The data shows that this group of voters - said to be disproportionately white, female, and suburban - disproportionately support Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. The numbers also show that more within this group do not support Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, than do.This is interesting on several levels.— Fannie Wolfe 🌈 (@fanniesroom) July 3, 2019
One, if it's true that Indivisible disproportionately includes "resistance mom," I think there are many reasons this group doesn't support Bernie. For one, he dredges up a lot of history from 2016 and can't seem to admit he lost to a woman. https://t.co/4GxCGPEdTZ
As I tweeted, these findings are interesting on several levels. Regarding Bernie, I think he dredges up a lot of history from 2016, most notably that he can't seem to admit that he lost to a woman. But in addition to that, I think he has earned the distrust many women probably have of him due to his consistent 1960s socialist rhetoric that dog-whistles the mantra that white working class men are to be prioritized with respect to the political solutions he's proposing.
There's also the reality that a good portion of the online left has spent far too much time and energy mocking "wine moms" and the "hashtag resistance" for not sufficiently feeling the Bern. Back in January 2019, I wrote about this. The refusal of the online left to take "the hashtag resistance" seriously as a political movement is, I believe, in no small part due largely to the fact that white, cisgender, straight men are not at the center of it.
We've seen some of these dynamics play out over the past three years, a notable example of which is the way many women have bristled at times when The Women's March has appeared to be a vehicle for channeling women's support toward a Bernie 2020 run, such as his invite to give what some were presented as a keynote speech at the organization's Women's Convention in 2017. (He accepted the invite, which caused a huge backlash, and then later backed out without acknowledging that invite/acceptance were controversial.)
The Biden numbers on the Indivisible poll are interesting, as well, not the least of which is because I think there is some "conventional wisdom" on Twitter that "resistance moms" are "neoliberal centrists" who probably disproportionately support him (or course, you have to factor in that "neoliberal centrist" has some bizarre definitions these days, most of which center around the degree to which one does/doesn't like Bernie Sanders).
I'm not sure what to make of Gillibrand's numbers, other than that she most likely has taken huge hits because she called on Al Franken to resign. So, perhaps these voters are resentful of her for that and/or they think other people would remain too resentful of that (ie, misogynistic) to vote for her.
Remember: a lot of women have internalized misogyny, and it's also pervasive among the moderate-to-left side of the political spectrum. It's fully possible to support some female candidates, while not supporting others for misogynistic reasons.
All in all, it's still early. Biden and Bernie have near-universal name recognition, however, and I suspect that the more people see of the other candidates, the more people will realize that neither man is particularly well-equipped for this political moment.
I know Bernie's team is pushing the narrative that everyone is stealing his ideas*, but demeanor - among other things matters - and he simply doesn't have it. (*If everyone is stealing Bernie's ideas and supporting "his" agenda, are they also still neoliberals centrist sellouts? Hmmm, ponder the paradox).
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