Liz vs. Bernie -- female vs. male

By now, you all know about the report that Bernie Sanders privately told Elizabeth Warren that a woman probably could not win in 2020. Sanders has denied the report, while Warren has confirmed it.

“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate,” Warren said in a statement. “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”

Did Sanders actually say it? Of course he did. Don't be naive. His current disavowals are lies.

That said, I profoundly disagree with the oft-heard prog presumption that Sanders' words during that private meeting were sexist.

NO. THEY. WERE. NOT.

What we have here is another example of the ludicrous mangling of language which progs insist upon -- the kind of verbal gamesmanship and supremely-annoying sanctimoniousness that alienates the average voter and transforms otherwise-decent human beings into Trump supporters.

Look, I'm no Sanders fan. If you've ever visited this blog before, you probably know that I cannot stand that guy. Moreover, Elizabeth Warren is my favorite of the Democratic candidates. (Here's why.) So please do not presume that a pro-Bernie attitude compels me to exculpate him from the charge of sexism.

It is not sexist to opine that a woman cannot win in 2020. You may disagree with that opinion, but the opinion itself is not sexist.

Progressives should pop open a dictionary and learn the profound difference between the words "can" and "should." Any attempts to elide this difference are devious and manipulative, and can succeed only in making the average person hate progressives.

Suppose you ask a mechanic: "Can my old car make it all the way to Montana?" Suppose he answers: "No, I don't think it can." He is not telling you that you should not go to Montana, as if the state has cooties. He is simply making a realistic assessment of the vehicle's condition.

Suppose you ask a doctor: "Do you think Grandpa can live long enough to see me graduate?" Suppose the doctor answers: "I'm sorry, but I don't think he can." Obviously, the doctor is not telling you that Gramps should die. He's not telling you that he wants the old man out of the picture ASAP.

Sanders's statement offers a cynical assessment of the American public, but says nothing about women.

I'm a noted cynic myself, and part of me agrees with Bernie on this issue, although I hope he is wrong. Frankly, I fear that things are getting worse -- that the public is more sexist now than it was in 2016, and that people were more sexist in 2016 and 2008 than in previous years. Compare the level of hate directed against Geraldine Ferraro to the level of hate directed against Hillary Clinton.

On the other hand: It is inarguable that Sanders is deluding himself, or at least deluding his supporters. Every poll I've seen indicates that the bias against the word "socialist" is far more formidable than is the bias against women.

This 2015 Gallup poll shows that eight percent of the electorate would refrain from voting from an otherwise-qualified woman, based purely on sex. We must be realistic: An eight percent deficit is a serious matter -- and that number probably underestimates the problem, since poll respondents may not have been honest with the pollsters or with themselves.

So, yes, it is true that an "accident of birth" bias against Warren does exist, and I strongly suspect that the bias has worsened since 2015. It should be noted, however, that Obama won twice even though this Gallup poll indicates that voters have roughly the same degree of prejudice against a black candidate (seven percent vs. eight percent).

However, it should be noted that the most formidable bias of all is the one burdening Bernie Sanders: The dreaded S-word. Forty-seven percent of the country would consider voting for a self-identified socialist, while fifty percent say that they would never vote for such a person.

If you're the sort who loves to engage in otiose wordplay, you may now be chomping at the bit to quibble about the various definitions of socialism, and about whether the public likes socialistic ideas better than it likes the actual label. Wanna have those debates? Fine. Do so. But take it elsewhere, because I will not publish your comments -- not now. In a future post, we can talk about such things.

Right here and right now, I am focusing on the objective fact -- and it is a fact -- that there is an overwhelming prejudice against the S-word. The American public simply hates that word, and there is no pretending otherwise. This prejudice will not fade any time soon. The Bernie Bros are being disingenuous if they think that they can "educate" half the public into giving up on this deeply-ingrained view. 

Bernie, who embraces the S-word, is therefore unelectable in a national contest. Elizabeth Warren, who rejects the word, is electable. The S-word is the decisive factor. 

Here are a couple of other considerations: The same Gallup poll indicates that seven percent of the American population won't vote for a Jew, which means that the "accident of birth" bias against Bernie is pretty much the same as the "accident of birth" bias against Warren (or Obama). Moreover, forty percent won't vote for an atheist. Does anyone truly believe that Bernie believes in God? I don't.

(I also doubt that Al Franken, who should be running right now, has any deep emotional investment in the idea that God exists. However, during his first senatorial campaign, he was politician enough to mutter a few sentences offering some vaguely religious notions. You gotta do what you gotta do.)  

