good evening, everybody. i'm betsy fisher, the executive director of the women in politics institute at american university and. welcome to our virtual series, women on wednesdays. we're glad you're here. to those of you need to want a bar. wpi is a nonprofit and nonpartisan institute and a school of public affairs that aims to close the gender gap in

political leadership. and we offer academic and practical campaign training, and we facilitate research and discussions like this on women, politics and leadership and. tonight, we want to discuss a question that really is at the heart of so many conversations about in politics. it's also the subtype title of a new book, electable why america hasn't put a woman in the white house dot, dot, dot yet by ali vitali, who covers for nbc news before her post on hill, however, she covered both 2016 presidential election. of course, saw a woman as the democratic nominee and hillary clinton and the 2020 presidential election saw a record breaking six women run for the white house. and one woman, of course, elected as president. so we're thrilled, ali here with us tonight to talk about front row seat on the campaign trail and help us reflect on the

progress been made and the progress yet to made. but before we start i want to let everybody know that we're going to save plenty of time for your questions so please feel free to submit those into the q&a button at the bottom of your screen and we will get to toward the end of our time with ali so with that ali, welcome i am so excited to here with you an amazing introduction. thank you, betsy. we appreciate it so much. and congratulations on the book it's really i mean a great chronicle of all of the discussion that i feel like we all had so many times especially 2020 when we had this incredible field of six women, unprecedented running for president and, you were there covering it all. and so i just really appreciate you that putting it all in one place is just such healthy thing to have because like i said, it was discussions that we just had

constantly. so i guess maybe i'll start with that with you just to give us, you know, a little bit of overview of your time on the campaign trail and the impact that these six women may still have on the future of finally maybe electing a woman as president will 2020 didn't look historic in the way that we thought it would look historic. but there was a history made from the fact that you have vice president kamala harris now. she is someone who is barrier breaking even if she isn't breaking that final barrier of being president, of the united states. but look, for me, 2020 really presented an opportunity as someone who's always been so fascinated by the intersection of gender and to finally have a field of more than just one woman showcasing, that there are a whole bunch of different ways to run in this case as a female democrat and ultimately have it shake out in kind of an election cycle where you had 16, where

the majority of the country we're ready for a woman president. that's not the way we elect our presidents. but. it's still a really important metric when consider is the country ready. but then you have 20, 20 shake out the way that it did. there were lessons to be learned, things that i hope to apply in my own reporting and others reporting going forward. but for me, this book was an exercise in, storytelling and reminding people of a lot of the experiences that we all lived through 2019 and 2020. and before that, in 2016. but doing them with a heavily gender lens on top them, which is not something we often get to do in, just the daily coverage and reporting right. and i mean even title of your book electable. i feel like that was a topic so much that was of cocktail party conversation that and people were having with their families is the woman electable but even asking question as you point out in the book sort of undermines the collective of a woman. so are we kind of stuck in that

circle? in many ways, yes. i often thought about because the feedback group too, and to me there was no other title you could use to talk about the women in the 2020 election other than electable because it was the metric it all came down to fairly would argue because most voters want to know that they're picking a winner but then unfairly because as they were considering that in 2020, there's so that's baked into that but truly electability is unknowable until people actually go to the polls and vote and you have someone who wins and someone who loses. and so really electability is a benefit of the metric. and even when you had women at every turn asked in various number of ways, can a woman win, can you win? even when they tried to answer those questions, it seems that all of their explanations fell short, in part because these candidates, these women candidates, faced with something that you talk about a lot in imagination barrier, where they are people not just imagine them

in oval, but imagine someone has never looked like a president being in the oval. and then there was the trump of it all, which was an extra complicating factor in 2020 and one that all of the women who ran who i talked to for this book from secretary clinton to senator elizabeth warren, amy klobuchar, senator kirsten gillibrand, carly fiorina, who ran in 2016, all of them chalk up the fact that there is it's complicated to run when you're a woman already, but it's extra complicated when trump is in the mix. and that was definitely the case in 2020. exactly. take us through the field a little bit. you mentioned chris and gillibrand and i wanted to start with her right out of the gate in 2020, her campaign seemed very, very focused on gender issues. yeah. do you think that, you know, in retrospect that for whatever reason, that didn't click, was it a candidate thing and does she reflect on her candidacy now? because it's she sort of came

