Tag: democrats

Amy Klobuchar, Or The Case Of The Workplace Bully

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary2 Comments

I believe Amy Klobuchar will be the Democratic nominee for president. I wish I was more excited about this. I don’t know how to get past reporting in The New York Times titled, simply, “How Amy Klobuchar Treats Her Staff.” If you live in the D.C. area and work in progressive circles, as I do, you are likely to know tons of stories that never have and never will be printed, shared first-hand with you by a variety of dedicated professionals who worked for her, people with no desires for notoriety and no axes to grind. The difficulty of working for her is common knowledge in this town.

Why I Want To Like Amy Klobuchar
It’s been time for a woman president since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, and I really want to like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The first woman senator from Minnesota — a dream I started phonebanking for in middle school, when Ann Wynia ran in 1994 — she gave the best campaign announcement of any Democrat running for president this cycle.

She launched her effort to defeat Trump in a literal snowstorm. The image of her smiling behind the podium, snow falling down, is epic to the point of worthy of a tattoo on other people’s shoulders.

She’s funny. She’s smart.

She maintained her dignity when Justice Brett Kavanaugh stepped far over the line with her during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, asking her if she had blacked out while drinking alcohol rather than answering the same important question she had posed to him, germane to the credible story presented by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her with a friend in the room while they were drinking at a high school party.

She was right when she pointed out that women candidates with Pete Buttigieg’s comparatively low level of political experience would not stand a chance in the Democratic presidential primary, and it was a feminist act to name that.

Why I Think Amy Klobuchar Will Be The Nominee
I believe Amy Klobuchar will be the Democratic nominee for president. I have been saying this privately for months; now you are seeing it here, in the public forum of my personal blog. I believe this will happen because, regardless of my personal beliefs, policy priorities, and favored candidates (I am to the left of Sen. Klobuchar, and unapologetically so), I believe that Democratic primary voters will eventually coalesce around a centrist candidate who they believe is most likely to beat Donald Trump in a general election.

As a centrist from the upper Midwest, Klobuchar checks a lot of boxes.

I believe her ascent is inevitable because former Vice President Joe Biden is a weak frontrunner, which is convenient to blame on the fact that he is 77, but actually stems from the ageless truth that he has run in presidential primaries repeatedly over the decades and has never proved much good at it.

With fundraising prowess, surging poll numbers, and a sharp generational contrast, it may appear that Pete Buttigieg has the easiest path to surpassing Biden in the centrist lane, but as is true for high school and life, it’s critical not to peak too soon. As much as I believe in the leadership of young people and that Buttigieg has a promising future in politics, it seems likely that centrist voters will shift from Biden’s weakness as a candidate to Buttigieg’s lower experience level to eventually land upon Amy Klobuchar and her electability among white Midwestern voters, who Trump can’t win without.

(This is not to say I don’t think Klobuchar, a former prosecutor, doesn’t have real gaps with to fill with Black voters, and especially Black women voters, whom Democrats can’t win without; however they seem less insurmountable than Buttigieg’s failure to thwart police violence in his own community and wild card Michael Bloomberg’s racist stop and frisk policy as mayor of New York City, for which he has recently apologized.)

On Tough Bosses, Women Bosses, Workplace Bullying, And Amy Klobuchar’s Run For President
A tough boss can actually be a great boss. Tough can mean high standards that make staff work hard, grow, and achieve more than they thought possible. Tough can be challenging in the moment and a source of pride later, even when it seemed at the time like the difficulty could never be redeemed and the boss was just the worst. Workplace bullying is different.

I’m defining workplace bullying as repeated aggressive, degrading behavior in the workplace that serves to isolate and ridicule its targets, making life a living hell for them; in order for it to truly be workplace bullying, this behavior must be accompanied by power dynamics that make it impossible for its victims to free themselves from the behavior, short of leaving their jobs.

The stories about Amy Klobuchar seem to fit the pattern of workplace bullying, and that matters for her presidential run because workplace bullying indicates what I believe to be a serious failure of leadership. Leaders articulate a vision, and inspire others to work together to achieve that common purpose. If a political leader can’t inspire their own staff — who share their ideology and in the context of the dysfunctional capitol dome should in most circumstances be the easiest management issues on their plate — without psychologically beating them into submission, how can they be expected to lead the whole country?

Rigorous definitions are important. A colleague who disagrees with you is not necessarily a workplace bully. Nor is a woman in power who isn’t ‘likable.’ There are unfair standards for women leaders, and it’s true that people have all manner of irrational reactions to women in power, even feminists who claim they want to see women in power (you know, those hypothetical women in power who are more attractive leaders than the women actually doing the work now, although a large number of feminists seem to be pretty inspired by Elizabeth Warren, thank you very much).

