elizabeth warren gave us her magic and then disappeared – just like toad the wet sprocket

“When in­for­ma­tion about their com­pe­tence was equiv­o­cal, 86 per­cent of par­tic­i­pants deemed the male can­di­date more com­pe­tent. When there was strong ev­i­dence of both can­di­dates’ com­pe­tence, 83 per­cent of peo­ple judged the man more lik­able. The fe­male can­di­date was re­gard­ed, more­over, as ‘in­ter­per­son­al­ly hos­tile” – as con­niv­ing, pushy, self­ish, abra­sive, ma­nip­u­la­tive and un­trust­wor­thy – even though the study par­tic­i­pants had the same in­for­ma­tion, on av­er­age, about the two peo­ple to be eval­u­at­ed …”
—Kate Manne, The Wash­ing­ton Post

“You can un­der­stand why War­ren seems to think Sanders’s dis­avowals ring a bit hol­low. Sanders sat down for an in­ter­view with Chapo Trap House, the ‘dirt­bag left’ pod­cast whose hosts re­peat­ed­ly serve up some of the most vi­cious and per­son­al at­tacks on War­ren. Sanders speech­writer David Siro­ta has ap­peared on their show while work­ing on the cam­paign, as has na­tion­al press sec­re­tary Bri­ah­na Joy Gray. From Warren’s point of view, it might seem like Sanders is speak­ing out of both sides of his mouth: Vague­ly dis­avow­ing on­line anger in pub­lic state­ments while his cam­paign reach­es out and ap­peals di­rect­ly to the peo­ple pur­vey­ing it.”
—Zack Beauchamp, Vox

See also: Joe Ro­gan.

I mean, Imag­ine be­ing a can­di­date for pres­i­dent and tak­ing any­thing called “Chapo Trap House” se­ri­ous­ly.

We could have had this. But no.

Men do not un­der­stand what the smart, hard work­ing, am­bi­tious, hope­ful women of this coun­try are go­ing through right now, and many are un­will­ing to even try. Most don’t care, ei­ther.

Eliz­a­beth War­ren, the ab­solute best per­son for pres­i­dent who ran this year, dropped out of the pres­i­den­tial race this week. And she should – she per­formed ter­ri­bly on Su­per Tues­day, came in third in her home state of Mass­a­chu­setts, and came in fourth in Cal­i­for­nia be­hind Biden and Bloomberg.

Cal­i­for­nia, that bas­tion of pro­gres­sivism. I am so dis­ap­point­ed in you, my home, my gold­en state, my birthright.

Now we are left with a bunch of old white men.

We get to watch them ar­gue and wag fin­gers and get con­fused and duke it out over the next nine months. That is, if we so choose. It doesn’t have to be painful. Ladies, we can just not pay at­ten­tion any­more. One way or an­oth­er, it’ll shake out how­ev­er it’s go­ing to shake out, and then in No­vem­ber we will check that box.

And we will wait. And then we will prob­a­bly cry. So maybe spend this time do­ing some­thing more mean­ing­ful and ful­fill­ing. We earned it.

Bernie ain’t look­ing good, peo­ple. He hunch­es over and leans on things when­ev­er he gets the chance. He *does* sound like your ram­bling old un­cle who restarts his sen­tences five, six times and whose brain goes off in every di­rec­tion. Add to that the fact that he’s us­ing a cam­paign video tout­ing his re­la­tion­ship with Oba­ma, which is just ut­ter­ly gob­s­mack­ing con­sid­er­ing he’s built his brand on tear­ing down “the es­tab­lish­ment” and Oba­ma falls firm­ly with­in that des­ig­na­tion.

He also came out and told his sup­port­ers the at­tacks on War­ren are aw­ful and need to stop.

Cool, thanks gramps! It’s a lit­tle late for that. This means about as much as when I spent two hours wash­ing my grandfather’s car and he gave me two quar­ters. They were shiny though! So I had that go­ing for me.

Frankly, he can fuck off and so can Biden. I’ll vote for whichev­er one “wins.” But right now, there are no win­ners, and Amer­i­ca has lost.

 

They shouldn’t have tried to hold an elec­tion AND teach Amer­i­cans how to wash their hands, all in the same week. It was too much. We were over­whelmed.

— ditch pony (@molly7anne) March 4, 2020

Oh and I want to say one oth­er thing.

Grow­ing up, I was en­cour­aged to study hard and get straight As so I could go to col­lege, get a de­gree, get a ‘good’ job, and make my way in the world.

Get­ting a col­lege ed­u­ca­tion was also framed as “be­ing well round­ed” and “be­ing ex­posed to a va­ri­ety of sub­jects and view­points.”

I went $15K into debt to get that de­gree (a pal­try amount com­pared to many, but it’s still debt) and I fi­nal­ly paid off that loan last No­vem­ber.

I am a col­lege ed­u­cat­ed white woman with a Bachelor’s De­gree in Amer­i­ca.

My de­mo­graph­ic is where Eliz­a­beth War­ren got the ma­jor­i­ty of her sup­port. And I know, af­ter do­ing every­thing I was told to do, I am vil­i­fied for be­ing “her only sup­port.”

Peo­ple said, “she only has the col­lege ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple” like it was a bad thing. It WAS a bad thing that her sup­port was large­ly lim­it­ed to us, but that’s not how it was meant when it was said by the peo­ple who said it to me and oth­ers.

It was meant as an in­sult – an im­pli­ca­tion that col­lege ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple are elit­ist and out of touch with “real Amer­i­cans” and so is War­ren. That she doesn’t have poli­cies for “work­ing peo­ple.” (I work 40 hours a week, but ap­par­ent­ly “work­ing peo­ple.” only means blue col­lar jobs.) That we can’t pos­si­bly know what’s right for Amer­i­ca and make de­ci­sions ac­cord­ing­ly. We are the es­tab­lish­ment. We are the en­e­my.

Pro­gres­sives don’t re­al­ize this but they have start­ed us­ing the same talk­ing points as the far right. In­tel­lec­tu­al­ism and high­er ed­u­ca­tion is scorned and peo­ple with de­grees are vil­i­fied. Man­u­al la­bor, work­ing gigs, and liv­ing pay­check to pay­check is de­cep­tive­ly glam­or­ized and twist­ed to make peo­ple feel they are more de­serv­ing, more knowl­edge­able, more in touch.

They for­get that many peo­ple – my­self in­clud­ed – came from blue col­lar fam­i­lies in rur­al, de­pressed ar­eas. And they do all this while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ar­gu­ing for free ac­cess to ob­tain the same ed­u­ca­tion I have, with­out a whiff of irony.

I played by the rules and did every­thing I was sup­posed to do and I’m proud my ac­com­plish­ments and where I’m at in life. I cer­tain­ly didn’t do it alone. It was hard­er for me than it should have been and it shouldn’t be hard for any­one.

But I am fuck­ing HAUNT­ED by this ut­ter lack of per­spec­tive and self aware­ness. This at­tack on my iden­ti­ty and the iden­ti­ty of many women (and men) who fought their way to a bet­ter life and were able to iden­ti­fy some­one who would help more peo­ple to have that, too.

This coun­try has turned into a buck­et of crabs. If you don’t know the metaphor, look it up.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2020 Emi­ly Duchaine. Pic­tured up top: Emily’s “She’s elec­table if you fuck­ing vote for her” shirt (cropped), with this pin, cour­tesy of her very good friend Mr. Robert Berry.

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