out of that box and like ready to go and then just flamed out pretty quickly. yeah, exactly. and i mean, look, you and i both know i come at this first as a political reporter, right? so there are a lot of political reasons. and i lay these out in the book to for why the women of 2020 didn't ultimately end up being the nominee. but at the same, the intangible part of, the pie chart where you chalk up the explanations for why these people aren't the nominee of the democratic party or the president right now, that that intangible is, in my estimation, gender. and just because we can't quantify doesn't mean we shouldn't speak about it. and so in the of kirsten gillibrand, you know, she's someone ran family forward stereotype because female issues used to talk on the campaign trail a family bill of rights and being able to fight american families in same way that she fights for her own. and there's an interesting feedback loop that comes when you are a nonwhite non-male where if you run on the issues that are authentic to the group

that you and represent, there's an authenticity there and an expectation that you'll be the person to speak to those issues. but then there's also the part where it's easier for you to get as just being seen as a single issue candidate. and if you want to be president, you got to be the person who governs everybody and everything. and it's a reminder that there is an objectivity given to straight white male candidates that not everyone else who runs gets to enjoy so easily. that's not to say that they you compare someone like gillibrand who ran on family issues with someone, elizabeth warren, who was also campaigning on care economy issues, things like pre-k, universal child care. and certainly warren wasn't seen as a candidate about women's issues. she had deep roots in explaining the economy and health care. right. so there are ways to break out of it. there has to be an awareness and look for gillibrand. she came up with one of the most interesting conclusions of the book when. i talked to her where she said her estimation 2020 was she

didn't think that any woman could have won in that election cycle, which is a striking conclusion to draw. but she said that because in her it was that electing a woman still carried an air of risk. and this electorate on democratic side in 2020 was just so risk averse. the only thing they wanted was someone who could beat trump, right right. and that definitely loomed over things. when i think about kind progress that's been made and you write about this a bit in, your book as well, when we talk about kind of the qualification question and think to even 2008 when hillary clinton first ran for the democratic nomination course famously against barack obama, but she right out of the gate had to answer that kind of qualification question. and she structured a lot of her campaign about proving that she was qualified ride in fast forward there i think you know

no one could argue that so many of the women that ran in 2020, i mean they were very qualified that that did not seem to be as much of a factor maybe as we had it had been in the past. yeah. and in fact, i would also we spend a lot of time, i think rightfully so, talking about the four women senators who ran in gellibrand, klobuchar, harris and warren. they were traditionally viable, but someone like tulsi gabbard, an elected house member, had clear of the electability threshold in that had been elected to federal office. and frankly, i to see gabbard and marianne williams then, who was also sellable rated as an expert in her field, definitely a nontraditional field to into a presidential run. but nevertheless, there was an expertise, and i actually choose to see them as signs of progress, because how many, frankly, mediocre outside the box or generic house members who were men? have we seen run this office and fall short and just join the

field of also rans and try to use it to parlay it into something bigger and better and whatever comes next. so i actually see them as points of progress in this, despite the fact that some in talking to me for this book almost called them the problematic women 2020. and in fact, i think that they just represent other paradigms, how to do this and by the thresholds that we deem viable, they always were going to have a harder path because they weren't senators with deep portfolios, big war chests and attracting talent to run their. right. well, you mentioned to, you know, the fact that these women were elected to legislative office, which is very different. we think about executive governor, even mayors, and obviously, of course, president. and there's been research on this topic. but what did you find in the book, the conversations you had with folks about the differences and voters minds when electing a

woman to legislative kind of position, an executive position walk? the mindset is completely different. and i feel like you guys have done great research on this. the barbara lee family foundation folks did a ton of great research on this. it's different going for federal offices that are part of a body. so congress right. or state state legislatures, other things that are that are large groups of who were elected here as opposed to being the boss, the executive mayor, the governor, and, of course, the president and it's why i think that we've seen women be able to grow their ranks in congress not as quickly as think many of us would like them to. but it's happening now at a quicker clip each congress you get to watch this this line charting how many women make up the body and it's consistently going up and that's fantastic trend because both parties realizing that they need to invest in diverse candidates and that women are very competitive. a lot of the seats that both parties want stay competitive

