Six women have quit Warren’s Nevada campaign and accused the campaign of “tokenizing minorities”
“The staffers quoted, mostly on background, said the campaign on the ground did not live up to the candidate’s rhetoric when it came to empowering women – and women of color in particular.”
They say they don’t want to hurt Warren but "“Every election will always be the most important election of our lifetimes,” Lewis said. “Organizing culture needs to change because the fact is our well-being is more important than any election. I hope this starts a conversation that helps facilitate personal reflection about ways we can change campaign culture.”
Warrenhas apologized. "“I believe these women completely and without reservation and I apologize that they have had a bad experience on this campaign,”“I also understand the long legacy of racism in this country and what it means and how it creates power dynamics and inequities that are toxic and dangerous. And that’s why it’s so important that we be constantly vigilant and determined to do better. I take personal responsibility for this and I’m working with my team to address these concerns.”
Apparently all of these women who quit were low level organizers frustrated that they weren’t being listened to.
It may be that the Warren campaign is a hotbed of racism, but that seems unlikely.
The more likely explanation is that these women were inexperienced and thought they knew more than they did. Every campaign has disaffected young staffers who think that they should be making policy and strategic decisions instead of manning phone banks and licking envelopes. The attitude of the woman who said that her feelings were more important than who won the election shows how selfish her complaint was.
Instead of investigating the charges and finding out if they are true, Warren immediately threw her staff under the bus, said that the power dynamics within the campaign were toxic and dangerous. This is the opposite of leadership.
The more time Warren spends on the national stage, the more obvious it is she is exactly the type of person who should not be in politics and should be kept away from power.
I have no idea what happened in Nevada, but if there’s one thing I’d personally like the party to get away from it’s identity politics. I get that identity and inclusion are important, but saying things like we have to have a minority candidate or a female candidate win the nomination or the party’s guilty of exclusion…no.
Warren really played up the identity angle, and over the course of her political career - and even before it - she’s been engaging in identity politics. That kind of politics attracts identity activists, who obsess over the politics of identity. Inevitably, white women (like white men) like Warren will have blind spots that will be exposed when it comes to diversity. Candidates can be inclusive without making it a centerpiece of their campaign messaging.
I’ve worked/volunteered on numerous campaigns and yes, it’s very common to have bright eyed ambitious intelligent people join a campaign and think they’ll set the world on fire only to find out that so much of the work is grunt work organizing volunteers and trying to meet goals like you’re a retail store manager. My key was to enjoy the fascinating people I’d meet and enjoy the long drives, cheap drink nights and late night bull sessions but realize I’m doing over 40 hours of grunt work per week for starvation wages with no long term future.
And, in Warren’s case she has a 3rd place finish in Iowa, 3rd in most New Hampshire polls and who knows what the internals are showing for NV. Nevada is a notoriously difficult place to poll plus winning a Democratic caucus is so dependent on the unions and whatever strings Harry Reid is pulling behind the scenes. You don’t normally see people jumping ship en masse from a campaign that’s going well.
The Warren campaign isn’t the only one. The Buttigieg campaign also has minority employees whining about how being asked to do basic tasks leaves them “feeling disrespected” and dealing with “emotional weight” and all that garbage. So naturally the campaign put its work on hold for a “mandatory half-day retreat about diversity and inclusion”, which of course did not solve the problem, so then there was a meeting to follow-up to the retreat, and then a follow-up to the follow-up, etc… They distributed a questionnaire asking about “microaggressions” and other hogshit. Presumably the emotional support puppies will be arriving soon.
This is part of the reason why I’m starting to think that Bernie will win the nomination, now that Biden is fading. Bernie has a large crowd of fanatical true believers who are madly in love with the dream of socialized factories building electric scooters financed by wealth taxes on billionaires, and in pursuit of that dream they’re willing to donate money, work long hours for little or no pay, and do whatever needs to be done. Warren and Buttigieg have both chosen to present themselves as the candidates of extreme political correctness, so naturally the people they attract most are spoiled brats who expect to be coddled, praised, and generally treated like royalty at all times. To win an election, you have to spend the available money and time on winning by convincing people to vote for you. How can you win if you have to spend resources babysitting spoiled children on your own staff?
