In recent decades, the Democratic Party has built an organization in which the leadership of women has become a fundamental part of their social coalition. Its public policies platform prioritizes the civil rights of women; its empowerment mechanisms convened, in these last parliamentary elections, the largest female representation to the Congress in history; and it has made as one of its strategic objectives to continue expanding this participation, together with that of ethnic minorities.
This empowerment process, in addition to promoting the mobilization around the Party of these demographic sectors, is intended to have a government that reflects the diversity of our society, avoiding “blind spots” in the legislative process as well as on the design and implementation of public policy.
In the last presidential elections, the Democratic Party nominated the first women presidential standard-bearer. Decades ago, it had also been a pioneer when Walter Mondale proposed congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate in a failed electoral attempt. But how is the female electorate responding?
Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in the Electoral College, but she achieved a solid majority in the popular vote. That result overwhelmingly included the majority of the African-American, Latino women’s vote, of all the other ethnic minorities, adding up the total of the female vote to 54% in favor of Hillary Clinton. Trump captivated the majority of the white woman vote with 52% in the consolidated result, but lost the vote of the white woman with university education (and particularly, that of the young women).
In fact, the Trump Presidency started with the powerful rejection by women, in a demonstration of impressive attendance in Washington DC and all the capitals of the country simultaneously. This initiative started the “Women’s March Movement”, a force that has been a determining factor in the political process that led to the Democratic triumph in midterm parliamentary elections. In the recent midterm elections the support of women to the Democratic Party and its candidates increased, including significant growth among white women with a college education, which grew from 52% to 59%.
In this context, we are approaching the 2020 presidential elections. The Democratic primary has been enriched by the announcement of several women as presidential candidates, all with impressive qualification and “gravitas”. Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Amy Klobuchar have already formalized, or are about to do so. Four powerful options. Who are they and what does each of them represent?
Let’s start with Warren. Senator for Massachusetts and contemporary of Hillary Clinton, is at 70 years the eldest of the group. She was an extraordinary law professor at Harvard University and a prominent Massachusetts Attorney General, a Democratic and progressive voice across the country. In her role as a prosecutor, Warren stood out in defending the rights of consumers and the most vulnerable sectors. She regained the seat in the Senate, which had been occupied by the legendary Ted Kennedy, briefly lost after a surprise special election in the wake of his death. In her crusade as prosecutor and Senator, Warren has tried to expose the abuse of big banks to the detriment of clients. Warren has been the target of direct attacks from Donald Trump, who calls her Pocahontas. The Senator is from Oklahoma and has always proudly said that her ancestry includes members of the Native American tribes of that region. The mockery from Trump generated rejection in the indigenous communities that have in Pocahontas one of the central figures of their heritage. Warren was a registered Republican between 1991 and 1996. And she admits having voted for that party until then, when she warned that it stopped defending the correct functioning of markets, and serving instead the concentration of economic power in corporations operate to the detriment of competition and consumers. At many points, Elizabeth Warren’s speech and political action intersects with those of Senator Bernie Sanders. Her presence in the primaries, together with Kamala Harris, reduces Senator Sanders’ vital space, both in the east and west of the country.
Kamala Harris is a Senator from California. At 54, she is not only the second youngest of the group—after with Gillibrand—, but also a freshman in the Senate, since she was elected in 2016. She also comes from being a prominent State Attorney General in her native California; and with an association at the beginning of the race with the electoral platform of the twice (and current) governor Jerry Brown. The brand of the highly charismatic Kamala Harris is associated with the fight for criminal reform, in order to eliminate injustices and traces of racism, including police violence, which affects vulnerable sectors and ethnic minorities, especially, African Americans and Latinos. She is, without a doubt, a national authority on social issues and health reform, and in economic issues she does not face the rejection that Sanders or Warren do in the business community. Daughter of immigrants—her father is an African American economics professor at Stanford who emigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica, and her mother a breast cancer scientist that immigrated from India—her leadership has great significance among African-American women, young voters and on the West Coast of the country. The experts see in Kamala Harris a strong candidate in this primary; and if a white man wins the nomination (such as former Vice President Biden or young Beto O’Rourke), she could be a strong partisan preference for Vice President in the 2020 ticket.
Senator Gillibrand represents New York. She occupies the seat that once belonged to Hillary Clinton. She is a young woman, 52 years old, with a rising political career, initiated with a successful career as a lawyer until she joined the team of the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo (son of the legendary leader of that state, Mario Cuomo), with whom she worked when he was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Since then, she has maintained a close relationship with the Democratic Party and with the then-Senator Hillary Clinton, whose seat she won when Clinton left for his first presidential aspiration and subsequent service as Obama’s Secretary of State. Gillibrand is, without hesitation, a champion of women’s rights and a fierce promoter of healthcare reform. She has been an inclement supporter of the #MeToo movement. She has not given refuge or benefit of the doubt to fellow members of her party accused of harassment. In fact, she demanded, from the outset, the resignation of the popular Senator Al Franken of Minnesota.
Finally, we have Senator Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota. At 59, she is, of all the candidates, the oldest in the Senate. She is a lawyer with a lot of recognition for her depth and intellectual sharpness, demonstrated in the private practice and as a district attorney in her native Minnesota. Her narrative is very typical of that of Democrats from this part of the US industrial geography, anchored in labor struggles and the interests of the middle class. Minnesota is one of the states with strong Democratic tradition along the Canadian border, and neighbor of the industrial steel belt that integrate Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, among others. Klobuchar’s leadership echoes in this important geographic sector, the Midwest, where Democrats have lost in presidential elections only twice: before Reagan and before Trump. Without those states, the road to Trump’s re-election is almost impossible, even if he retains Florida. That is why it makes a lot of sense for a woman like Amy Klobuchar to emerge as a vice-presidential running mate, which would ensure entry into the electoral precinct of the Midwest industrial belt states, whose culture is emblematic of that of the Minnesota Senator.
Four women, lawyers with impressive profiles, with proven struggle for women’s rights and health reform, with audiences very defined by their specificity, but focused on the most vulnerable sectors of society, and with influence in different areas of the US geography. With the exception of Warren, who comes from a longer political trajectory, they are women of a new generation. Their presence enriches the debate and greatly expands the registration in the Democratic primary, and many agree that if any of them does not achieve the nomination it is intensely likely that some will be the vice-presidential running mate of the candidate.
Para español lea Al Navío: Estas son las 4 mujeres que lideran el Partido Demócrata en EEUU