in. now, there is a caveat to that, which is that there is concern that i've heard republican and democratic operatives alike that you could end up with a situation. there are certain house seats that swingy and well-suited to women and end up just having a republican woman replace the democrat and then it doesn't move. yeah, that doesn't help in growing the ranks overall, but it is a sign of progress if there's even a conversation that we're having. i suppose. but certainly when it comes to executive offices, the qualifications that we automatically think of for these roles tend to be a little bit more in the way that we think of someone who can be commanding, someone who can be a gentex, someone who is individual leader as opposed to someone who is better representing the collective the community, the whole. and so it's it's a it's a reframing moment for us to to sort of tackle the way that the patriarchy has built these structures around men for men

and to continue to be held by men and, it's on these women candidates to then have to navigate the barriers of getting there. but frankly, again, i am that we will. right. and then you also have seen the likability question comes in. well, if you're if you seen as too tough, you might not be likable. and yet you end up with a. and pull in that sense as well in executive office. right. and it feels like it's, you know, the idea of likability. i think for some of us in the media, before you dig into this, it's sort of like it's a metric, of course, that we've now seen as gendered, but it's also a that people might think, oh, it's just nice to be liked. in fact, that's not women need to be liked order to earn people's votes, whereas people are much more forgiving to. vote for a man who they don't like. and i heard this time and again when i was out covering trump, i really don't like the way he talks. really don't like that he did this or that but i'm still not for him. yeah, it's a lot harder to find the women or the voters who are

saying that about the women candidates and instead those conversations tend to devolve into, well, there's just something about her that i don't like. i don't like the way she talks or she's shrill or she too much. she doesn't know enough. yeah, she's qualified. too qualified. yeah. and write in the book too. and there's a couple of different on this, on this very story about kamala harris in that first debate going joe biden on the issue of bussing. right. and the fact that, you know, while it may have helped in a very short term, people saw that as political opportunism, which, of course, in politics it's omnipresent everywhere. right. name of the game. right. but when you're a woman and again, you get hit with being too political, too opportunistic, and that doesn't sit well with voters in many

ways. those are words that carry such deeper meaning. and they shouldn't have an impact on the way that we view people and their leadership. but for women in particular, we do and the electorate did. and at each of the moments that these women had arguably strong debate performances and that they were showing what they were about. they were also going after other candidates. you know, the name of that game is. none of these moments are actual, as spontaneous as they appear on tv. many of them are actually workshopped. and yet at each turn, kamala harris, during the first debate over bussing with joe biden, elizabeth warren, when was on the stage in las vegas, taking down michael bloomberg at various even when the women were winning, it seemed like they were somehow also losing. and so there is a calculation has to be made a that you the juice is worth squeeze, so to speak. bitcoin is worth making that you could a few voters but then also

finding a way to do that doesn't make you seem unlikable but also makes you seem commanding. i do also think that with kamala harris, one of the things that plagued presidential campaign was the fact that it always seemed to kind of fall in the details, politically speaking. and that was true with the bussing where biden's policy and harris's policy on, frankly, an issue that was pretty arcane. the electorate in 2020, their positions ended up being somewhat the same. and so harris had this feedback pattern on the campaign where it always like the policy story or the explanation or the details were changing and politically. that's a reason why that was bad for her. but it doesn't explain voters that i would meet who said that they felt really hurt or wounded or upset or at her because she go at someone this way when really that's the name of the game. you've got to be you've got to be contrasting in a field of 19 or 20 people. you've got to differentiate yourself somehow.

