When Asked if Sexism Killed Warren's Campaign, Trump Puts That Rumor to Rest
President Donald Trump scoffed Friday when asked whether sexism led to Democratic voters shunning Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in favor of male candidates.
Warren dropped out of the Democratic presidential race Thursday. Former Vice President Joe Biden currently leads the contest, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the field, but is far behind the leaders.
During a news conference, Trump was asked if sexism torpedoed Warren.
“I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater. She destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly, like it was nothing. That was easy for her,” Trump said.
“But people don’t like her. She’s a very mean person, and people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean,” Trump said.
Earlier, Trump fired back at a questioner who implied Biden was not part of the left-wing of the Democratic Party, according to a White House media pool report. Trump particularly cited Biden’s statement while campaigning in Texas that he would make former Texas Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke his point man on gun control.
“Well, he’s left-wing and he’s got all people that are left-wing. And in many ways, he’s worse than Bernie. Look at what he did with guns. He put Beto in charge of guns. Beto wants to get rid of guns, right? So that’s a bad — that’s a bad stance,” Trump said.
“And he’s got a lot of people that are left-wing, and they’ll be running the government. He’s not going to be running anything. If he ever got in, they’ll be running the government. They’ve got people further left-wing than what Bernie has. So, not — not going to be good. Wouldn’t be good for Wall Street, I can tell you that.”
Trump said Biden’s tax plan would wreck the economy.
“Plus, if you look at his taxes, he’s going to raise taxes incredibly. He’s going to raise taxes more than Bernie. I looked at — and he’s open about it. Bernie doesn’t like to — doesn’t like to talk about it. I mean, Joe Biden, his tax increases are — they’re staggering,” Trump said.
“It’s ridiculous. He’ll destroy everything that’s been built.”
Many on Twitter attacked the argument that sexism doomed Warren, who trailed either Biden or Sanders in the polls for most of the race, and even lost to both in her home state of Massachusetts in the Super Tuesday primaries.
If you try to write off Warren running third in *her own state* to sexism, then you just haven’t paid attention to Warren.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 4, 2020
Well… bye. And please, don’t try to blame ‘sexism.’ This has nothing to with Warren’s gender. It’s an undoing of her own making. #2020election #ElizabethWarren https://t.co/7LNOSbymT6
— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) March 5, 2020
Here’s yet another of the endless postmortems pinning Warren’s defeat on sexism. They all sound alike; none ever has evidence to back the claim.
76% of women ?? ????????????? this week voted against Warren. It wasn’t sexism. It was Warren.https://t.co/rtHV8gDyj1
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) March 6, 2020
Writing in The Nation, however, legal correspondent Elie Mystal claimed sexism in fact was a factor in Warren’s loss.
“Democrats are not going to be the ones to get a woman elected president. This party, as currently constituted, is never going to fully get behind a woman candidate, because no real woman can match the pubescent fantasy of a woman Democrats seem to want,” Mystal wrote.
“No woman can be explicitly feminist enough while also nonthreatening to male swing voters. No woman can be laughably overqualified compared to her male opponents while still being a ‘new’ and ‘fresh’ face to lead the party. No woman can be strong, sweet, tough, flexible, brilliant, accessible, fiery, motherly, and attractive, but not distractingly so, all at the same time. And if a woman can’t be all those things, well, why take the risk of promoting a woman when we can find a perfectly mediocre man just lying around waiting for somebody to give him a chance?”
Not all commentators agreed.
“Warren could have focused on the working class; instead, she focused on the wokest class. She advocated for social positions that may resonate with highly educated, largely white activists but just don’t appeal to a broad base of Americans across race and class,” Katie Herzog, a staffer at the Seattle publication The Stranger, wrote in Reason. “She talked about nonbinary driver’s licenses and advocated for trans women to play women’s sports and used the term traffic violence’ when the rest of us simply say ‘car crash.’
“She’s out of touch — or at least, her advisers are — and there aren’t enough Oberlin grads for her to win Ohio, much less the swing states that will likely determine the outcome of the 2020 race.”
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