Is Kirsten Gillibrand the most electable female democrat in 2020?

[Mr. Morden]

Gillibrand is a poor man's Hillary Clinton (and Booker is a poor man's Obama).

Not to mention she's super boring. Her speeches could compete with ambien.

So Atlas has agreed to Gillibrand - Clinton, Booker - Obama, but who is Harris and Warren?

I don't really agree that Gillibrand is an analog to Clinton.  In some ways, sure.  But in others, Klobuchar is more Clinton-like.

I continue to wonder how Gillibrand's "gender essentialist" outlook (if we use the NY Magazine profile's framing of it: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/kirsten-gillibrand-progressive-champion-2020-run.html ) is going to play with the electorate.  To quote from that article:

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I can imagine that kind of talk helping her in the primary, but it seems risky in the GE.  I mean, I think she will have to shift her issue focus and how she frames issues if she's going to launch a presidential campaign, because if presidential candidate Gillibrand is the same as Senator Gillibrand, then she risks being painted as the identity politics candidate for women*....which is not the best place to be if you also need the votes of men.

* Kamala had a good line in the Tea Leaves thread: "Gillibrand is basically EMILY's List if it were a person."

[Mr. Morden]

I can't find any baggage for Gillibrand.

Well, she can speak Chinese, so she's probably a commie spy.  I mean, here she is in Beijing in the 80s:



Doesn't she look like a spy?

[Mr. Morden]

She'll be attacked for her Wall Street connections, of all the female potentials she's the one with the biggest Wall Street problem by far. And she's married to a banker and has received gigantic donations from Goldman Sachs.

"But her record on Wall Street will haunt her. Gillibrand, as usual for New York senators, has worked assiduously on behalf of the financial industry. In 2010 she briefly suggested filing an amendment making it harder to regulate derivatives trading, though she later backed down after a backlash. In 2011, she complained that derivatives regulation would make U.S. banks uncompetitive. In 2013, she and five other Democratic senators wrote to then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew arguing essentially for an indefinite delay of regulations on cross-border derivative trading. As Reid Pilfant wrote in 2012, she has "quietly overcome considerable skepticism about her on Wall Street to become a go-to advocate for the financial services industry in her own right.

http://theweek.com/articles/691363/kirsten-gillibrand-2020-not-wall-street-problem

Regulations on derivatives trading sounds kind of esoteric though.  Can whoever attacks her on that connect her position on derivatives trading to a real impact on people's lives?  That is the question.

[Mr. Morden]

Attacking candidates don't need to explain, they'll just label her "friendly to Wall Street."  She'd have to explain why and that becomes hard given that no one understands derivative trading.

That may do some damage in the primary, but since the thread is asking about electability in the general election, I'm not so convinced that's such a killer line of attack.  Again, barring some easy way to connect the dots between her votes on these topics and regular people's lives.

[Mr. Morden]

I think there's a huge difference between the way Gillibrand and Clinton approach their femininity. Clinton was always one to try and downplay it as much as possible. She took very very hawkish positions on foreign policy for example. She tried to remove any doubt within voters minds that she was a "weak" woman. I don't think that ended up working out for her, as she came across in many's minds as condescending or snobbish. Gillibrand on the other hand seems to embrace that more mom-like aspect of herself.

Agreed.  And I think in general, there's a generation gap on this.  Elizabeth Dole, back in her 2000 presidential race, relentlessly emphasized that she was "tough", presumably figuring that the biggest hurdle for a female candidate for president is having to convince voters that she's tough enough for the job.  Clinton seemed to think along similar lines, and I think Warren (who's of the same generation as Clinton) is similar as well.

But the candidates born in the 60s or later (including Gillibrand) seem more attuned to the fact that female politicians can get burned from both sides:

“If you’re too tough, you’re not feminine. If you’re too feminine, you’re not tough enough. There’s a very small space between those two that is safe territory.”

This younger generation of female pols seems more adept at navigating that space, though that doesn't necessarily mean they always make the right choice.  Gillibrand goes farther in the other direction than I think any other woman with presidential ambitions that I've seen.  E.g., tearing up in an interview when she talks about being hormonal as a new mother, and how this impacted her views on gun control.  Is that a step too far for American voters in terms of a woman running for president embracing her status as a woman?  I guess we'll find out.

[Mr. Morden]

One point that I have not seen mentioned is that, last I heard, Gillibrand's husband was not a United States citizen, and I don't think there have been any moves recently for him to acquire citizenship. While almost certainly not going to be an issue in a Democratic primary, this seems like a prime line of attack (if totally unfair) in a general election and probably hurts her electability at least a little bit.

That is interesting.  I knew he was British, but didn't realize he wasn't a US citizen.  Actually, I guess I did know, since there was a thread about that back in 2012 which I posted in, but I guess I forgot:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=165457.20

That said, I imagine that the chances are high that he'll apply for citizenship between now and 2019, should she actually decide to run for president in 2020.  It would be a little weird for her to run for president and have her husband unable to vote for her.  (Maybe there'll be attack ads saying "Even her own husband has never voted for her!"  )

Anyway, yeah, easy enough to fix by having him apply for citizenship within the next two years.  If Cory Booker is willing to get married for the presidency, then surely Gillibrand can talk her husband into becoming a US citizen.