but the operatives who i spoke to in real time, i'm sure you were talking to them to. and then after almost of them said that the conclusion that they drew from watching these women on the debate stages was just, we don't like it when women's health, we don't like it when women aggressive we go after their goals. how do you know when you talk to people from that campaign, you know, if they thought about that ahead of time, did they sort of map out the different consequences of this? i mean, clearly was a planned sort of attack. right. do you think that there was, you know, a debate within, the debate team about whether to do that or not? look, i think that this point the thing that they clearly have sticking with them as you were unpacking this over a year after it happened, this idea of the t shirts that that little girl was need t shirts and not unheard of for campaign to take viral moments and just try to fundraise as much as they possibly can off of them. that is the whole point of being a debate stage is like marco

rubio water bottle. yeah my god he has exactly. this was a much cooler version. the water bottle, right? yeah. i mean and the t shirts became emblematic of this idea that they planned. they were just profiting off of biden being in a bad political spot that kamala harris put him in. and in fact, yes. senator harris, at that point did put him in a bad political because that's what you try to do with your opponents. he was the front runner at that time. no one had been able to lay a glove on him because it was the first debate. of course do this with the campaign still says is that the t shirts themselves were not some preplanned preordained part of their their strategy but instead something that up organically through their digital team. but again the t shirts sort of became emblematic of this larger idea that they planned it. it's like they did. but why is that from pence's right and it's something that men do all the time in debates.

yeah, exactly. i mean, look even just look back at 2015 and 2016 the way that donald would go after and frankly that his opponents would go after him, things got really i mean, there was a lot of name that was sort of the vibe of that primary. but at the same time, no was saying, oh, wow, these, these are just it's a reflection on their leadership ability. it just it didn't as personally at that point. so while we're talking about kamala and clothing, i go to a story that you have about south carolina right that you all with her and you all well tell the story going to this clothing store. yeah sort of what followed and it's a great example of kind of sexism at work in the in the campaign sexism at work in a campaign and it happened so early on. so i remember coming we were on in columbia, south carolina, on a street called lady street, a street of predominantly women of color businesses, which is just

tailor for a candidate like emmylou harris. and this is the bread and butter of being a presidential candidate. right. you go out and you don't just do rallies in stadiums. in fact, most of the rallies you out doing are at coffee shops and, diners and wherever people live their lives organically. it's meeting voters where they are. so this was a day that felt very brand for kamala harris. we go into this store. it is a thrift, a thrift store. the owner has an amazing story of being homeless, a young woman being able to be lifted up by her community out of homelessness into college. now she runs a business. not only that, she also runs a business to give back to homeless youth. it is a really amazing story of people innovating within their own communities and women innovating their own communities. but in the of participating in shopping. kamala harris picked up a sparkly jacket that i rented to

play in, you know, new orleans mardi gras. and this is the costume mean you find a good sparkly jacket you stick it, you got to get it. yeah, exactly. and so for me, for other reporters in the press corps, this was an easy moment of, levity. and i think the whole group, predominantly women, i would add. but veteran campaign reporters, all of us on our second or third presidential campaign sort of enter on to try it on. she she laughed. the sleeves were too the whole thing was just like a mess. she bought it, of course, because the jacket could not be passed up. but we left the store tweeting about this, but also the conversation that she had had with store owner. and i found that some white conservative men online sort of clutched their ties at the very idea that this could be a day on the campaign trail with female covering a female presidential candidate. there were a lot of questions he raised that others the right

wing and then in more establishment legacy media organizations echoed this idea that it was unserious that we were somehow in the tank for the candidate that the candidate wasn't doing the job of being a serious presidential candidate despite the fact that not only male contenders shopped before mitt romney did this barack obama did this, but also men had been allowed to do any number of things during their retail politics stops. you know, john hickenlooper was a guy who owned breweries, his early entrepreneurship. we did a lot at with john hickenlooper lindsey graham went skeet shooting when he ran in 15 reporters went along for that and wrote about it in the first person in the times in the post. no one criticized that, but when it was a woman doing a stereotypic female task, just being a presidential candidate, it was a reminder to me that there's still an uncomfortable city with women in the media and the narratives that we would put forward. but there's certainly an

