Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Minnesota's Dr. No

Why I’m not a Klobuchar supporter:
She’s not a man, she’s not a socialist, she’s not a New Yorker, she’s not gay, she’s definitely not a firebrand or a reformer or a visionary. She has no online army—two subreddits dedicated to her campaign have fewer than 1,000 members each. She’s not Hillary and she’s not AOC. She’s not Bernie and she’s not Warren. She not rich and she’s not poor. She’s not legible as a “wife” or “mother” in ways that can hurt female candidates who seem too feminine or nurturing. Nor can she be slotted into the Tracy Flick or Lisa Simpson tropes that so often plague political women: She’s not a try-hard. Yes, she shared that her Spanish name was “Elena,” but she also forgot the name of the president of Mexico. (This last may ironically have saved her: We don’t really have a category for a less-than-perfectly-prepared Tracy Flick.) She’s not funny (sorry) but she’s not humorless. She’s not a political novice but she’s also not D.C. She does have proposals, but those proposals largely reflect her strategy to run on a “politics of no”—mainly to reject her opponents’ ideas. No Medicare for All, no pandering. And though she’s also a moderate Midwesterner, she’s also tried to make it clear that she’s not Pete. And of course, she’s not Trump.

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