Gillibrand's Failure HOF Tribute
On Wednesday Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) withdrew from the 2020 presidential race after a rip-roaring eight month long ride where the nation joined her at soaring crests of 1.5% of prospective 2020 Democratic voters on January 19 in the RealClearPolitics aggregate and commiserated with her at the depths of 0.1% this week. Fortunately so that the American public does not forget the searing imprint of her candidacy The Nation has stepped forward to give the perfect send-off for this woman that was so inspiring, that only someone with equally unfulfilled potential could pay proper tribute.
And how appropriate that such a person, Joan Walsh, is their National Affairs correspondent? The woman that authored What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America has presumably found the perfect real-world subject for that book’s rhetorical question. Walsh titled her homage to the withdrawn candidate “Kirsten Gillibrand leaves the 2020 race with no apologies” but the truth is that both Gillibrand and Walsh have much to apologize, as their careers converge at the same destination: shameless self-righteousness and abandonment of principles.
What is so fitting as that the two arrived at that point from two seemingly different origins, Walsh as a so-called progressive and Gillibrand in the now distant past as a “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrat. Indeed the Gillibrand that sat in the House as a freshman congresswoman elected in 2006 and elected in 2009 to the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton would be considered a tool of the NRA today the same way that former VP Joe Biden is raked over the coals for supporting the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill. By contrast Walsh had staked out her career in media by writing for progressive mainstays like The Nation, as editor-in-chief of the decidedly beyond left-of-center Salon,and as a commentator MSNBC. Her evolution to the false center (which is really the corporate left) began in 2016 when she began defaming Bernie Sanders’ followers as misogynist white “Bernie Bros” in order to discredit complaints that the Democratic primary process was skewed to Clinton’s benefit. As the 2020 race heats up some progressives seem to think that this criticism has fallen away. They would be wise to know that the same misogyny lie used by Walsh to defend Hillary Clinton by defaming Sanders supporters could be applied in defense of Elizabeth Warren.
Walsh complains that “there are still plenty of people, most of them white guys, with as much support as Gillibrand, or less, and far less to contribute, who will soldier on, at least for a while, even though they also failed to make the third debate”. If by “a lot” she means two white men, former House Reps John Delaney with 0.1% and Joe Sestak at 0% in the aggregate, who are not running while in office and have no current obligations to serve their constituents in Congress, she is technically accurate. But ahead of her are Michael Bennet (0.5), Tom Steyer (0.5), Tim Ryan (0.5) and Steve Bullock (0.8). Beside Steyer and Bennet, all of them have smaller fundraising numbers and none of them have public profile that is attendant with being a sitting senator from the Empire State. This is even though Bullock, Bennet, and Ryan all entered the race months after Gillibrand (Steyer is largely self-funded). According to the available fundraising data, the reason Gillibrand is dropping out has more to do with a petering budget than sexism and racism.
And why is it that Walsh brings up the fact that these are white men as a reason to urge them to drop out? Marianne Williamson, who is ahead of Gillibrand in the polls but still cannot qualify for the September debate, hasn’t dropped out. Neither has Amy Klobuchar. In the aggregate both of these white women poll less than 1%. Auspiciously Walsh has not voiced any criticism for the decision to exclude anti-war maverick Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who is both a woman and a Hawaiian Islander by the DNC due to its dubious choice of qualifying polls.
Being a low achiever despite great advantages is something for which Walsh can certainly lend a full perspective. She was the editor-in-chief of Salon for 17 years, leaving in 2015. In that time period the online news magazine was never profitable and even came close to shutting its doors in 2005. In 2015 she left the steadily sinking magazine officially for The Nation. In 2017 Walsh’s contract with MSNBC was not renewed after twelve years, so she went to CNN. Fellow MSNBC lunatics Chris Hayes (a colleague at The Nation) and Joy Reid whined about how “we need to be at full strength as media entities, and Joan belongs in the mix” (Reid). But if she is so “indispensable” as Hayes asserts, why is it that Walsh appears so infrequently on the network? When she does it is to discuss why a joke that Donald Trump told about how ordering hamburgers for the Clemson football team was better than having Melania Trump and Karen Pence prepare “quick little salads” was sexist. In March she pleaded with Joe Biden not to run. But rather than address the cognitive failures and record of the former VP, she focused on daring him to support one of the female candidates.
The irony is that the Democrats as a whole, Walsh included, piled into the “future is female” ship already in 2016 with Hillary Clinton despite the massive holes in its hull. Gillibrand’s credibility among partisan Democrats was always going to be suspect due to her role in pushing Senate colleague Al Franken (D-MN) to resign as part of the #MeToo campaign. She also lacked a clear message or policy priority which is why she lagged far behind Sanders (MedicareForAll), Andrew Yang (Universal Basic Income) and Joaquin Castro (immigration issues). To make matters worse, up until this campaign she had marched lockstep with the Democratic leadership. Therefore her attempt to pivot into being a change-maker and mimicking Kamala Harris by attacking Biden as a sexist was a total dud. Not surprisingly, Biden reminded her of previous events where they had stood for women’s rights together. He finished by dismissing her attack by stating the obvious: “I don’t know what’s changed except - now you’re running for president”.