By any measure, the odds against Bernie Sanders are far worse than the odds against Elizabeth Warren.

Wanna see some real sexism? When Elizabeth Warren confirmed the report which started this controversy, the Twitter response included some utterly disgusting comments. Many seem to think that in any "He said, she said" controversy, she must be lying -- if only because she is, in fact, a she.

I always liked Warren overall and even though she wasn’t my preferred candidate, I believed her to be well intentioned. Now I see she’s more sinister and cynical than I could have imagined. What a massive disappointment.

I don't think she's sinister. I think her ambition overrules her decency.

She's like Hillary, minus 60 pounds and 50 corpses under her.

You can find a lot more (as in a LOT more) commentary along these lines carpeting the length and breadth of Twitter. I presume that some of this carpet was manufactured in St. Petersburg, or wherever the bots and trolls do their dirty work these days. Some of it -- but not all of it.

Obviously, the presumption that Evil Elizabeth has slandered Saint Bernie is, in and of itself, sexist. Here we encounter a paradox, since the sexism now evident on Twitter proves the validity of what Bernie Sanders said to Elizabeth Warren at that meeting: A female candidate does face a serious obstacle.

But a socialist candidate undeniably faces a worse obstacle.

Does modern feminism beget sexism? Earlier, I opined that sexism has worsened over the past decade. I don't have numbers to back that opinion; it's more of a gut reaction. But I'd wager that many of my readers have guts similar to mine. 

Why has sexism worsened? My suspicion is that sexism ticked up when feminism changed: What was once an honorable and necessary egalitarian movement has devolved into something much less attractive -- into puritanism, into the reflexive hatred of all males, into the absurd demand that all women be considered beyond question or criticism. In short, feminism has become a unceasing series of rationales for unreason.

Once again, I direct your attention to a brilliant essay titled "Why I no longer identify as a feminist," by Helen Pluckrose, one of the true geniuses of our age. For her, feminism went wrong when it became infected by the philosophical movement called postmodernism.

Very simplistically, it was an academic shift pioneered by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard which denied that reliable knowledge could ever be attained and claimed that meaning and reality themselves had broken down. It rejected large, overarching explanations (meta-narratives) which included religion but also science, and replaced them with subjective, relative accounts (mini-narratives) of the experiences of an individual or sub-cultural group. These ideas gained great currency in the humanities and social sciences and so became both an artistic movement and a social “theory.” They rejected the values of universal liberalism, the methods of science and the use of reason and critical thinking as the way to determine truth and form ethics. Individuals could now have not only their own moral truths but their own epistemological ones. The expression “It’s true for me” encapsulates the ethos of postmodernism. To claim to know anything to be objectively true (no matter how well-evidenced) is to assert a meta-narrative and to “disrespect” the contrary views of others which is oppressive (even if those views are clearly nonsense.) The word “scientism” was created for the view that evidence and testing are the best way to establish truths.

In social theory, postmodernists “deconstructed” everything considered true and presented all as meaningless. However, having done this, there was nowhere else to go and nothing more to say. In the realm of social justice, nothing can be accomplished unless we accept that certain people in a certain place experience certain disadvantages. For this, a system of reality needs to exist, and so new theories of gender and race and sexuality began to emerge comprised of mini-narratives. These categories were held to be culturally constructed and constructed hierarchically to the detriment of women, people of color and LGBTs. Identity was paramount.

Liberal feminist aims gradually shifted from the position:

“Everyone deserves human rights and equality, and feminism focuses on achieving them for women.”

to

“Individuals and groups of all sexes, races, religions and sexualities have their own truths, norms and values. All truths, cultural norms and moral values are equal. Those of white, Western, heterosexual men have unfairly dominated in the past so now they and all their ideas must be set aside for marginalized groups.”

Liberal feminism had shifted from the universality of equal human rights to identity politics. No longer were ideas valued on their merit but on the identity of the speaker and this was multifaceted, incorporating sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality and physical ability. The value of an identity in social justice terms is dependent on its degree of marginalization, and these stack up and vie for primacy. This is where liberal feminism went so badly wrong.

I apologize for quoting at such length. Please read the rest of this essay: Pluckrose is absolutely brilliant. Before I encountered this monograph, similar views had been burbling in the back of my own brain for a number of years, although I never knew how to express those thoughts. Pluckrose found the words that I had hunted but could not capture.