And I wonder whether any Democrats are aware of how ridiculous and repulsive this sort of thing looks to many working-class voters?
And I can guarantee that any campaign is going to have activists and they’re going to be hard to manage at times. Many people that go to work for these campaigns are especially bright and talented and are ready to set the world on fire and that often clashes with the boring grunt work of a campaign.
What exactly do you want Warren to say? “I don’t believe these women and I don’t think they had a bad experience on my campaign?” Also, I don’t see anything in that quotation to suggest she’s “throwing her staff under the bus.”
What a terrible take on a difficult situation. Her statement was exactly the kind of leadership we need. She is apologetic and taking responsibility. But I guess you want to hear “those women are just lazy whiners”. Please.
See this post and the one directly underneath it.
One take is that women are supposed to be believed absolutely. The other is that you take a more rational approach and try to find out if anything was done wrong that needed to be addressed.
Of course, if no finding of anything happens, then we are stuck with them not believing the accusers …
And it could be very true that they’re both right. The campaign staffers could have taken the job thinking they’d be providing insight and strategy and found themselves doing a different job. And it’s also possible that Warren is concerned and may have senior staff be more explicit about job expectations when hiring staff.
How do you know they weren’t investigated? I find it entirely plausible that this particular campaign office was run by a manager who happened to be the sort of person who treats minorities in a hostile patronizing manner, and that HR, didn’t want to rock the boat. This sort of thing is happening all the time in offices all over the country.
I don’t see that this indicates a fundamental problem with Warren or her campaign. Unless similar allegations are raised at other of her headquarters, I am going to conclude that it was probably just one bad apple who got through the screening process.
The sheer glee with which conservatives amplify any internal disagreements among progressives, and the alacrity with which they reach the conclusion that brown women are disaffected, selfish, and whining, is as gross as it is predictable.
Sure, there are some working-class voters who hate Sanders, no question. But I have this sneaky suspicion that they didn’t ask ITR Champion to be their champion.
The two politicians currently going who have shown the ability to raise and sustain massive support both know this and use it. Donald Trump leans into it. Bernie Sanders has largely ignored or dismissed complaints about sexism on his staff or supporters who have made politically incorrect comments, most recently when he was endorsed by Joe Rogan. Trump and Bernie get it. They understand that most voters don’t want leaders who act cowardly and beg for forgiveness in the face of accusations of racism, sexism, transphobia, or whatever. They take a page from Monty Python: don’t grovel and don’t apologize.
Warren has instead embraced every part of identity politics and taken every opportunity to brag about how she’ll totally believe every complaint of oppression and do everything that the allegedly oppressed want, even to the point of absurdity. (Remember this?) So when her campaign is on the receiving end of accusations of racism, even ones as obviously ridiculous as the ones in the OP, she’s kind of stuck.
The same problem afflicts a lot of left-wing organizations. Perhaps they should talk about it at some point.
It’s an issue bigger than Warren. Democrats have made themselves vulnerable in this regard, as ITR Champion pointed out - to being hoisted on their own petard.
This is the most impressive bit of equivocation I have ever seen.
The poll asks people, point blank, if political correctness has gone too far. “Political correctness” is a deliberate slur. While a vanishingly small number of people have used it unironically as a self-label, overwhelmingly its use is to denigrate its object. Asking people if it’s gone too far is like asking, “Are bad things bad?” Of course most people say yes to this dumbass question.
So you take the response to this poll about the term, and then suggest that because you’ve concluded that the term fits Warren, she’s trapped herself.
I would have liked her to say that she takes the accusations seriously but that the claims need to be investigated.
She said “I believe these women completely and without reservation” The article quotes her 5 hours after the initial story came out.
Her believing the worst of her staff after no investigation is throwing them under the bus. Treating accusations as unquestionable is how injustice happens.