Back at the end of March, the president and many others were already talking about Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign as if it was over. Her campaign finance director quit in frustration, basically because he wasn’t being allowed to compensate for his failure to deliver by pitching Warren to big money donors. But that just demonstrated a lack of faith. Warren raised six million dollars in the first three months of the year and $19 million in the three months after her finance director left the campaign. She did it her way, and it began to work.
Meanwhile, Anna Peele of Washington Post Magazine, asks why America is ignoring Kirsten Gillibrand. On paper, you might think that Gillibrand and Warren are very similar. If anything, Gillibrand has the advantage of being the junior senator of New York, which should guarantee her more media exposure than most of her colleagues. So, why is Warren surging into third place and Gillibrand can’t break out above one percent in the national polls?
There is admittedly some mystery involved here, but one thing is pretty clear. The Democrats nominated a woman in 2016 who once held the same Senate seat that Gillibrand holds now, and it did not work out well. Working on the assumption that not learning from your mistakes is the definition of insanity, few Democrats see Gillibrand as a sufficient recalibration of strategy. She’s not getting traction because too few people accept the concept of her campaign to bother listening to what she has to say.
I know people will bring things up, like Gillibrand being the first out of the box to call for Al Franken’s resignation, but I am not sure that is actually a liability for her at all, and it’s certainly not something most voters even know about. It can’t possibly explain the giant shrug that has greeted her campaign.
Warren may just be a better politician who is running a better campaign. I could try to get granular with that theory and examine the choices each of them have made, the positions they’ve adopted, and their strategies for getting attention, but I think at the end of all that I’ll probably come out just saying that Warren is more skilled and has a better team.
What complicates the analysis is just how throughly moribund Gillibrand’s campaign has been from the very moment of its launch. If she had ever had the slightest buzz I might be able to explain how she lost it. It’s much harder to explain why she hasn’t generated any buzz at all. I could argue that she did a bad job of branding herself at the outset, but her choices haven’t seemed all that illogical. In a #MeToo moment, she’s depicted herself as a champion of women. She not only took the lead on ousting Franken, but she’s been out front on abortion rights and (in quite a turnabout) an extremely vocal proponent of gun control. It’s possible she went a bit too far into gender branding and turned herself into a niche candidate like Steve Forbes hammering a flat-tax or Gary Bauer railing against secularism. But even they were able to do considerably better than one percent in the polls.
For Peele, who spent some one-on-one time with Gillibrand in Iowa, the answer may be that she’s a little too boring for our entertainment age, but she speaks passionately, is photogenic, and isn’t shy about throwing herself into controversial topics. I don’t really see how she is boring. Peele also notes that she’s at her best on the campaign trail when she’s listening rather than talking, and there could be something to that. Maybe she’s a better retail politician than a made-for-television one.
Whatever the explanation, it doesn’t appear that her campaign is going anywhere, while Warren is resonating with more and more people each week. I’d like to give credit to Warren for being smart, showing leadership, and having a strategy calibrated to win where Clinton lost without selling out the base. But, again, that might explain why Warren is doing well but it does little to explain why Gillibrand is doing so badly.
I’m interested in this – Gillibrand was one of my top three picks at the start and Warren was not, but Warren has clearly shown greater leadership in terms of both policy and campaign tone than anyone else running. I became a supporter a couple of months ago. I think she’s got the zeitgeist of the moment.
I’ll speak only for myself but I’ve never liked Gillibrand. When she was appointed to the Senate seat in New York she had made her name as a conservative Democrat. Once in the Senate she moved left but I’ve never had the sense there’s any real political core other than whatever’s expedient and most likely to keep her in office.
Warren surged the moment she told Fox News to pound sand. That created separation between her and the rest of the pack. She followed that up with strong social media and appeals for $$ that presented as casual, not desperate. She’s doubling down on a folksy approach which serves her well and it’s leading voters to give her a second look.
Gillibrand is coming across pretty stock. A #metoo/whiskey/guns(?) mash up? Not sure anyone is buying that. She presents as political and slightly desperate. She needs a hook and some policy room to maneuver.
