Commentary: Democrats’ rejection of Elizabeth Warren shows misogyny is still rampant
Chicago Tribune ^ | 3/05/20 | EMILY L. HAUSER
Posted on 3/6/2020, 5:59:24 AM
**SNIP**
Anyone who hasn’t had those experiences, or known what it’s like to plan an entire day and an entire life around the possibility of sexual assault or harassment, or what it’s like to be the only one of your gender in a room marked by power, or what it’s like to have your reproductive freedom legislated by people with different reproductive organs - simply brings a different sensibility to the issues that shape the lives of 164 million Americans. It matters that women are so often absent from the halls of power, and it’s well past time for one to be in the White House.
But Warren’s campaign - for which I have canvassed across state lines, made calls, live-tweeted speeches and raised more than $10,000 - faltered and finally ended Thursday. Despite her wisdom, compassion and proven success in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unseating an incumbent Republican in Massachusetts and destroying the campaign of a billionaire with a history of sexual harassment complaints (bye, Mike Bloomberg) - Democrats, the ostensible party of progressive values, have decided they prefer one of two near-80-year-old men: Joe Biden, who oversaw the shameful railroading of Anita Hill in the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, or Bernie Sanders, a man who was unaware that his 2016 campaign had been roiled with complaints of sexual harassment and gender pay disparities and when later asked about it by Anderson Cooper, responded that he hadn’t known at the time because he was “a little bit busy running around the country.”
Of course, both men have also supported women: Biden introduced the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, and Sanders has since adopted a sexual harassment policy that he terms “the gold standard.” How wonderful that they have some notion that women, too, deserve full citizenship rights.
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