… While each has so far trailed the leading male candidates—Warren and Senator Kamala Harris poll closest to the top of this group—collectively they have smashed our stubborn assumptions about powerful women and permanently changed our notion of what a presidential election looks like. For the first time, multiple women stand on the presidential-debate stages, their presence signaling to millions of Americans that the era of a dozen men—and maybe a lone woman—arguing the issues is over. (When Governor Jay Inslee touted his record on women’s rights in the first debate in Miami, Klobuchar chimed in with, “I just want to say, there’s three women up here that have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose.”)
These candidates have also, inevitably, reminded us of the hurdles, bordering on bulwarks, that women at the highest level of American politics still face. To many of us, watching the 2020 race unfold has felt less like a celebration of rah-rah feminism and more like a daily, live-tweeted, televised pelting by the patriarchy. Indeed, we cannot assess any of these candidates without also assessing our own biases. Debates about who is “electable” (or not) have become a smokescreen for lingering discomfort with what we have still, after 243 years as a republic, never seen: the election of a woman president. CONT.
Amy Chozick, Vogue