The Washington Post - 07.03.2020

SATURDAy, MARCH 7 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

BY JENNIFER FIORE

I

h ave a confession: I went to Costco last

week and bought a cartful o f pasta, b eans,

frozen veggies and Clorox wipes. I

wouldn’t say I panicked in the face of

coronavirus, but I like to be prepared. I have

three kids — two are ravenous teenagers —

and the prospect of “significant disruption”

compelled me to pull on my yoga pants and

hop into my Volvo to stock up for the coming

plague.

Yo u’ve heard of the “soccer moms” of the

1996 election and the “security moms” of

2004. Now meet the sanitizer moms of 2020.
      We are on text chains and Facebook feeds
      sharing updates about the emerging pan-
      demic. We a re about to be legion — s preading
      like a contagion, if you will — and we’ve been
      training for this since we first picked up a
      copy of “What to Expect When Yo u’re
      Expecting.”
      Recent days have seen a rush of panicked
      shoppers at b ig-box s tores all over t he country
      and online, cleaning out even Amazon of
      hand sanitizer. Americans are preparing for
      quarantine and for a shortage of drugs, and
      their fears have brought about a political
      reckoning in the Democratic primaries. Fol-
      lowing Super Tuesday, New York magazine
      snarked, “Concerns about the spread of
      COVID-19 appear to have created a new bloc
      of coronavirus voters — whatever that
      means.”
      To counter this grim reality, and looking
      ahead to the general election in November,
      President Trump spins his own fairy tale of a
      functional government. His recently televised
      address and appointment of Vice President
      Pence to spearhead the government’s re-
      sponse were m eant to be reassuring — n ot just
      to families but also to investors who are
      selling off stocks at an unsettling speed. The
      president, unbelievably, is still downplaying
      the crisis, speculating that the World Health
      Organization’s m ortality rate is overestimated
      and sharing out-of-date statistics on the
      number of Americans infected.
      Moms don’t have the patience for the
      president’s misinformation. We have to figure
      out how we are going to work when our kids’
      schools close — or when our workplaces do.
      When I made a joke on Twitter about what to
      do with millions of kids home from school, an
      Iowa mom replied, “Much more worried
      about what we’ll do for money.” Our kids may
      be tuned in to the Disney Channel, but we’re
      watching the cable bill.
      All of this was on the minds of Democratic
      primary voters on Super Tuesday. In exit
      polling in several big states — including
      California, which reported the first case of
      “community spread”; Te xas, which hosts a
      major quarantine area for patients with
      confirmed cases f rom China and the Diamond
      Princess cruise ship; and Virginia, home to
      thousands of federal government workers
      who know a thing or two about security and
      global health — more than half said the
      coronavirus was a factor in their vote.
      Just like that, the electability argument
      prevailed. Those who were candidate shop-
      ping all last year are now backing the person
      they consider the safest bet against a reckless
      and malignant president. According to NBC
      News, those coronavirus voters chose Joe
      Biden by 47 percent to Bernie Sanders’s
      29 percent.
      Though there is a case to be made that
      providing Medicare-for-all would serve us
      well in a pandemic, jittery voters looked for
      safe harbor in the former vice president.
      When it came time t o vote Tuesday, B iden won
      both women and health-care voters by
      12 points across the 14 Super Tuesday states.
      While Biden isn’t a groundbreaking or
      inspiring candidate (and women are frankly
      getting tired of the relentlessness of political
      sexism), he’s trustworthy in the face of
      looming public health and economic crises.
      As Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said, “Joe
      knows u s” — a nd as always, t he personal is t he
      political. With unrelenting news of coronavi-
      rus spreading and the economy faltering,
      sanitizer parents of both political parties are
      likely to turn to a candidate who can instill
      confidence in a crisis, one who understands
      that our kids are what keep us up at night
      (sometimes literally).
      There’s a second phase of the contest
      coming up soon. Although she didn’t win
      Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren’s confi-
      dence-inducing plans — she even had one for
      coronavirus — mollified sanitizer moms like a
      glass of rosé while watching Rachel Maddow.
      So if Joe knows us as well as w e hope, h e’ll p ick
      a woman for his vice president.

The writer was a senior adviser to former

Democratic presidential candidate Julián castro.

Goodbye,

‘soccer moms.’

Hello,

sanitizer moms.

THE YEAR 2148

T

oo bad! Look, there was, once again, a

problem with the female candidate, and I am

very sorry about it. We h ave sure had a run of

bad luck with these candidates! I would have

said 10 years ago that there was no way Cyborg Dave

would be president before a human woman, or that

Armored Bob would be president SIX TIMES, but —

that just shows why I am so highly compensated as a

pundit: I am always so surprised, and people love to

see it.

But the good news is that there are a lot of women

who are already getting my hopes up for 2152. I can

just tell. This new crop is everything that the past

hundred-plus years of female contenders were not!

They j ust feel right to me. This is going to be the time,

for sure. (Coincidentally, those were the last words

my now-140-year-old mother said, in 2076, right

before we placed her in the Cryo-Ta nk so that she

could not see the results and be disappointed yet

again.)

It’s amazing to me, the weird coincidences we’ve

had with these f emale candidates. F irst Hillary. T hen

Liz, Amy, Kamala and Kirsten. Then Alexandria.

Then Fiona. Then Tiffany. Then Siri. Then Glorm

(1 through 19). They a lways seem so presidential, and

then, every time, like clockwork, the second they

enter the race, it turns out that something is the

matter with them and that a vote for them would

betray the ideals I hold dearest. It almost feels

deliberate and malicious on their part. Maybe they

are the real cyborgs, not President Dave! (No, I am

joking. Dave is certainly a cyborg.)

