Let's be honest about things. If you blame anyone, blame Tom Perez and his DNC henchpersons. They made the 15% rule. It was the pinch that had party regulars at Klobuchar's throat to drop out for Biden, before Super Tuesday. Klobuchar did not persevere. She caved in. She bailed out. However you phrase it, she took the low road; for the likes of Ukraine Joe.
I blame that on her. I exerted no pressure, indeed, as I saw it I called it. Klobuchar was the better candidate than Ukraine Joe. She's honest. Nobody has ever challenged her on that. Her caving in was similar to Warren; again the 15% rule at play, and Bernie aptly being the leading progressive for multiple gender independent reasons: His policies were more progressive and favorable to regular people. In 2016 when people were begging Warren to oppose the Goldman-Sachs candidate - taking three legal bribes a/k/a speech fees for a quarter million each from that financial behemoth. Taking that path was a gender neutral, money incentivized thing Ms. Clinton did, and Warren's policy positions were progressive.
However, Warren declined when begged in 2016 to provide an alternative to Wall Street rule and grotesque income and wealth inequality, and Bernie stepped to the plate. You don't hit any home runs if you decline going to bat.
Then after Bernie raised the bar in 2016, 2020 comes, and Bernie and Warren both ran, again with Bernie's policy positions being the more progressive. People saw those differences, it mattered. And as to gender, in 2016 a progressive alternative existed to the Republican ticket and the Goldman-Sachs ticket. Jill Stein. Gender aside she got my vote because of the dreck the two party stranglehold ended up offering, 2016.
And in 2016 Goldman-Sachs was positioned by the two parties to a win-win situation. Bernie got DWS'd at DNC [leaving DWS gender aside she's as bad or worse than Perez on character]. If there was gender bias, it cut Madeline Albright's special-place-in-hell way where Ms. Clinton played her gender card and then criticized opposition as misogynistic. It wasn't. She was a greatly flawed money-grubber, per the "speech" payments.
Now, Tulsi is still in, and nobody on the crying towels wants to note that. It is not my fault Biden got more party support than Tulsi. And more than Amy. I'd rather either of those two leading the tocket over Ukraine Joe. I could have voted for either in the general election, unlike for Ukraine Joe. But I only have one vote. If Warren had stayed in and been a contested convention winner; I'd have been thrilled; it was her party colleagues who pushed Ukraine Joe. Not me.
With that as a prelude, a Strib item inspired this posting. Strib, this morning had local content, "'It's just so bleak': Minnesota women reel after female candidates leave 2020 race - Some hope that a woman will be vice president.
By Briana Bierschbach and Torey Van Oot - Star Tribune, March 6, 2020 — 9:10pm."
Mid-item excerpt:
The laments have not only come from Democrats. Carly Fiorina, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, suggested that sexism was at play when critics questioned the qualifications of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ 2008 vice presidential candidate. In the 2012 presidential election, then Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann became the first woman to win the Iowa GOP straw poll, but then finished a distant sixth in the state’s caucuses.
Amid this year’s disappointments, many Democratic women were looking to where women in the race might land. Some hoped one of the former female candidates would at least end up on the ticket this November.
Stephanie Schriock, the president of EMILY’s List, a political group that works to elect Democratic women who support abortion rights, was disappointed when Warren, only the second woman in history to get the group’s presidential endorsement, dropped out. But she said she was encouraged by the fact that even four years ago, the idea that there would be six women running for president in 2020 didn’t even cross her mind.
Let's parse that. Fiorina was a blah candidate whose claim to fame was that she'd been CEO of Hewitt-Packerd. In fact, she mis-managed the firm, and was fired; the firm later recovering under alternate management. Schriock - she was a crackerjack campaign manager for Tester in Montana and Franken in Minnesota; then took her regular-paycheck retirement, via Emily's List; which was so into pushing Ms. Clinton's 2016 candidacy that it shorted down ticket possible help, and somehow Jill Stein, not a Dem inner party regular, was fully and totally ignored. Emily's List is a party organ. As DNC, each in 2016 headed by a woman. If gender matters, what about the Warren campaign management - why not a woman? Presumably Warren picked the most promising manager, independent of gender - as Bernie supporters in 2020 are picking who they (based not on gender but on his more progressive policy and his courage in 2016 to oppose the cramdown of the Wall Street candidate) thought best.
Of the women running in 2020 - Warren was second choice here based on policy and record, Gillibrand had deep-sixed Franken. Harris is/was an opportunist, a Willie Brown protege, (some have alleged bedfellow), and she had a prosecutorial record that was challenged as unnecessarily harsh. Gabbard had much worthwhile to say from having served in the military, against regime change war [recall Clinton's Libya fiasco] and was sidetracked by MSM, which is their fault, not Tulsi's and not mine. (Of those still candidates for the Dem nomination, Tulsi to me is second best to Bernie, now, with Warren out; and voting for her over Trump would have been a joy, were she to be the Dem nominee. Unlike Ukraine Joe. Where if Jill Stein runs again I again would pick her over two-party dreck. Or the legalized mj candidate this cycle if there is one, rather than flawed Ukraine Joe.
