This is going to be fun.
Gail Collins at the NY Times seems to sum up the bitterness many liberal women seeing the glowing coverage Beto received when he announced his presidential campaign:
Why do you think he’s getting so much attention? Certainly none of the announced women candidates are creating this much stir. Elizabeth Warren has been shoving out policy positions. Kamala Harris has been campaigning like crazy. Warren, Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar are all acting senators. O’Rourke is a former member of the House of Representatives who lost a race to Ted Cruz, one of the least appealing human beings on the face of the earth.But there’s just something about Beto that makes him stand apart. Hate to think it’s being a cute white guy who can skateboard.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Politico collected some more bitter clinger comments, ‘Not one woman got that kind of coverage’: Beto backlash begins:
Since announcing her 2020 run, Elizabeth Warren has dispensed three major policy proposals, held 30 campaign events and visited nearly a dozen states.Since announcing his 2020 run, Beto O’Rourke has made one visit to Iowa, where he vaguely outlined his positions, including from atop a cafe counter.Guess who’s getting the star treatment.The breathless, sweeps-like cable television coverage that greeted the former Texas congressman’s first campaign events stunned and frustrated many Democratic operatives — particularly women — who viewed it as an example of the double standard at work in the historically diverse presidential field.To them, O’Rourke, a white, male candidate had already been ordained the next sensation, his entry into the race greased by live television shots and O’Rourke-centric panels.
Politico quotes Massachusetts Democrat political consultant Mary Anne Marsh:
“I feel like the media is always captivated by the person they seem to think is a phenom: Bernie. Trump. Beto. But they always seem to be white men who are phenoms. In a year where we have more choices than ever, more women and more persons of color than ever, none of them seem to be deemed a phenom,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic political consultant.
“It’s a replay of Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton. Instead, it’s Beto O’Rourke in the Bernie Sanders role, to the detriment of every woman running. Not one woman got that kind of coverage. Not one. Not Kamala. Not Kirsten. Not Elizabeth Warren. Not Amy Klobuchar in a blizzard.”“So what have we learned?” Marsh continued. “Nothing.”
Danielle Tcholakian at The Daily Beast complained about The Unbearable Male Privilege of Beto O’Rourke:
Humility is not a quality found in politics, generally, but there’s something particularly stunning about a man who spent the aftermath of his failed Senate bid doing a sort of “On The Road” soul-search tease of his presidential bid with a Vanity Fair profile in which he declared he is “born for this” and followed it up with a stunningly dull video formally announcing that bid—a video in which he talked straight to the camera for more than three minutes while his wife sat eerily silent beside him.It’s impossible to imagine a female candidate for whom this approach could work. Can you imagine if Stacey Abrams went on a vision-quest road trip, joked that her spouse (who happens to be the primary breadwinner in the family) mostly raises her kids, then rambled at a camera for three and a half minutes to announce she is simply called to be president? The collective eye-rolling from the nation’s political pundit class might alter the Earth’s orbit.
Maybe Beto is just more likable?
Beto livestreamed something people hate — going to the dentist — and it was cool.
Elizabeth Warren livestreamed somethig people love — drinking beer — and people cringed.
You can fake somethings, but you can’t fake likability.
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