uncomfortability with women candidates just simply doing the job of running for president. and there are invisible traps that they can fall into simply just by being a candidate that men don't have to worry about. and having that at that early point in the campaign really set the tone for me that, yes, there was, because there were six women running and it was the most diverse field ever, but also there were pitfalls that still very much existed. well, we think about the media coverage. talk a little bit about, you know, what i would consider now is, you know, people being more willing to like if they see see something, say something. that people are more apt to call not only, you know, other politicians out, but media out when there is coverage that, you know has, you know, sexist kind of language around something. talk about how maybe that has changed over the past ten years or so and and how, you know, you

in the media and your colleagues kind of deal with some of those issues and it's a good thing that there is more empowerment to call those things out. i think the more women that you have at every of a newsroom, the better your coverage is going to look. but it's not perfect, and it doesn't mean that it means that there's no narrative that's going to be misogynistic, that crops up. i would give two examples that show sign of progress and then a sign that we are definitely not past gender ism in campaigning. the first would be when i was talking to one democratic operative, they said to me that after kamala harris got the nomination as vice president, she was getting a lot of calls from male reporters saying, am i allowed to say this about kamala harris? i love to say about kamala harris. and she would laugh. the calls would be the most basic thing in, the world. and the thing that she would say is, well, if you would say it about joe biden or if you would say it about donald trump, then you can consider saying it about kamala harris. and a lot of those things never

got written. but i think a sign of progress that especially men writing about women would to ask and disrupt their own and narratives in real time. i think that's awesome. but then turn to something like the veepstakes, which crafted in part democratic party knowing were going to have a female nominee, came together. a lot of operatives, a lot of women's groups formed. we have her back. they got as much buy as they could to to try to disrupt sexist narratives before they started. they would go on cable. and when they were asked to compare karen bass or kamala, they instead would sort of get rid of the premise of that. and just say, well, karen bass would be great because this kamala harris would be great because this we're pitting them against each other. that's one thing that was a positive sign. but then still, the veepstakes itself devolved into a conversation about. people who were self advocating being seen as too ambitious, despite the fact that mike pence or joe biden or al gore, none

of. these men just fell into the vice president's. they had the ambition to at least network it behind the scenes. but the weird about 2020 was everything was happening either on zoom privately or on zoom on television. and the only way that you had to talk about if you wanted to be vice president was, to say that you wanted to be vice president and it was only women. yes, ambition and politics goes hand in hand, inherently don't run for office if you don't have ambition. right. but but that veepstakes is interesting, too, because i think in many ways, you know, by biden out and saying that he was going to nominate a woman yeah you ended up having sort of this you contest play out in the media where women were you know dissected and criticized every which way. and by the way, there were other women doing it other potential candidates doing it to other

women. opposition research wise. i know but you know versus biden biden just picking a woman for i mean for vice president if. so just you know the upside of, yes, we have a female vice president, but wouldn't be great if he just actually picked woman and we didn't have to have eggs going through you know the negativity each of these potential women. i mean, look the auto is always going to be there, right? because politics so politics of the day, anyone like ambitious enough to want be vice president is probably she doesn't have to have the apparatus to try to get the name of the game. but i do think i've heard sides of this. right. the biden campaign, the aides that i've spoken to say it was important for him to lay down the metric at that point in march when he was effectively the nominee. bernie was still in. but biden was trying to show what kind of administration he would build. they felt it was an important metric.

lay out some in his orbit, said something online that it was empowering. say men, it's not your time you can sit down. but then the other side of it is there's a lot of people who wish that he would have just said this is not feel the people who i happen to be considering and oh gosh i all really women. well i'm just going to pick the best one as opposed to picking the best women which they still that they did, but i would also say that in biden kamala at that point and in the book, i try to dip back into history. so 1984, when mondale chooses, geraldine ferraro, the first time you have a female v.p. and then again in 2008 with john mccain choosing sarah palin, stunning most of the political world when he did it. in both of those situation, you had male candidates at the top of the ticket who were struggling politically. the polls, they were down. they were lacking energy around their candidacies. i knew palin and and ferraro as sort throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks and what excites the party choices with