In 2016 I would have been overjoyed to vote for Warren, had she run, and now for 2020 I'd have been overjoyed to see her the nominee and voting for her in the general election would have been joyous too, had she generated more 2020 traction than Bernie.
So, based on policy and history, Bernie favored as more progressive. And if the nominee was to be from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party - Klobuchar was better than the inexperienced town mayor, and not critically flawed as is Ukraine Joe. But the inner party, not voters, did the Joe cramdown. Amy took it, and quit. She could have stayed at least through Super Tuesday as Warren did; but choose to bow to party pressure - improper party pressure but, again, based on Perez hacks setting DNC rules.
So, Warren picks a male campaign manager, and complains now of gender bias. DWS held DNC leadership and abused the power. Fiorina was in fact a failed CEO. Harris' unappealing and overaggresive ambition galled, as did the overambitiousness of the South Bend mayor.
BOTTOM LINE: Klobuchar was the best of the Repbulican-lite candidates. The worse, Ukraine Joe, was the inner party darling as was Ms. Clinton in 2016, and their choosing mediocrity is their problem, not mine.
They hate progressives, love Wall Street donor money, and choose accordingly, but then Klobuchar was the better person in that Republican-lite camp.
Warren just suffered having a better progressive option running, one who also had the courage to push a progressive dimension into the 2016 contest when Warren deferred. Warren was wanted then by progressives, better known then, than Bernie.
But Bernie had the guts.
So. The belief here was Warren and Klobuchar should have remained. They quit.
Next, as to gender bias, it is not an easy topic. For example - Basketball coach Reeve has committed to only hiring future female assistant coaches, as a palliative step given how the WNBA has a majority male head coaching situation, league-wide, in a womens' league. It is a gender biased decision, clearly, merit not being the key determinant (as with Warren's campaign manager choice), but gender first and determinant, second criterion being to choose the best woman available.
I like that Reeve decision, but I can see it criticized by others as gender biased. Which it is.
Bottom line - Warren should have listened and run in 2016 when she was known and respected as a leading progressive and Bernie was an unknown but with guts to put himself into things so there'd be a progressive option. Bless that step, especially against Goldman-Sachs and Wall Street, the Clinton power base. Now Ukraine Joe is their darling of the day, not Amy, and the reason is likely relative pliability, Joe being the most understanding of serving the donors any way they want.
More could be argued, but the post is lengthy already. Blame the DNC and Wall Street for 2016's Clinton defeat, and for what might shape up as a DNC - Wall Streat 2020 brain fart by DNC, with Wall Street happy with Orange Man or Ukraine Joe.
If you get a sense that DNC is disrespected here. Good. It is. The entire batch of wealth-over-fairness DNC inner workers and donors are the villains.
Don't blame me. I supported Ellison for DNC head. Because he is a progressive. He was an early 2016 Bernie endorsee, as was Tulsi Gabbard; and now the inner party morons are
I'd have wanted a Bernie and Warren contest, with the one getting more primary votes having first ticket spot and the other being VP candidate [not most convention delegates being the measure but popular voting numbers to be what matters, as might be done about electoral college reform to make popular voting majority definitive]. Then for a second term the two, Bernie and Liz, could have reversed ticket spots. That would have been the ideal ending for me.
UPDATE: It is guessing after a fact not in evidence - but if 2016 had been a general election, Fiorina vs. Ms. Clinton, I probably would have voted Fiorina, holding my nose and going lesser evil (unless something like a Fiorina-Pence ticket was offered). The one presidential candidate in my lifetime I would never vote for even if under torture, is female, I admit that. Because of where I live Michele Bachmann ended up my Rep., and that she thought herself presidential was the nastiest of jokes. I would vote Ukraine Joe or Ms. Clinton over that monster, but it's not faint priase, it is no praise at all to say that. And, I would if so confronted vote Ukraine Joe, in a heartbeat, over Mike Pence. Aside from those qualifications, I regard Ukraine Joe as toxic waste, based on his entire career, and I'd expect Anita Hill to agree with me.
The Democratic Party has to reform. They've at least respected the electorate enough to lie to us, where the Republicans say who they are and that they'd screw us. Aside from Trump that is. He lied. He won. We need caps, "Make American Politics Marginally Decent Again," or some such slogan. At least Reagan's passed and can no longer haunt the nation. There is sunshine in that realization. It relates to how I cannot hate Trump the way some do. Reagan was worse. And I remember. That we survived the Gipper means we can survive Trump, and the Chicken Little fluff from some Dems that Fascism is inevitable if Trump gets four more - that is galling - because we're fascist already, (Bloomberg did run), and our goal has to become less so. Medicare for All is a first step toward that goal. It should be a litmus test for any Dem Party nominee; but Ukraine Joe, along with his other baggage, opposes it. Perhaps progressives should decline en masse to vote for any nominee not on board to healthcare being a right of every person living in the nation. Make it the pivotal issue, as Bernie is trying to do.