I think it’s a mistake to assume that her fratricide of Franken hasn’t alienated the sort of Dem voter who takes a position this early in the race. The low information voters aren’t paying attention yet, so the only data we’re getting right now is from people who keep up.
Also, Liz doesn’t represent Wall Street. It’s not easy for any NY politician to shed that baggage.
Agree, and I support her actions in regard to Franken and am glad he’s gone. You can’t mention her name online without someone jumping in to say how horrible it is that she called for his resignation. Ppl don’t care what the evidence was, don’t care that if he had stayed he’d have been in the Kavanaugh hearings, don’t care that multiple Dems including leadership called for him to go. IMO it’s ridiculous and misogynistic to blame Gillibrand for Franken’s fall, but lots and lots of Dems do blame her, and it hurts her.
She is not a progressive ; she has been assuming progressive positions fairly recently. I thought she did very well in the first debates .
She more than pushed Franken to resign with Chuckie Schumer ‘s strong assistance.
Franken,a true progressive,got eliminated by the corporatist Dems,without an investigation or hearings.
OK, this is a side topic in this thread, but you know, lots of people care what the evidence was in Frankens case. I care what the evidence was. There wasn’t any, not really. Not that rose to the level that he had to resign over it, in my opinion. He was hounded out of the senate for no good reason and I blame Gillibrand and some other senators for that, along with those who hold the view that ANY activity, however innocently-meant, that makes someone else the least bit uncomfortable is sexual harassment and grounds for losing ones position. I mean, giving a constituent a hug? Having a dumb joke picture taken years ago, when he was an actor? (If that was harassment then pretty much every actor I know is guilty of it. Most actors are not exactly uptight types, in my experience, at least they didn’t used to be when I was involved in that scene.)
The pendulum has swung too far on this issue and it will hurt some dems with a lot of the country unless they moderate their stance. Yes, there are real harassers out there and they should be dealt with accordingly. Women do not get fair and equal treatment in the workplace. Weinstein belongs in jail. Something needs to be done. But also, Franken got a bum rap, and that isn’t fair either.
Facts not in evidence. It has barely swung and hurt anyone in power at all. What has changed, fundamentally? A court case in the news of a kid recording his rape on his phone and called it rape, and the judge said he didn’t want to ruin the kids life. Now I have mixed feelings on stuff like that because I don’t really want to incarcerate anyone. But the pendulum has barely begun to swing…
It is kind of baffling. (Booker too.)
This isn’t an explanation but sometimes it just happens with certain candidates. Bill Richardson (MOC, Cabinet secretary, UN ambassador, governor) never broke 5% in a 5 person field in 2008. Bobby Jindal (university president, MOC, governor) never went anywhere in 2016 in a race that had 8(!) candidates break 10%.
Sometimes politics is odd that way.
To some extent I think it’s that only a few candidates can “catch fire” because most people have limited attention for politics. Warren had a much higher profile than Gillibrand at the start, and Gillibrand hasn’t done much to really stand out and replace her. There were already 3 well-known candidates at the start (Biden, Sanders, and Warren) and it’s difficult to get any more people noticed in the current media environment.
A tougher question is why Harris has caught on and not Gillibrand. They are fairly similar in starting position – 50’s, photogenic, well on the left of the caucus, and with similar levels of statewide experience in large liberal states. Why did Harris’ announce with a bang and Gillibrand with a fizzle? All I can really think of is that Harris announced with a bold progressive platform and Gillibrand with a “work across the aisle” offer and a opiate policy which, while pretty good, isn’t partisan like Harris’ massively progressive tax cut. I am suspicious there was some trolling work against Gillibrand’s opiate policy, so maybe the troll farms have been working against her, who knows why.
I wanted her to run in 2016. I too am flummoxed. I didn’t think she had the best shot, but surely she’d be in the top 8? She has a large email list, she has a lot of grassroots funding (one of the highest in the Senate around the 30’s%, despite representing New York). Ahead of the curve on a lot of issues. I even liked her debate performance where she mediated a lot of the conflict. She announced at Trump HQ! She’s willing to admit where she’s wrong and why she has changed her mind.
I think it’s the Franken thing. I really do. If you click that WaPo article, all of the comments are about Al Franken.