the fact that when he picked harris, when he laid out the metric that he was going to choose a woman is a sign of progress because. he was saying in that moment, not only was it advantageous to have a diverse ticket with a woman running him, but also at the apex of his power, he was acknowledging it powerful to bring that olympics variance and diversity on with him. and that's a departure from the last few that we've seen women as running mates. absolutely. so we've talked about kamala harris. we a little bit about kirsten gillibrand. i want to just have you share your thoughts because you spoke to them both elizabeth warren, of course, like to me the enduring memory of the campaign with her was the pinky promises and the self-dealing rings. right. and and what that meant. and then also, you know, amy klobuchar, who again, was also considered as one of the vice presidential picks as well. yeah, both warren and klobuchar end up in that veepstakes, go

much further than klobuchar was able to. but look for klobuchar think she's a fascinating case study in someone who politically was probably aligned with the moment being a moderate from the midwest. but at the same time was regularly tapped. her central theme was bringing the receipts. she loved to talk about all the things she had accomplished, and many of them in both parties and fashion, but seemed like there was not enough to judge her potential, even though she had so much that she had already done and with with klobuchar, she was aware of the fact she's so politically adept that the barometer and the environment she was operating in among democrats was that they were so skittish and that she was aware that even if she wasn't trying to campaign overtly on gender, that it was still something that was functioning her, she would still be kind of woman win and it would knock her off theme.

i'm talking about her own electability because she had won one time, right in a purplish state. and the same one for elizabeth warren, certainly massachusetts. not purple in that conventional way. minnesota, but winning in marquee beating scott brown. get to the senate and one of the hottest contests that election cycle. she had proven herself to be electable. and i think when warren looks back on her presidential run, their political reasons why i think she didn't get the nomination, i spent the most time with her and her campaign. i think on health care, for example, they just waited too long to come out with a plan. really, the entire primary, every debate. we would painstakingly spend so much time talking about medicare for all versus any other kind of health care plan. they just waited a little bit too long. and their rivals pounced on them for that. even though she was the candidate a plan for that. but the moment that sticks with me and frankly the that that really launched this book on the day that she dropped out she talked about the fact that she

was thinking for the voters who expanded in minds just a little bit what they thought of president could look like. and she knew that gender was a barrier and it's that she talked about with us off record and details that i've since reported for the first time in this book but also throughout it was clear that she was always thinking about gender closing her message iowa by saying simply that women win again, trying to speak electability and how women done so well electorally in the age of trump but it all comes down to is all these women were asked any number of ways to talk about how they win, how they could be electable. and even when they showed that they did better than the men who were running, they still weren't able to answer that question in the mind. the electorate. yeah. and so as we think about 2024, what and sort this invisible primary that goes on of course the biggest parlor game in washington now is does biden run? does he not run?

right. but in your opinion, what does the field look like if biden doesn't run? do we have kamala does elizabeth warren get back in? does amy klobuchar get back in? what are your thoughts on the democratic and then, you know, the republican side? well, with, you know, some female governors. yeah. you know, could potentially run as well. and of course, does the trump factor hanging out there, too, right. yeah. what are your thoughts kind of look into 20, 24? yeah. i mean, look, the reality in the way we do politics right, is that if you're the incumbent or if you're the guy who was just in the white house and you want to run again, you've got the best claim to it. we've only seen men get to do. but i would say gender aside, because frankly, is the way that this goes. but it might doesn't run. certainly the person you have to consider is the vice.

president of the united states. and many of the people who i talk to for this book, despite fact that she has had a very rocky go of it as vice president, many of them still think that she's positioned than anyone else if and these are the caveats, would govern any vice presidents future presidential aspirations. if biden is in good depending on what his legacy looks, depending on what his favourability ratings are, all of that is really going to matter. ultimately, biden's legacy is what harris ends up running if and when she runs in 2024 or after. but there are other people, even within the cabinet, who we could be seeing are women. i think commerce secretary gina raimondo is someone who comes to mind, having been a governor and now serving in the cabinet, but then also governor gretchen whitmer in michigan, someone who was part the veepstakes, who has been leading the charge on reproductive access. someone democrats are paying a lot of attention to and arguably has a great place to make president, win or lose in 20. she's got one of the marquee contests, obviously, this cycle, but certainly she's got a long future ahead regardless of if she wins or loses in 2020.

