms. Gillibrand has addressed the question head-on. She kicked off her recent “Rural Listening Tour” throughout southwest Iowa with a clear focus on highlighting her ability to win Republican votes. “Secretary Clinton and I, while I admire her, are very different people and we have very different stories,” she said at one stop. “I’m from the upstate part of New York. She’s from the suburbs of Illinois.”
(....)
She has made her understanding of rural issues and her ability to reach across the aisle central to her campaign pitch, trying to sell voters on what she’s termed “heartland economics.” In Nevada, Iowa, she vowed to protect the state’s farmers, suggesting she could form a coalition that could bridge divides between the agriculture industry and environmentalists.
(....)
When asked in a phone interview if she believed her candidacy was being hampered by gendered notions of “electability,” Ms. Warren demurred.
The reporters try to let Gillibrand have her cake and eat it too: She appeals to the heartland...but can appease the left-wing as well:
In an interview in Iowa, Ms. Gillibrand specifically alluded to Mr. Buttigieg and Mr. O’Rourke, saying, “I don’t think either of them have won red and purple areas. I have.”
She also added a warning for the Democrats trying to occupy a more moderate lane, as Mr. Biden has since entering the race.
“If your ideas aren’t progressive or bold enough, you will not win the respect of the grass-roots,” Ms. Gillibrand said. “You will not win young people. You will not win black women -- all the people who were responsible for electing a Democratic majority this last election cycle in the House of Representatives.”
