From the New York Times:
‘This Is My Space’: Kirsten Gillibrand’s Unabashedly Feminist Campaign
By Lisa Lerer and Shane Goldmacher
Feb. 12, 2019The morning after the election of Donald J. Trump, Kirsten Gillibrand woke up and began crying. “Bawling,” she corrected herself.
After spending the next two months “deeply depressed,” the junior senator from New York experienced what she called the most inspiring day of her political life: the women’s march. And almost two years to the day after that, Ms. Gillibrand sat in a Manhattan wine bar, holding a glass of pinot noir, and described why she believes the country and the Democratic Party need an unabashedly feminist campaign for president — and why she thinks she’s the candidate to run it.
“You understand, this is my space,” Ms. Gillibrand said, in an interview.
… Ms. Gillibrand is the only one who is making running as a woman, for women, the central theme of her candidacy.
… But she is choosing the mantle of feminist crusader at a time when other core Democratic issues are more problematic for her.
As a House member from upstate New York earlier in her political career, she held far more conservative positions on gun control and immigration. Her years as a corporate lawyer, taking clients that included a big tobacco company, and her past as a voracious fund-raiser from Wall Street donors complicate her ability to attack greed and inequality in big business. …
Of President Trump’s 2017 tweet that Ms. Gillibrand “would come to my office ‘begging’ for campaign contributions,” she called the president “misogynistic,” saying in the interview, “I mean, he essentially called me a prostitute!”
There is no real precedent for Ms. Gillibrand’s strategy: As a candidate, Hillary Clinton struggled to talk about her gender, and essentially tried to copy the approach of the male presidential candidates who had preceded her, said Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s former communications director.
Really? I don’t recall Hillary had any issues besides It’s My Turn.
There is also the math: Women are expected to make up a clear majority of voters in a Democratic primary — nearly 60 percent, according to Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who specializes in female voting behavior. …
Speaking of female voting behavior, the NYT article goes on to report:
Linda Smoley, who hosted Mrs. Clinton at her Sioux City, Iowa, home in 2015 and attended Ms. Gillibrand’s first house party in Iowa in January, said she was so distressed after Mr. Trump was elected that she got anti-depressants from her doctor and then accidentally drove her car into her house.
Don’t you just hate it when you do that? I blame Trump.