I remember earlier in my career, a woman I worked with was frustrating to me. Our styles clashed and we often had different points of view. Once during a phone call she spat out, just because I’m disagreeing with you doesn’t mean I’m yelling at you. She was right. I appreciate this lesson, and actually remember her fondly today.

Our Country Needs Leadership — Desperately
Our country needs profound, courageous, principled leadership if we are to bounce back from the deep challenges to our democracy posed by structural inequality, ascendant white nationalism, and an authoritarian administration that has purposefully sown doubt in what is fact, undermined the free press, and used overt racism, support for gun manufacturers, and the magic carpet ride of anti-abortion extremists who will go along with literally anything to overturn Roe v. Wade. We will need to find ways to overcome conservative gerrymandering and social media echo chambers. The crisis of our democracy in 2020 is an urgent cry for leadership.

Cory Booker has a great message about leading with love, and I believe that our country desperately needs inspirational leadership skills and messages like his to draw people back together. While I could get very excited about a Booker candidacy, or a Warren candidacy, and I deeply, painfully miss the Harris and Castro campaigns, maybe the candidate we get will not be very exciting to me or to you.

If our first or second choice is not the nominee, we should choose to be grown-ups. Stopping Trump is indeed the most important thing. Tearing down every Democrat running is counterproductive, and every time I log into Twitter, where I follow mostly Democrats, I feel a little more demoralized to see how much energy is going into total, all-or-nothing shutdowns of Democratic candidates. No one deserves a total shutdown except Putin puppet Tulsi Gabbard (Kamala Harris was right about a number of things, including this!).  Mostly, I’d like to see Democrats organize respectfully for our favorite candidates and chill.

So Amy Klobuchar will not get my vote in the primary. If she is indeed the candidate in the general election, I will lean into what I like about her, dig in for the work required to move her to more progressive positions, and do everything I can to get her elected. I will do this for any Democratic nominee who is not a known Putin puppet. If it is Klobuchar I’m certain I would ugly cry and joyfully scream to see a woman from Minnesota defeating Donald Trump. But I will not pretend now like workplace bullying does not give serious pause. It does. It should.

Thinking Of Running For President As A Democrat? Please, Just Don’t.

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

There are too many Democrats running for president. The vanity and ridiculousness in the 20+ Democrats running could be hilarious if it weren’t so serious —

We have a classroom’s worth of politicians angling to be captain rather than part of a winning team. This is not how we defeat an authoritarian leader who lies, violates democratic norms, and welcomes misinformation campaigns from foreign adversaries that actively work to sow division among his opponents.

Let’s be honest: The current bloated field is filled with candidates who are replicas of one another. An ever greater number of these candidates don’t have a chance in Jupiter of winning Democratic primaries, much less the general election. Democratic Party leaders have failed to take control of this situation. This has happened likely in part because of fear of a renewed batch of complaints similar to what occurred from the Bernie Sanders campaign and its supporters after the last election, but an intramural and dated fight about a ‘rigged system’ within the Democratic Party shouldn’t be a factor, because it’s both an echo of the complementary waves that brought Trump into power within the Republican Party and also irrelevant to voters in the suburbs and exurbs who need an alternative to Trump.

I am not arguing for a coronation; an ideal number at this stage would be five or so candidates — enough to have a significant exchange of ideas, but also enough to get real and create the conditions where candidates with low poll numbers decide to move on. As it stands, not getting traction or polling into relevance is not enough incentive for our bloated field to winnow itself down now, because most candidates don’t have traction or high polling, creating an effect where no one leaves.

We cannot choose a strong candidate to support when we can’t even fit all of our candidates on one stage. There is a reason why no conference, ever, invites more than 20 panelists to weigh in on a given topic. Please, for the good of the Democratic Party, the United States of America, and the entire free world, if you’re thinking of running for president as a Democrat just now, don’t. And if you’re not getting traction, do the honorable thing and drop out. 

Sometimes the greatest acts of leadership are not when one person’s name blinks in giant lights, but when that person assesses the real landscape in which they operate, recognizes what exists and what is needed, and declines to blow a fuse.

 

 

Let’s Just Be Done With Excuses For Why Women Aren’t Running In Democratic Primaries

On By erintothemaxIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Let’s just be done with excuses for why women aren’t running in Democratic primaries, shall we? Let’s be done with excuses for why it is always some other man’s turn.

Yes, we know who gets invited to the golf course.

