This was on the latest episode of the podcast Hacks on Tap with Mike Murphy and David Axelrod:
—We aren’t going to stop Mitch McConnell from ramming through Amy Coney Barrett if he has the votes, but swarming the Capitol with Handmaid costumes might sabotage attempts to win back the Senate, so we need to keep our eyes on the ball. She says she is focusing her efforts on persuading feminists about being pragmatic in this regard. (Unfortunately I don’t have much confidence that she can get through to the histrionic activist types who were already ginned up by the Bret Kavanaugh fight and are now at 11 after the passing of RBG.)
—Although she emphasized that she understands that it’s not right or fair, the reality is that women pay a political price in debates if they are seen as too aggressive and cutthroat. As a former prosecutor herself, she remembers debates that she lost because she won them too thoroughly. So Kamala Harris needs to hold back and focus on being likable in a way she would not have to if she were a man. (This one I am more optimistic about, as Harris is smart and has good advisers.)
In a pragmatic sense you’re right- for right or wrong, the feminists need to look at the long game, not the immediate issue. Protesting Amy Coney Barrett isn’t going to stop her confirmation, so they need to look at winning the Senate/House/Presidency, which is something that too much/too vociferous protesting of Amy Coney Barrett is going to hinder.
But the activist types aren’t really looking at it like a game of chess; they’re more wound up about protesting and getting their message out there, regardless of who’s in office. They’re sort of orthogonal to the political realities of getting someone elected in a lot of ways.
Yeah, the problem with protestors is that they are, by definition, not happy with what is going on, they do not like the status quo.
So, when they are told that they should accept the status quo, that they should not complain about what is going on, and instead stand by and wait while the needs and wants of others are catered to, they sometimes protest against that demand.
I think I’ll wait to comment after people of the female persuasion weigh in on this thread about feminist activists and what they should or should not be doing.
I’m not completely sure why I should trust Claire McCaskill on this one. There’s a reason she’s not currently a sitting Senator. And while activists didn’t prevent Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the points they successfully hammered home are probably going to end Susan Collins’s career. I don’t see why making noise about Coney Barrett would cost them in the election, rather than being a positive campaign issue against Grassley (should be run again), Portman, or Rubio in 2022.
Isn’t the purpose of protesting to change public opinion?
Although he is a revered figure these days, I think it bears mentioning that Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t particularly popular in his time, especially with white people. Would you have told black civil rights leaders in the 1950s and 60s to shut up because it might hurt certain politician’s chances of getting elected?
Did anybody besides me dig up the podcast in the OP and listen to it? Because McCaskill didn’t say exactly what the OP says she did. She DID say the Handmaiden’s bit was not helpful, but she never said Harris or women in general “pay a political price in debates if they are seen as too aggressive and cutthroat.” That’s the OP’s interpretation.
She also said–and this was before the VP debate–that Harris would need to be “measured” and to “make sure she shows her warmth.” McCaskill said she herself got so focused on content, she forgot to be likable. And it should be noted that McCaskill has faced backlash for commenting that women in politics should be “self-effacing”:
Some of McCaskill’s fans felt her remarks this week were out of sync with her record, and argued that women shouldn’t be told to conform to a double standard.
“All it does is erase their hard work if young women are forced to keep playing with one hand tied behind their back, backwards and in high heels,” Jess McIntosh, editor of Shareblue Media and a longtime Democratic strategist, tweeted in response to McCaskill’s comments. “The point of progress is to make it easier for the next gen, not to tell them to hamstring themselves because you had to.”
McIntosh added that “self-effacing” was not an adjective you could apply to McCaskill.
Finally, as a woman who was royally ticked off about Kavanaugh and was upset about the passing of RBG, I resent the “histrionic” label. Earnest, impassioned, fervent, or a host of other synonyms would be more accurate and are not gender stereotypes. And though you probably didn’t approve of the activist conservative men who invaded the Michigan legislature, I very much doubt you’d characterize them as “histrionic.”
Maybe because the Handmaid connection is an exaggeration of the reality of right-wing gender politics*. But there are plenty of avenues for protest of Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination that are 100% factual, and it would be better to be out there with signs and chants that emphasize those.
There’s a hint of ‘you’re enjoying this’ when people protest wearing costumes that works against the serious goals of protesting. Role-playing is for SF/media conventions, not for political messaging. (That’s my feeling, anyway.)
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*Yeah, I know: reality has come VERY close to fictional dystopias. Even so.
McCaskill herself is “of the female persuasion”. I’m not allowed to agree with her unless I’m female too??
Yes, there is–but probably not whatever one you’re alluding to. She lost by six points, two years after Hillary lost by 19. Just like Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, she did everything humanly possible to overcome the partisan disadvantage, but it was too heavy a lift. Both of them would be ideal candidates in states with a single digit R tilt, and that’s the kind of strategery we need given the inherent disadvantage we face in the Senate.
No, I’d characterize them as toxically masculine nutcases. They wanted to kidnap the governor because she closed down their local gyms.
…the current news cycle lasts no longer than a couple of hours now. The president of the United States earlier today called for his political rivals to be indicted and that has already dropped off the news cycle. A protest (even a swam of handmaid costumes) isn’t going to change a damn thing. It might gain a couple of votes, it might lose a couple of votes, but it certainly won’t sabotage efforts to win back the senate. There are more important battles to be won.
You can say that about almost anything that happens in this election. But that doesn’t mean you want to unnecessarily create even a bit of drag (keeping in mind that there is tangible evidence the fight against Kavanaugh hurt Democratic Senate candidates in 2018). While Democrats are competitive in a shockingly large number of races, and could conceivably pick up as many as 10-12 seats, they are not comfortably ahead in enough races to get to a majority. And with Manchin in there, we really don’t want a one-vote majority either.
A lot of the races we have a fighting chance in are in pretty red states: Kansas, Alaska, South Carolina, Georgia. Those places are going to be more sensitive to “Handmaiden” tomfoolery.
Are you taking @nelliebly’s word on this? Because I would say she’s wrong. I’m not that keen on going back to search through the whole podcast for the exact wording, but if she’s going to dispute it as an accurate paraphrase of what McCaskill said, she should have cited a time stamp and quoted her verbatim.
I doubt it. And when I have linked to podcasts in the past, people have invariably griped that they don’t want to be assigned an hour of listening or whatever.
But now you’ve got me sufficiently exercised that I probably will go through and listen for the exact wording, which I will then quote and provide a timestamp for.
Good. That’s what you should have done in the first place. Please give us the exact excerpts. I listened to two podcasts, the one before and the one after the debate. McCaskill was only on the one before the debate, but I listened to the one after the debate in case you got the quote right but the speaker wrong. If I missed something, I’d be happy to say I was wrong about what McCaskill said. Since she’s done this “Be self-effacing” bullshit before and has been called out on it, she’s probably not the best source to use, but go ahead and quote her from the podcast before the debate.
I couldn’t really do it “in the first place” without re-listening to the whole thing, as it wasn’t something I thought of posting about until it was over.
I don’t know why she should be “called out” on the advice to “be self-effacing”. She bends over backward to stress that it’s not a good or right thing that women face this double standard. But it’s the political reality: to win a majority, you can’t get there just with voters who are not sexist. You have to get some sexists too, including some people who are quite sexist (in part because a surprisingly high number of female voters in battleground states are conservative and will never vote Democratic, so you have to get a lot of men–even if not the majority of men).
