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Warren, Klobuchar, Gabbard, and Williamson could all be
that woman... could they?
Rather than being propelled, these women have seemed
stuck in a sort of political purgatory, firmly, frustratingly
sandwiched between Hillary’s loss and the country’s (even-
tual?) realization that a woman can be president. Studies
conducted by Northeastern University and FiveThirtyEight,
respectively, found that the female candidates have received
more negative coverage in the news media than their male
rivals, and have had a harder time breaking through in cable
TV and viral moments (unless you count Trump evoking the
massacre at Wounded Knee to mock Warren). Depending
on the day, these women have been eclipsed by a man who
can speak Norwegian (Pete Buttigieg) or who played in a
punk band (Beto O’Rourke) or who picked up $700,000
on a Wednesday night in Hollywood (Joe Biden). As I was
reporting this story, David Axelrod, the former Obama
adviser, praised Buttigieg’s taco-eating ability. (“He can eat
tacos without apparently dropping any on his white shirt,”
Axelrod tweeted). I tried to imagine a woman candidate (or
any woman) being praised for eating, well, anything.
None of these candidates want to dwell on sexism and
double standards—and even asking those questions feels
a little sexist when you realize that the men in the race get
to spend their time talking about issues, policy, their planto defeat Trump, Irish modernist literature. Of course I
still ask. What about the time a Boston radio reporter de-
scribed Warren during her Massachusetts senate campaign
as “a strand of pearls short of looking like the head of the
P.T.A.”? Warren tells me that after that one she enlisted her
husband, the Harvard law professor Bruce Mann, to be
a sort of taste tester. He’ll scan news stories and then yell
upstairs—“Clear!”—if they are safe for his wife to read.
On the topic of uneven media coverage, Klobuchar gives a
flash of that cutting politesse known as Minnesota nice: “The
public wants a leader to have an optimistic economic agenda,
and they’re not really going to relate to you complaining that
you didn’t get as fair press coverage as some guy who got up
on a counter.” (She’s talking to you, Beto.) The Minnesota
senator also says that the women in the race have so much
elected experience (a combined 40 years in Congress) that
they inevitably get tougher questions than male candidates
with lighter résumés. “We’ve all been asked those questions
because we’ve done the job,” Klobuchar says. “People who
have less of that experience—there are no questions to ask.EXPERIENCE MATTERS
Five candidates, representing a combined 40
years in Congress. In this story: hair and makeup,
SET DESIGN, M Carrie LaMarca. Details, see In This Issue.