Wednesday, March 11, 2020 // The Statement
6B
A
t events across the country,
from Iowa to Arkansas to
Nevada to California, Sen. Eliz-
abeth Warren, D-Mass., ends each night
by taking a selfie with every person who
wants one, often snapping hundreds of
photos — which, including a moment to
talk to each supporter, runs for several
hours. Each time a little girl reaches the
front of the line and walks up to take her
selfie, Warren bends down and says, “My
name is Elizabeth, and I’m running for
president because that’s what girls do,”
then offers her pinkie so they’ll promise to
remember it.
When asked about these now-famous
pinkie promises, Sen. Warren recalls her
first run for the United States Senate:
People encouraged her to run, but admit-
ted they thought it was unlikely a woman
could win against a male incumbent. Feel-
ing frustrated with sexist remarks about
her hair and her clothes and her voice, she
began making these pinkie promises with
little girls. She said, “It matters a lot to me
that little girls see themselves as future
presidents of the United States.”
Every time I see a picture of War-
ren down on one knee, pinkie promising
another young girl that running for presi-
dent is what girls do, I feel a combination
of affection, tenderness and I’ll admit, a
bit of jealousy. How I wish I could be one
of those little girls, intertwining my pin-
kie and promising to do what girls do with
Elizabeth Warren.
My first memory of an American presi-
dential campaign is from when I was
about their age. It must have been early
June 2008 because then-Sen. Barack
Obama, D-Ill., had just secured a major-
ity of delegates to become the nominee.
In the spring and summer of that year, I
would have been about to turn 10 years
old. I remember sitting in our living room
while one of my parents was watching
cable news, which, by that point, was plas-
tered with coverage of the Democratic
primary. Though I knew little about the
candidates or their policies at the time,
I can still recall the visceral anger I felt,
red hot right in my belly, when someone
explained that this meant Hillary Clinton
would not be president.
I wasn’t old enough to know anything
about the policy differences between
Obama and Clinton, and I was sheltered
enough that I didn’t realize that Obama’s
nomination was also historic and what it
would mean to a lot of people — includ-
ing me. Down the line, I could understand
how important Obama’s presidency was
for the forward progress of our country
and how his legislative accomplishments
would directly affect my life (by expand-
ing healthcare to millions of Americans,
banning insurance companies from deny-
ing coverage to those with preexisting
conditions and allowing young people to
stay on their parent’s health insurance
until 26, he personally improved my life as
a person with a chronic illness). All I knew
then was that it really, really mattered to
me to see someone like me gain the con-
fidence of the nation and ultimately stand
on the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol,
right hand raised, swearing
an oath to the Constitution
and becoming the President
of the United States.
My anger then may have
been a little misguided, but
the place it came from wasn’t
wrong. Look where we are
now: It’s 12 years later and
the two front-runners in the
2020 Democratic primary
are two rich, heterosexual,
able-bodied white men in
their 70s, to say nothing
of the traumatic, decisive
misogyny that was rampant
in the 2016 election.
At 21 years of age, I’ve
only ever voted for a woman
for president of the United
States. It meant so incred-
ibly much to me, and to mil-
lions of young women across
the country, to cast my first-
ever vote for president for a
woman candidate — not just
because she is a woman but
because she was an incredibly
qualified, smart and passionate nominee. I
imagine it felt similar to how Black people
felt casting their vote for Obama for presi-
dent or how LGBTQIA+ Americans felt
casting their vote for former-South Bend
Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly-gay
presidential candidate.
The 2020 Democratic primary began as
the most diverse field of candidates to run
for president ever, which was made possi-
ble, in part, by both Obama’s and Clinton’s
candidacies. We had Kamala and Julián
and Cory and Amy and Kristen and Eliza-
beth and Pete and Andrew. For the most
part, it wasn’t just tokenism — there were
multiple candidates of color and multiple
women filling various different ideologi-
cal lanes. Of course, Buttigieg was the
lone gay candidate, but it seems likely his
historic candidacy will open the doors for
many after him.
Now, though, the field has been whit-
tled down to two candidates who offer the
least diversity and hold identities with the
most social power and privilege. We can
and do talk about their policy positions or
their experience or their age or their abil-
ity to do the job, but for just a moment, we
should reflect on the candidates them-
selves, particularly their identities.
Of course, all Democrats want to beat
Donald Trump in November, but when the
conversation about how to win revolves
around how to appeal to some imaginary
white male conservative voter in Wiscon-
sin, this framing of electability — which is
based on the same biases that elected the
first 44 white male American presidents
— has deeply hurt every candidate who is
not white and not male. It is profoundly
disappointing and frankly disheartening
to see so many people retreat to their com-
fort candidate — i.e., a heterosexual, white
male — when things get tough. It indicates
the weakness of so-called allyship and
demonstrates an easy willingness to aban-
don non-white, non-male, non-hetero-
sexual candidates when it comes down to
the wire. It is not the progressivism we’ve
been promised.
When making the argument for a
woman candidate, a woman of color can-
didate, a gay candidate and so on, many
will toss accusations of playing identity
politics (something that somehow only
applies to people who aren’t heterosex-
ual white men). If you support a woman
candidate and like the fact that she’s a
woman, other candidates’ supporters will
call you a “vagina voter”. To some, it is
unimaginable that anyone identifying as
female might be capable of making a ratio-
nal choice, even when it results in choos-
ing someone who looks like them, and that
holding a marginalized identity might
actually be a valuable quality when run-
ning on a platform of working for those
who have been left behind by the status
quo.
In my case, my support for Elizabeth
Warren in the primary was not based
on the fact that she’s a woman (though it
wouldn’t be bad if it was!). While I see the
fact that she’s a woman as an incredible
bonus, I supported her primarily based on
the fact that she committed to getting rid
of the Senate filibuster, something which
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has and says he
will not. The filibuster requires 60 votes,
which the Democrats don’t have, to pass
any form of universal healthcare. As a
chronically-ill person in desperate need
of accessible healthcare, I want the candi-
date who not only has the best policy, but
also the best plan to get it passed.
Alternatively, others will accuse you
of prioritizing representation instead
of actual progress. Beside perpetuat-
ing a foolish brand of tokenism, this idea
that increased representation — having
women, people of color, disabled people,
indigenous people and queer people at the
table making decisions — doesn’t matter is
simply wrong, for two major reasons.
Marisa Wright is a junior in LSA study-
ing Political Science and Women’s Studies
and is a Statement Deputy Editor. She can
be reached at marisadw@umich.edu.
ILLUSTRATION BY TAYLOR SCHOTT
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Extremely white and incredibly male
BY MARISA WRIGHT, DEPUTY STATEMENT EDITOR