During a recent trip to my hometown of Cleveland, I enjoyed catching up with an old friend over breakfast. During our visit, the subject eventually turned to the 2020 presidential election. When I asked my friend who her current favorite was, she replied, “ABT.”
Her response to my confused expression was, “Anybody But Trump.” Since that time, I’ve noticed a resounding chorus of voices representing variations of my friend’s theme.
Of course, it’s understandable that the first priority of Democrats is to prevent Trump from winning a second term, but suggesting that the primary qualification for selecting a candidate is their ability to beat Donald Trump abdicates our responsibility to elect the person who can best lead this country in a positive direction.
When voters decide that the main criterion is one’s ability to topple our bully-in-chief, we are setting a low bar. It’s presumptuous to assume we know who can beat Trump. I’ve heard lots of speculation that the candidate must be a white male with name recognition. Hence, it’s not surprising that Joe Biden is leading in the polls, followed by Bernie Sanders.
The media has reinforced this message, creating a mantra that voters won’t elect a woman, basing this so-called knowledge on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. Such speculation ignores Clinton’s narrow Electoral College defeat, much of which can be attributed to her campaign’s mistakes.
Clearly, assessing the electability of 24 candidates is a daunting task, resulting in many folks taking a passive wait and see attitude, based on results of next year’s early primaries.
Yet, the media is actively influencing the 2020 campaign. Media decisions of who gets air time and who remains invisible; who is the pundits’ “darling” and who is demonized; whose record is revealed and whose is ignored, are all exerting subtle and not so subtle influences on viewers’ perceptions.
Have we forgotten how greedy corporate executives obsessed with ratings gave the Trump campaign endless publicity? Remember how in March 2016, FOX, MSNBC, and CNN focused their television cameras on an empty podium waiting for Trump, instead of broadcasting Sanders’ speech?
Unseating Trump starts with media awareness. Shortly after Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced her candidacy in February, she became the subject of accusations that she mistreated her staff. Since that time, I’ve seen little news about Klobuchar’s campaign. In fact, there is a wealth of online articles attempting to explain the media’s failure to give equal coverage to women candidates.
The invisibility and disparaging attitudes toward these candidates fuel the misogynist trope that this country is not ready for a woman in the White House. The hypocrisy of putting South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg on the cover of Time magazine, while ignoring experienced candidates including Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris is infuriating.
The media also renders candidates of color invisible. My husband extoled the virtues of former HUD secretary Julian Castro long before he jumped into the 2020 race for president, yet whenever he sings Castro’s praises to friends and colleagues, they claim to have never heard of him.
And how do we explain why pundits have suddenly decided that Sanders is worthy of coverage? Unless we critically examine the media’s influence on this election, we are all in danger of falling under its spell.
The inordinate attention to white males in the 2020 campaign for president is in contradiction to last November’s 2018 elections, when voters elected the most diverse group of congressional representatives in U.S. history. Women flipped more than 60 percent of incumbent districts, contributing to the largest number of female congressional representatives in history. Twenty-four congressional representatives are people of color, including the first Native American and African-American women to be elected by their states.
Why, then, do we appear to be on track to choose a presidential candidate that represents the status quo? I am not suggesting that identity politics should be the primary consideration in electing our next president. However, the November elections demonstrated the electability of candidates who represent the diversity that gives the United States its character and strength.
Voting is a privilege that Americans often take for granted. We owe it to the future of this country to really research candidates’ experiences, accomplishments, stands on important issues, values, and their visions for our country.
We also shouldn’t shy away from holding them accountable for decisions that we find troubling. It’s imperative that we educate ourselves about each candidate, starting with their websites. Preparing for the primaries also requires that we identify the issues that matter to us and assess how our biases obstruct us from fairly evaluating each candidate.
With such an enormous field of presidential contenders, it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Our work is cut out for us. With the very survival of the planet at stake, we have a responsibility to go beyond an “Anybody But Trump” approach.
Sara Weinberger of Easthampton is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.