in 2022, rather. and then, of course, you could see people like elizabeth warren or amy klobuchar try to run again. and i think it's a sign again of how democrats are built that bench and there could be newcomers on top of that and then look on republican side to 2020 was a year where many operatives who had sort of been sounding the alarm to the predominantly male republican apparat, the leadership that they needed to do at investing in female candidates. elise stefanik is someone who has done that through her super pac, but are other pacs who are trying to do the same with the caveat that there is this fascinating dynamic happening and politics right now that, these hyper conservative, very pro-trump women like lauren boebert and marjorie taylor greene have a lot of power within the because of their command of the grassroots frankly. but they are sort of deemed among republican who i talked to, as you know, not just

because you're a woman doesn't mean that you're a good leader. in fact, you represent part of our party that we don't want to see. and so republicans have have felt the need to say, well, will only help viable or qualified women. so certainly there is a dynamic at here in republican politics about. okay. it's not just about bringing up women. it's about bringing up a certain kind of woman. but certainly when you think about conservatives who could run for president, cheney is the first person that comes to mind she's clearly toying with this. but then also people like governor christie in south dakota. i think that lake is someone who whether or not she runs for, should certainly be on the national stage in 2024, especially if she wins the arizona governor's race. elise stefanik is someone who i'm watching, maybe not for president, but certainly for what she does in congress, that she's in leadership there. so nikki haley, the former u.n. ambassador, served with trump and governor of south carolina. two terms when she's someone who's got a long runway ahead of her as well, and just released a which is usually one of the tea

leaf readings that we might expect for the shadow primary. well, you write about when thinking about republicans, you about this notion that we've heard lot about republicans not wanting to focus on gender when it comes to women in politics and running and you spoke to congresswoman nancy mace, of course, the republican congresswoman from south carolina, first female graduate of the citadel. and that was very much her, too, is, you know, we don't as republicans focus on our gender. right and so that that comes into play. but yet we saw republicans, i think, you know, after. only electing one new women woman to congress in 2018, sort of, as you mentioned, kind of double down and start investing women in 2020 with much success and and many of the seats that they were able to flip because they put competitive good qualified women on the ballot there and they ended up winning.

and so that something that republican operatives were saying to me that there was now proof of return on investment for running and supporting. and i think it's a good it's a good time for us to point out, like part of the reason i spend so much time focusing on primaries in the book is yes because you had a diverse primary field for president in 2020 but also once you get to the general election, especially for presidentials that, broadly speaking, people are pretty tribal. if you're the republican, you get the republican if you're the democrat, you get the democrats. it's in primaries that the isms, gender ism, sexism, those are where tend to manifest and where the structural of the system are just harder for women, whether it's on fundraising or the right kind of stuff, all of those barriers exist and they are the most at play in primaries. but yeah, the thing with the republicans that i found, i talk to people who work for michelle bachmann, who of course ran for president. carly fiorina herself, who was the only woman in the 2016 field. i think fiorina is really indicative of the mindset here,

which that she'll show up to the fact it's different when you're different is what she said to me. but then would very pivot to the idea that it should be about merit. which of course it should be. but it's hard only focus on the merit when the road that you're running on is just completely uneven and everyone else you're running behind has completely straight path ahead of them. and so you have to address that there inequities there and part of i hope to do with the book is make people so aware of the biases and narratives that can come about around female candidates that the narratives are easier to disrupt because once you see it, it's kind of hard to stop seeing it. and that could just make the path more exactly. we have a couple questions. so let me try to run through a few of them with you. just on the topic we were talking about. sydney has a question. she says do you think there are different qualification for being electable for republican women versus democratic women? i think that's really

fascinating. one of the things i think that that comes about is the idea that once you're deemed electable, i would argue that and studies that that i found for book and that i include in the book show that if there's a demographic concern and on the part of a conservative voter, it can assuaged by proving your ideological strength. so if you're a woman and you want to prove that you are conservative enough, it's why we've seen so many women candidates on the right be so hyper conservative around so-called women's issues, around idea, for example, of abortion. the same thing goes along racial lines to making sure if you were a candidate of color on the right trying to speak against ideas like affirmative action and the culture wars we see the right often waging along the lines of race and gender. those are ways that can establish conservative credentials, even if an audience may subconsciously, consciously come with the bias that a woman might not be conservative enough or a person of color might not