We got it.

Yes, we know that you find our ambition grating, our knowledge overwhelming, our qualifications a symbol of being “too establishment” or a liability in our “ability to connect.”

We know that you are delving deep into the psychology of why women don’t run, how we have to be asked several times, and how if we just thought more highly of ourselves then maybe it would happen.

We are also uninterested in you blaming us and our inner states, personally, for why centuries of male dominance are continuing today — even though none of the men who are actually holding the power mean it in any sort of oppressive way, lass.

We are up to our ears with Republicans who fundamentally disrespect our humanity and Democratic men who are said to be better for women than, well, the women who are the backbone of the party.

I stopped accepting your excuses for why women aren’t taking the elected seats years ago; you can still tell them to me, and I will listen. I will nod for your reasons, for even if I haven’t heard them before, together they make the most lovely quilt we can present to our daughters with the shrug that maybe their generation can do better.

Well, no. I refuse to teach my daughter that women should wait their turn.

I got angry the first time I took her out in a baby carrier to get out the vote and realized that in the allegedly most progressive corner of the Commonwealth of Virginia we were working to elect nine men and no women. In the Democratic Party. Four years later, in 2017, Arlington Democrats added literally one woman to the picture — out of nine candidates they wanted us to elect. Now, in 2018, we have what The Washington Post calls “two newcomers [battling] for Democratic nomination to Arlington County Board.” No shade to these lovely men, but there is nothing new about having men hold the gavels and women hold the clipboards, and I’m just done.

Those moments in life when we stop accepting our own excuses are the most powerful. I am no longer accepting my own excuses about why I cannot run for office — if you know me personally, you know my No. 1 line is that Arlington is a big pond with political people from D.C. who have a long line of succession, and if I lived somewhere else, I’d do it. I realize now that my excuse sounds a lot like another patch on the quilt of excuses for why Charles is almost always in charge. I am giving up my own excuses now about why I can’t run for office. I can run for office, I’m just not doing it right now. I encourage you to give up your excuses with me.

 

I Waited Until The Polls Closed To Say This: It’s Insulting To Have Only Men Running On Women’s Issues

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary14 Comments

I waited until the polls closed to say this:

It’s insulting to have only men running on women’s issues.

I live in Virginia. I am a feminist. I am a Democrat. And, I am disgusted.

This is me and my daughter doing a September literature drop in Arlington for the Democratic slate. At the time, she was 15 weeks old:

canvassing

We walked for hours through the heat distributing copies of a newsletter featuring the photographs of nine men the Democratic party urged Arlingtonians to vote for. No women.

You don’t need me to tell you women’s issues are front and center in the Virginia election. Nearly every ad on television has been about abortion, and/or has featured women surrogates speaking for candidates on both sides. I have been receiving invitations to attend events with “the candidate’s wives.” As I type, the races have not been called and all local and national pollsters are talking about women voters. Because, duh, that is a major part of what this election is about.

The more I walked with my daughter, the madder I got. What kind of feminist mom am I?

Every day I work for policies that will support her future. It is important to me to include her in some of my work. I want her to understand how politics work. We have not just campaigned together, we have gone lobbying on Capitol Hill together. I want her to see public service as accessible. There is a woman suffrage poster in her nursery. I have been encouraging her to run for Governor of Virginia when she grows up.

By no means do I want to send a message to her that women’s issues are important, and they are best handled by men.

By public appearances at least, the feminist infrastructure in my state supports all the Democratic men without making public comments about how wrong it is that women weren’t included — not just as wives, not just as issues, not just as voters — but on the ticket.

It is unacceptable to run on women’s issues without women on the ticket. Men can and should run in support of women’s rights, but men also need to make room for women to share leadership with them. I am new to Virginia, having moved here in March. Perhaps some will say I am naive. I made a decision to not say anything about this until the polls had closed. I considered whether to say anything at all.

It’s true that I am a newcomer and don’t know the intricacies of the Arlington Democratic politics. It’s also true that I vehemently agree that this year’s Republican ticket was dangerous for women, and I was committed to electing Democrats.

But clearly, whatever excuses I’m about to get, the continuous presence of unchecked “women are important! let’s have men lead the way!” messages and deeds is pandering and it’s wrong.

I will not remain silent through a future election cycle. It should have been a woman running against Ken Cuccinelli. At a minimum, there should have been women running down the ticket.

If Democrats want to run campaigns on women’s issues, and I agree that they should, they must immediately begin to make room for women on the ticket. Women must run. And the party must support us in our capacity as not just constituents, but leaders.