I have a guess, and it’s just that, not a position. Kirsten Gillibrand has a degree of sex appeal, so does Kamala Harris, while Elizabeth Warren, with greatest respect, does not. We rarely elect men with any noticeable degree of sex appeal (Bill Clinton and JFK being two exceptions) but it may be as simple as voters of all genders being vaguely uncomfortable with the idea of a ‘do-able’ woman in a position of authority.
I can tell you what did it for me. She came out READY. She has a plan, and she’s going to defend that plan, whether the ‘plan’ is her ideas on income equality, health care, or financing her campaign.
What that told me was that here was someone that if they won the presidency SHE WOULD BE READY.
Harris or Warren. But IMHO Warren will be the better prepared.
.
Some months ago, I, plunked down small donations to several candidates, including Gillibrand. The idea was to get them going enough to let us find out who they were, without picking a favorite yet. Several friends of mine did the same thing. For some reason, I reacted negatively to the emails I started getting from the Gillibrand campaign. They were very numerous, several per day, which was a problem. There was one in particular that invited me to do a survey on issues. The survey was the worst political survey I have ever seen – something like 5 questions, each a Yes/No, and with questions that amounted to “Do you support a ban on killing kittens for sport?” Utterly worthless questions as phrased, with absolutely no opportunity to express myself. It was obviously a ploy to elicit more donations, and nothing more. I hated it, and unsubscribed from the email list, giving my reason as “Too many emails. Way too many. Way, way, way too many. Too too many. Too many.” Thus ended my interest in Gillibrand as a candidate. I blame it on a poorly chosen campaign team.
Gillibrand is a good retail pol. Good constituent services, and has a good reason for her stances. She is measured, and knows a lot about a lot. My family was directly helped by her Rochester office. But even in a very Democratic western NY county, there has been zero buzz about her campaign. Even on social media, we have nothing.
Warren is surging here, and has people fired up. Lots of buzz on social media, and lots of in person conversations among my coworkers about plans she has championed. The student loan plan, with its discrete figures and way to pay for it, had a lot of people talking. Warren appears to get that folks are struggling, and has very real plans to help. Not positions, but plans that can be rolled out, complete with how to pay for them.
I, too, recall that a lot of people were writing Warren off when she first announced. They spoke about Pocahontas and compared her to Hillary and spoke about likeability. Funny, I always found Warren to be very likeable.
Then Warren came out of the gate very proactively. She was way ahead of the other candidates in proposing plans to solve the major problems of this country and world, but she didn’t present her plans as dry policy. She transformed talk of policy into a reflection of who she is as a person, politician, and candidate for president: “I have a plan for that.” She also boldly came out in favor of impeachment before most of the other candidates.
Of course, there is the theory put forward by Kos about her not going on Fox News and not trying to raise money from the big donors. In his view, that has set her apart from candidates like Gillibrand who did Fox townhalls.
I’ve been favorably impressed by several of the dem. candidates so far, but Warren has stood out of the pack for me. Her debate performance was superb and her policy proposals are attractive. She’s a fighter. I’m glad that others are seeing the same thing.
I think basically Warren is a much more known commodity than Gillibrand. There was a Draft Warren movement in ‘016. Donald Trump attacks her on the regular. Nothing like that has ever obtained with Gillibrand. To the extent she has national recognition at all I’d argue it’s precisely because of her prominence in the Franken ouster, and yes that is necessarily limited to the people who really tune into politics. FFS there were a lot of people who wanted Warren to challenge Clinton in the ‘016 primary. She was a keynote speaker in what, 2 DNCs? Is this really such a mystery? Warren is famous, Gillibrand is not.
Unless you are an overwhelming favorite, you need to take outlier positions to stand out. Barring that, you need to present yourself in some kind of distinctive way. Gillibrand hasn’t done either, whereas Warren has done both. I don’t agree with some of the positions she’s taken, but there’s no denying taking a strong stance on healthcare has given Warren a big signal boost. And that has benefitted her even with people (like me) who don’t necessarily agree, because it shows that she has a degree of political courage, which will be needed in the coming fight.