Op-ed: Can a Jewish candidate win?

Disclaimer: Hannah Kahn is a former executive opinion editor and executive audio editor at the Daily.

If you’re waiting for a critique of Bernie Sanders or Mike Bloomberg, you can stop reading. As someone who believes that healthcare is a human right, and that the wealth gaps in this country are disgusting, I would be no short of thrilled if Bernie was our president. As a Jew, it’s endlessly satisfying to see a presidential frontrunner who is motivated by Tikkun Olam (‘repair of the world’), not to mention one who is played by Larry David on Saturday Night Live. As for Bloomberg, he has proven himself as of late to be a talented Democratic Party sugar daddy. I will support either of them enthusiastically if they were to become the nominee. 

My grievances are, mostly, with the media.

Some people will not get this far in the article, or will not read it at all spare the headline. Let me make this very clear: Jewish candidates can win. We can have a Jewish president. Bernie Sanders can win. Michael Bloomberg can win. Jonah freaking Hill could win. 

But you can imagine that, for many, reading that headline over and over again might sow seeds of doubt. Which is why the media coverage this election cycle has been so excruciating for me, as a woman, and especially as a supporter of Elizabeth Warren. 

As Lori Poloni-Staudinger and J. Cherie Strachan wrote for the Washington Post, even raising the question “Can a woman win?” has real consequences. The authors cited research like one study from 2018, which found that media sexism really does tamper with women’s motivation to run for office. You can envision, then, this effect extending to voters’ decision to ‘take the risk’ on a female candidate.

Many people might argue that Warren brought this issue to the spotlight herself, when CNN published a story that Sanders had told Warren in a private conversation that he didn’t think a woman could win. 

Sanders and Warren were both asked about the remark during the Iowa debate, a conversation where the moderators seemed to take Warren's word. Warren got to deliver a punchy electability message: “The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women, Amy and me.”

Whether or not her team was or was not responsible for this leak is not for me to say. Whether or not this conversation transpired as he or she remembered it is not for me to say. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. 

But if you think this was a conversation Warren wanted to have in the first place, I disagree. She hit on a worry that had been gnawing at her support since she announced her run—a woman? After 2016? And ultimately, although she got a powerful soundbite, bringing the question of female electability out in the open did not help her. If anything, it emboldened people, particularly media pundits, to ask it aloud, which hurt her. 

In the time I’ve spent volunteering for Warren in Iowa and New Hampshire, I’ve heard a healthy dose of coded sexist remarks. One man said he “can’t listen to her” because she’s “shrill” and a “nag.” Another man, even less subtle, told me her whole “‘I am woman, hear me roar,’ mantra” was “alienating half the country.” 

But most of what I got were fear-based comments, mostly from women, about whether or not a woman could win. “I don’t know if the country is ready for a woman president,” was a common Iowan refrain, which usually was accompanied by a long sigh. 

For the most part, I don’t think these people are being sexist—I think they want to see a woman president. I just think they’ve internalized a ton of sexism—and haven’t we all! They’ve picked up on historical cues (as Amy Klobuchar put it, “Name your favorite woman president”). They’ve examined the rhetoric of the last presidential winner (cough cough “Grab ‘em by the pussy”).  And they’ve read the headlines from Slate (“Can a Woman Win the Election?”), the Associated Press (“Can a Woman Win the Presidency? Clash Exposes Deeper Issue”), The Wall Street Journal (“Can a Woman Win in 2020?”); there are lots more, but I think you get the point.

Some of these articles appear like clickbait (like this one, admittedly). But many of them ask the question with a painful earnesty. It’s like a patriarchal chicken and egg—is the media directing public opinion on women’s electability, or is the media picking up on societal doubt in women’s ability to win? Obviously it’s both, but one is supposed to have better editors.  

At this point in the race, it looks more and more likely that Sanders is going to win the nomination. Some polls show Bloomberg in second.Standings may fluctuate, but there is a good chance we have our first Jewish presidential nominee, which means Democrats — and others who want to keep Trump a one-termer — will have to fight to elect the first Jewish president of the United States.  This would be a serious undertaking and a huge deviation from the norm. Commander in Chief is just about the most goyish title you can have. 

In all seriousness, we have seen the white supremacistunderbelly of this nation come out in full force post-2016 — and it is really important to note that they weren’t exactly hiding before. But events like the Charlottesville rally, the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh as well as a “dramaticincrease” in antisemitic “physical assaults” according to the ADL, remind us that being Jewish is still a category of otherness that is often shunned, even targeted.

You might think that, in ‘liberal havens’ like Tufts, or the New York suburb where I’m from, we would be past asking questions like “Can a woman win?” But even in these places, these reductive queries come up all the time, circling around the same issue: electability.

Our sample size of presidents is very small, meaning studying which presidential candidates are “electable” is impossible until we elect them. These electability discussions are often just thinly veiled referendums on how much our country is supposedly willing to deviate from the 44 of 45 straight white male presidents we’ve had. 

And if “Can an X win?” is asked here, you can imagine the way its phrased in more socially conservative parts of the country. Back in Iowa, a woman told me that, if Bernie Sanders is the nominee, “a lot of people are gonna say ‘they won’t vote for that [expletive].’ (The woman said she had converted to Judaism, so it was “okay for her to say [expletive]” to me.)

Questions of this nature, “Can an X win?” not only harm by contributing to the mythical ‘electability’ narrative; they are also extremely unsophisticated. Can a woman win? I don’t know, but maybe a senator from Massachusetts with a background in public education and fighting for working families could. We drain all the nuance out of journalism and politics when we reduce people down to one facet of their identity. 

This is mostly a plea to the media but also to all of us who get sucked up in it. Asking “Can a woman win?” has not helped Warren. Asking “Can a Jewish candidate win?” will not help Bernie. And even if you don’t care to assist those candidates individually, you should care about future generations who want to run for office but fear they won’t be able to get over the ‘electability’ hurdle, either. 

Media, please be responsible. And fellow voters, please be thoughtful. I sincerely hope that the Tufts Daily is the most prominent news publication to publish this headline. And in future election cycles, let’s be mindful of the content we put out and take into our virtual ecosystem, in the hope that we don’t sideline marginalized groups going forward. They are the future of the Democratic Party, and they don’t need one more hurdle to get over.