‘Lord knows we need more women in charge…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former President Barack Obama took great strides during his time in office to see that the government, not science, had the upper hand in determining people’s gender.
But at a rally in the D.C. suburbs of Northern Virginia, he confoundingly took it a step farther, encouraging voters to replace a Republican woman, Rep. Barbara Comstock, with Democratic Jennifer Wexton because, “Lord knows we need more women in charge,” he said.
Obama pressed forward with a talking point that his party first trotted out during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that the #MeToo movement would dominate the midterms. Promoting it as a reboot of 1992, liberals have declared—ironically, despite the election of serial abuser Bill Clinton to the nation’s highest office that year—2018 marked the return of the “Year of the Woman.”
But as it did the first time around, the changing context has made the Left’s bid for the female vote a bit awkward on occasion.
On one hand, Democratic politicians like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Vice President Joe Biden have shown a lack of self-awareness by refusing to reconcile their rhetoric with their own misogynist histories.
On the other hand, as Obama proved Tuesday, the Left has no issue with disparaging the wrong “type” of female—i.e. the conservative kind.
While supporting the politically charged and unsubstantiated claims of Kavanaugh accusers—some of whom have since been discredited and admitted to lying—leftist activists didn’t bat an eye in sending death and rape threats to the offices of Maine Sen. Susan Collins after she cast the deciding vote for Kavanaugh.
Likewise, pop-star Taylor Swift made the unusual move of endorsing Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen by claiming he would do a better job representing women’s issues than his opponent Marsha Blackburn—an actual woman. Blackburn countered that she represented the issues that mattered to the women of Tennessee.
Although the “Believe all women” slogan was popular for a brief moment during the Kavanaugh hearings, it quickly ran into its limits as Keith Ellison, deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, worked overtime to brush his own abuse scandal under the rug.
Meanwhile, in California’s hotly contested 39th district, several tables were turned as Democrats found themselves rallying around a male millionaire lottery winner, Gil Cisneros, to replace retiring Republican congressman Ed Royce rather than Young Kim, a first-generation Korean-American woman.
Adding insult to injury, Cisneros found himself tamping down claims from another left-wing politician, Melissa Fazli, that after the state Democratic convention, Cisneros had demanded sex in exchange for a campaign contribution. It took a good talking to for Fazli to come around.
“This past week, seeing the pain of Dr. Ford and so many women and the dismissiveness of both Judge Kavanaugh and Washington Republicans, I felt it was important to reach out to meet with Melissa,” Cisneros said, according to Politifact. “… We sat down and heard each other, found a clear case of misunderstanding, and are both ready to move forward.”
Rep. Adam Schiff, who stands poised to head the House Judiciary Committee should Democrats retake the lower chamber, nonetheless joined Cisneros on the campaign trail Tuesday, with a promise to re-open the House investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign, even as special prosecutor Robert Mueller is working to bring his investigation to a close.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford deserves our respect.
I am inspired by her courage.
She is one woman, but her words carry the weight of millions who have faced sexual assault.
I believe her.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) September 27, 2018