You, a woman, are electable
Let’s just keep saying it until everyone believes it
Hey kid,
So this week, Elizabeth Warren suspended her campaign for President. I want to talk to you about that for a bit.
When I started this little project, I had a few rules in my head for it:
1. It would be honest
2. It would choose hope over cynicism
3. It would give you some general life advice while avoiding the tumult of the daily news cycle
This note is going to violate the second half of Rule #3 as I lean hard on Rule #1. I’m going to try really hard to keep Rule #2 intact.
You already know me and your mom rooted hard for Elizabeth Warren. Somewhere around the fall of 2019 I remember thinking about the Democratic 2020 primary and, simply as a matter-of-fact, saying “I don’t know why we’re still talking about this.” Your mom and I are going to vote for whomever the Democrat is in the fall of 2020, but my very sophisticated political analysis boiled down to “Oh come on already!”
It was so obvious to me that Warren should be President. She was the smartest. She rooted her campaign in justice. She knew how to get things done - tough things, things people actively tried to prevent her from doing. To put it in terms of the people you look to as heroes, she was the RBG, the Supergirl, and the...er, your mom of the Senate.
Our family knocked on doors for Warren. We sent texts. We gave her money. We were in it to win it.
Being the smartest person in the room is never going to be enough. This is an unfortunate truth in political campaigns. It’s a fact more than a few people have pointed out in the aftermath of all this.
They’re not wrong. We tend to forget, however, that men who run for office are allowed to escape the mistakes of their past and be redeemed in spite of them, or, in some cases, because of them. Women are not often allowed this same advantage.
You are a smart person. But it won’t be enough. You need to know how to fight for what you know and believe.
And Elizabeth Warren sure knows how to fight.
The legendary, illustrative moment of this campaign, the one that will be taught in schools, is her dismantling of Mike Bloomberg over his treatment of women. If you could look up the phrase “ruthless efficiency” in the dictionary, it would just be a minute-long video stream of this moment from their debate. It was like watching a soldier field-strip a rifle.
This moment was on par with Ronald Reagan saying “I am not going to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” I suppose it was also on par with Lloyd Bentsen saying “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” and we all know how that turned out.
I showed you the clip of Warren and Bloomberg and you were thrilled because he has been pissing you off for weeks because his ads keep interrupting your YouTube videos. Every time I heard you saying “Shhh, hush!” I knew it was because Mike Bloomberg was trying to tell you - a non-voting nine year old trying to watch a Minecraft video - he was going to get it done. When I told you Bloomberg had to drop out of the race, you uttered a low, guttural “Yesssss.”
Along the way, she took down a guy named Chris Matthews who had a habit of diminishing smart, professional women by focusing on their looks.* You don’t know who he is and now you will never have to, which is great. So let’s just move on.
The point is, you can start a Google search for “Elizabeth Warren destroys” and come up with quite a few options between 2014 and 2016, not to mention in 2019 and 2020.
But being a fighter isn’t enough, you have to have a plan for how to accomplish your goals.
Elizabeth Warren is the ne plus ultra planner. She is a 1980s training montage made manifest. She is Tracy Flick without the problems. If Ocean’s 11 wanted to run for President, they would be Elizabeth Warren. She is a human Bullet Journal. Her plans would fundamentally reform the structures that keep people from improving their lives.
Having plans isn’t enough. You have to show empathy for people. Those plans have to be inclusive of those who don’t share your experience, which means you need to learn how to listen.
We haven’t talked about this, but Elizabeth Warren had these selfie lines at each of her campaign events.
As a campaign tactic and as a mini-case study in project management, it was brilliant. It created what lots of people in my business call “earned media,” but more importantly it was also “free media.” It was inherently social, wrapped in emotion. Elizabeth Warren was shown to be as important as someone’s family photos or their really delicious brunch. You literally can’t buy that kind of press.
But those selfie lines were how she built her campaign around empathetic listening. The way she used those selfie lines meant she was getting a constant livestream of information about the problems real people had in their lives along with a lot of pinky promises. She’s an academic, but one of her gifts is understanding how Main Street experiences are woven through think-tank level analysis. This four-minute explanation of how a global coronavirus relates to manufacturing is another masterclass.
So know this: All your world-changing plans are worthless unless you talk to other people about how they’ll be affected by them. Your plans ought to meaningfully help make the lives of others better, especially those who don’t have your abilities or your privilege.
Elizabeth Warren was smart. She was a fighter who had detailed plans. They were plans built around empathy and inclusion.
And it wasn’t enough.
Was she too much of a progressive for some? Probably. Was she too much of a pragmatist for others? Probably. Did she make some mistakes in her campaign? Sure. Comparing one presidential campaign to another is a foolish game because the conditions on the ground are never the same, but it seems like Bill Clinton did OK with all this in 1992.
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Bill Clinton was no Elizabeth Warren.
But that cuts both ways.
***
I love the way you look at the world. I’ll show you a video or a band I think you might like and more often than not you’ll look at it and say something like “Hmph. No girls in it.” And then you are done with that thing.
A lack of girls or women involved in something is a disqualifying factor for you. Do not lose that. But know that much of the world thinks the opposite - even some women.
I’ve bent this format to serve my own purposes here. I can’t promise I won’t do that again, but know that I’ve carved out this space to be of use to you, not me. I want to talk about hope. I don’t want to dwell on the bad, I want to focus on the future. You deserve that.
There’s another guy in the 2020 campaign who has the ability to say something over and over and get people to accept it as gospel truth even though it’s neither truth nor rooted in the gospels.
I’m going to tell you something that’s worth repeating over and over again. Unlike what’s-his-face, this statement has the added benefit of being true.
You are electable.
A widespread belief in this statement seems to be what prevented Elizabeth Warren from getting the same opportunity as anyone else in this race. So much so that someone had to put it on a t-shirt.
So:
You, a woman, are electable. Your friends are electable. Your mom is electable. Your aunt is electable. Your teachers are electable. Your urgent care doctor is electable. The women you know in your lives who keep the world turning are electable.
Studies have shown that women need to be told several times to run for office before they’ll believe it. So I want you to tell every girl you know that has inclusive, empathetic plans she’s willing to fight for that she is electable. Tell ‘em that’s what girls do. I’ll do it, too. I’ll tell the boys I know to tell the girls they know they’re electable. But we have to start now.
2024 is only four years away.
Love,
Your dad
* Incidentally, if an adult ever looks at you and says “Look how pretty you are” like it’s some kind of revelation unto the world then please look them straight in the eye and say “Thank you. I’m also really smart.”