Next time, the candidate’s authenticity will be

palpable to all. People will not be excited about the

fact that she is a woman. They will be excited to

demonstrate that they are unmoved by consider-

ations of gender but want what is best for all —

dispassionately. That w ill be what happens next time,

for sure!

As for now, there are already dozens of women I

could name who would be acceptable, and all of

whom have one thing in common: They are not

currently asking for my vote. There is something

about a woman who has never declared any interest

in running for president that just screams “presiden-

tial.” I am excited to vote for her.

This year was unfortunate, but I just think it

showed that if there were a female candidate who

was qualified but a fresh face, and who did not bring

so much baggage and inauthenticity, people would

support her. This is a different problem from four

years a go, when the female candidate on whom I had

set my hopes had an imperfect response to the

Plasmid Crisis, and four years before that, when the

woman turned out not to be in perfect control of her

army of swarming bots, or four years before that

when — w ell, I f orget e xactly w hat the error w as, but I

know that it was specific and unforgivable.

This is certainly not all women. It’s just every

woman so far — a weird fluke that has happened

every four years, like clockwork, since 1872. Nothing

is holding these women back but themselves, and I

am excited for them to be better next time — a nd fix it.

Yes, next time, things will go d ifferently! So we beat

on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly

into the past.

Twitter: @petridishes

ALEXANDRA PETRI

So 2148 was a bust. Next time a woman runs for president will be different!

DRAWING BOARD

B Y JOHN cOLE FOR THE ScRANTON TIMES-TRIBUNE

B Y RIcK McKEE FOR cOUNTERPOINT

B Y DAVID FITZSIMMONS FOR THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR

B Y OHMAN FOR THE SAcRAMENTO BEE

D

on’t q uite know how to break t he news to

Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Robert

F. S mith, D avid S teward a nd Shawn Cart-

er, a.k.a. Jay-Z. But if Bernie Sanders

makes it to the White House, they had better p ack

their bags and h ead for the h ills.

That’s because Winfrey, Jordan, Smith, Stew-

ard and Jay-Z, the five richest black people in

America, are among the 607 Americans who

landed on Forbes’s annual billionaires list.

The very thought of that list seems to sicken

Sanders. “There should be no billionaires,” he

flatly d eclared in a tweet last fall.

Sanders s aid he w ants to be rid of them because

“we cannot afford a billionaire class whose greed

and corruption has been at war with the working

families of this country for 4 5 years.”

I am not personally acquainted with Winfrey,

Jordan, Smith, Steward or Jay-Z. I am aware of

their prominence in the world of the wealthy. I’m

sure they are just as flawed as the rest o f humanity.

It n ever occurred to me, h owever, to think of t hem

as greedy, corrupt threats to America’s working

families or the cause of economic disparities and

human misery.

As best I can tell, America’s black billionaires

didn’t reach Forbes’s list because of inherited

money. They also didn’t amass their net worth

through marriage. Winfrey, Jordan, Smith, S tew-

ard and Jay-Z built their fortunes. No matter.

Sanders w ants to tax it away.

But it’s not just the wealthiest of the wealthy

who are the ruination of America. There’s that

other class of corruption — c orporate chief execu-

tives, viewed by Sanders as banes of the country’s

existence. “Greedy corporate CEOs,” he calls

them, who “have rigged the tax code, killed mar-

ket competition, and crushed the lives and pow-

ers o f workers and communities across A merica.”

I’m acquainted with Marillyn Hewson, the

chairman, president and CEO of Lockheed Mar-

tin, and Rosalind Brewer, Starbucks’s chief oper-

ating officer. These female executives never

struck me as tax-riggers or market-killers.

This is the first time I heard that Merck

chairman and CEO Kenneth Frazier, TIAA Presi-

dent and CEO Roger Ferguson, and Lowe’s CEO

Marvin Ellison — three African American busi-

ness leaders — might be crushing communities

across the nation.

Rather, they all strike me as successes in the

corporate world, as role models for women and

folks of color who want entry to the executive

suites of the Fortune 500. But then again, I have

never thought of businesses that create jobs and

pay wages as dens of inequity, although some are

better than others. More glass ceilings need to be

shattered. Corporate governance reforms are

long overdue. Adjusting tax rates to ensure that

corporations pay a fairer share of federal tax

revenue and closing tax loopholes are absolutely

essential.

And I wonder where an institution such as the

Howard University School of Business, which is

celebrating its 50th anniversary — and, for that

matter, all business schools across the country —

fit in a Bernie Sanders world. Business school

programs are about preparing students for the

world of commerce. Studying and finding solu-

tions to business and management problems —

global a nd locally — a re what they do.

The existence of those schools is predicated

upon the assumption that the private sector and

markets are indispensable to the economy, that

entrepreneurship is valued, that the p rofit motive

is not sinful and that there is nothing immoral

about w anting to exchange p ositions in the work-

ing class for success up the rungs of a corporate

ladder.

I know there are those out there who buy the

notion that America consists of a small class of

privileged, rapacious super-rich lording over

throngs of oppressed, capitalist-exploited work-

ers. You can see it in poll numbers showing the

share of Americans who prefer socialism to capi-

talism inching upward. Sanders would probably

count t hat as success.

But most folks across the color, religious and

social spectra who want to reduce deprivation

and retain or improve their own economic status

are not thirsting for a Sanders “revolution.”

Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and company

have no place in Bernie’s world. But would others

in America seeking or enjoying e conomic empow-

erment truly be better off? Who wants to risk

finding out?

[email protected]

COLBERT I. KING

Black billionaires

need not apply

to Bernie’s world

I have never thought

of businesses that create jobs

and pay wages as dens of inequity,

although some

are better than others.