And now that she’s not, Walsh is just running her mouth.
And how appropriate that such a person, Joan Walsh, is their National Affairs correspondent? The woman that authored What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America has presumably found the perfect real-world subject for that book’s rhetorical question. Walsh titled her homage to the withdrawn candidate “Kirsten Gillibrand leaves the 2020 race with no apologies” but the truth is that both Gillibrand and Walsh have much to apologize, as their careers converge at the same destination: shameless self-righteousness and abandonment of principles.
What is so fitting as that the two arrived at that point from two seemingly different origins, Walsh as a so-called progressive and Gillibrand in the now distant past as a “Blue Dog” (conservative) Democrat. Indeed the Gillibrand that sat in the House as a freshman congresswoman elected in 2006 and elected in 2009 to the Senate to replace Hillary Clinton would be considered a tool of the NRA today the same way that former VP Joe Biden is raked over the coals for supporting the 1994 Clinton Crime Bill. By contrast Walsh had staked out her career in media by writing for progressive mainstays like The Nation, as editor-in-chief of the decidedly beyond left-of-center Salon,and as a commentator MSNBC. Her evolution to the false center (which is really the corporate left) began in 2016 when she began defaming Bernie Sanders’ followers as misogynist white “Bernie Bros” in order to discredit complaints that the Democratic primary process was skewed to Clinton’s benefit. As the 2020 race heats up some progressives seem to think that this criticism has fallen away. They would be wise to know that the same misogyny lie used by Walsh to defend Hillary Clinton by defaming Sanders supporters could be applied in defense of Elizabeth Warren.
Walsh complains that “there are still plenty of people, most of them white guys, with as much support as Gillibrand, or less, and far less to contribute, who will soldier on, at least for a while, even though they also failed to make the third debate”. If by “a lot” she means two white men, former House Reps John Delaney with 0.1% and Joe Sestak at 0% in the aggregate, who are not running while in office and have no current obligations to serve their constituents in Congress, she is technically accurate. But ahead of her are Michael Bennet (0.5), Tom Steyer (0.5), Tim Ryan (0.5) and Steve Bullock (0.8). Beside Steyer and Bennet, all of them have smaller fundraising numbers and none of them have public profile that is attendant with being a sitting senator from the Empire State. This is even though Bullock, Bennet, and Ryan all entered the race months after Gillibrand (Steyer is largely self-funded). According to the available fundraising data, the reason Gillibrand is dropping out has more to do with a petering budget than sexism and racism.
And why is it that Walsh brings up the fact that these are white men as a reason to urge them to drop out? Marianne Williamson, who is ahead of Gillibrand in the polls but still cannot qualify for the September debate, hasn’t dropped out. Neither has Amy Klobuchar. In the aggregate both of these white women poll less than 1%. Auspiciously Walsh has not voiced any criticism for the decision to exclude anti-war maverick Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who is both a woman and a Hawaiian Islander by the DNC due to its dubious choice of qualifying polls.
Being a low achiever despite great advantages is something for which Walsh can certainly lend a full perspective. She was the editor-in-chief of Salon for 17 years, leaving in 2015. In that time period the online news magazine was never profitable and even came close to shutting its doors in 2005. In 2015 she left the steadily sinking magazine officially for The Nation. In 2017 Walsh’s contract with MSNBC was not renewed after twelve years, so she went to CNN. Fellow MSNBC lunatics Chris Hayes (a colleague at The Nation) and Joy Reid whined about how “we need to be at full strength as media entities, and Joan belongs in the mix” (Reid). But if she is so “indispensable” as Hayes asserts, why is it that Walsh appears so infrequently on the network? When she does it is to discuss why a joke that Donald Trump told about how ordering hamburgers for the Clemson football team was better than having Melania Trump and Karen Pence prepare “quick little salads” was sexist. In March she pleaded with Joe Biden not to run. But rather than address the cognitive failures and record of the former VP, she focused on daring him to support one of the female candidates.
The irony is that the Democrats as a whole, Walsh included, piled into the “future is female” ship already in 2016 with Hillary Clinton despite the massive holes in its hull. Gillibrand’s credibility among partisan Democrats was always going to be suspect due to her role in pushing Senate colleague Al Franken (D-MN) to resign as part of the #MeToo campaign. She also lacked a clear message or policy priority which is why she lagged far behind Sanders (MedicareForAll), Andrew Yang (Universal Basic Income) and Joaquin Castro (immigration issues). To make matters worse, up until this campaign she had marched lockstep with the Democratic leadership. Therefore her attempt to pivot into being a change-maker and mimicking Kamala Harris by attacking Biden as a sexist was a total dud. Not surprisingly, Biden reminded her of previous events where they had stood for women’s rights together. He finished by dismissing her attack by stating the obvious: “I don’t know what’s changed except - now you’re running for president”.
And now that she’s not, Walsh is just running her mouth.
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