New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is making a lot of enemies in the Democratic Party these days.
Having clung to Bill and Hillary Clinton like a cheap suit her entire political career, Gillibrand turned on Bill when it became inconvenient in the current #MeToo climate to continue worshipping him, as I wrote in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand disavows Bill Clinton now that he can’t help her anymore. Clintonworld was not amused with that backstabbing opportunism.
Progressive Democrats also are furious with Gillibrand for the way she turned on a dime against Al Franken. A recent article in The New Republic highlights Gillibrand’s role in this craven sacrificing of Franken:
The whole thing happened with startling speed—no deliberations, no process, and no pause for thought, it seemed. The main actors against him got increasingly worked up—and they struck at the first opportunity. The entire episode, from when the first complaint about Franken was aired to when he announced unhappily that he’d leave the Senate, took three weeks; his self-appointed prosecutors turned on a dime, at first supporting and then throwing process (consideration by the Senate ethics committee) to the wind. There wasn’t even a meeting of the party caucus to deliberate and discuss. (Male Democratic senators with misgivings didn’t want to get in the way of the women.) A group of Democratic women senators got up a head of steam; its ringleader, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, declared, a doctrine of “zero tolerance.” “Enough is enough!” became not just an expression of exasperation but a policy.
It’s no secret that Gillibrand fancies herself a potential national candidate, if not for President in 2020 then at least on the ticket.
That likely is why she has thrust herself into a leading role in attacking not just Trump, but fellow male Democrats. Gillibrand wants to ride the #MeToo wave and to make herself its political enforcer. Sacrificing someone like Franken is small potatoes when the real goal is taking on Trump.
So it’s no surprise that Gillibrand is on Trump’s radar. Trump, as I’ve written many times before, has a knack for branding people with epithets that are damaging but also are based on a certain kernel of reality. “Low Energy Jeb” worked because, well, Jeb was kind of low energy, at least in public. Same with Trump’s branding of Marco Rubio as “Little Marco” and Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” — whether you like the term or not, it raises the problem of Warren’s ethnic deception in claiming to be Native American.
Gillibrand attacked Trump when some of the women who accused Trump of sexual harassment during the campaign were trotted out again as part of the Democrat/Media strategy to reinvigorate the War on Women campaign theme.
Trump shot back with a tweet that has generated a lot of attention, but I think that attention misses what Trump was doing.
Everyone focused on the part of the tweet about Gillibrand “would do anything” for campaign contributions. That was called a sexual double entendre, sexist, and so on.
Trump’s press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed back against that narrative:
Regardless, people have lost sight of the beginning of the tweet, branding Gillibrand as “Lightweight.”
I have to say, if you asked me to do word association with Gillibrand, “lightweight” definitely would be on the list. Anyone who has followed her career knows that she never has accomplished much other than self-promotion by latching onto others (the Clintons, Schumer).
So as with “Low Energy Jeb,” Trump is onto something with “Lightweight Gillibrand.” There’s at least a kernel of truth there, which is why the branding will be effective, if Trump keeps it up.
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