be conservative enough. that's at least what one study found in the book. so that's one way of establishing those qualifications. but again, for all candidates, this is true and a bunch of the research that you guys and others have pointed out, women especially need validators. that's true. whether you're a democrat or republican you need people to speak on your behalf to show what kind of leader you are. and that's going to be key for anybody who's running for sure. let's see. we also have a question about lessons that future female presidential candidates should take away from 2020. this is really fascinating. i think one of the things that always stuck with me when i talked with secretary hillary clinton, she was talking to almost every single woman who ran during 2020, throughout the arc of the primary. and i asked her if they had anything in common when they would talk about what they were experiencing in the race and. what she said is they had all run high profile, high stakes, big senate races.

they'd all had pretty big careers, if not on the national stage for a presidency. but they were well known and all of them in some way or another expressed how much more the misogyny felt palpable at the presidential level, how those narratives were quicker to take hold. they almost surprised by that. but clinton, of course, in her response, said something to the effect of that. i had been there so. i knew exactly what they were going through. as you get more into that spotlight, that's one of the things that's worth expecting now. it mean that you don't campaign authentically. and it's why one of the things that i talk about in the book is that, yes, the candidates have to strategize, knowing all of the things that this book points out, the fact that debate stages are wins can also somehow be counted as or when you're laughing, sometimes people will somehow find the best inauthentic laugh. i mean, we don't allow necessarily women to show the same complexities. the same difference range of range of emotion, anger, of sadness. all of that is baked in the

cake. unfortunately. but i also think that on the other side, it taking the power out of the candidate's hands, looking at us as the media. i do think that having more diverse newsroom where the reporters lived is closer that of the candidates that they can better explain to people why, for example, important to the way that kamala harris leadership and community that would go to celebrate her and go to celebrations of the divine nine. having reporters who actually know what the divine nine is. those are important pieces to being able to explain candidates that don't all just look white and male like most of the candidates that we have seen throughout history. very true. here's a question from meghan. she says, what message will it send when a woman is finally elected to the presidency. yeah. did it. no truth, truthfully. look, i think i think the message that it sends is reflective governance is a good

thing in that it brings about policy that more people ideally a positive way having more people at the table who can understand the impact of the policy through a multiple economically racially, demographically lived experience wise, that means that government is functioning better for people. and liz cheney made a joke a few weeks ago that always sticks me. she said, men have been running things for a while. it hasn't been going so well. there's a lot of reasons liz cheney would say that, and it's hilarious on its face. but it's also something speaks to a country that has never tried outside of barack obama being the first black male president. they've never tried any other model leadership and it would serve this country well to, be represented by as many kinds of people that live in this country as possible. and so this is a barrier that would make people feel seen when we break it. yes, but that also could have really big impacts on the way that this country governs and,

how people are touched by government. and you write in the book about hillary clinton actually thinking that it could very well be a republican woman who makes it to the white house. why is that? which i think surprised some people when they read it. but it's she's a student of history and not the only person who said this to me. democrats and republicans alike are aware of fact that when you look, for example, at places like great britain and across countries when they've had first women, those women have broadly come from the conservative side of the spectrum first. now, what you think about when you think about great britain is the fact that systemically they just do their differently. and this is also true places like germany and new zealand and others where we've seen female heads state come up as prime minister or chancellor when you're elected within a parliamentary body and then elevated out of that, that's a very different kind of executive role than just being an outright

executive. that's why we did things in the us. we have a president, nancy pelosi and i wouldn't have needed to write this book, but that's not the way that we do here. so there is a systemic argument to be made there. when you look at other countries. but yet history has shown conservative women can get there. first, though, clinton was very fast to say to me she that it could happen. she really hopes that's not the way that it shakes out. unsurprisingly, obviously. let's see here's another question about. comparing 2020 to 2016. the questioner wants to know, is 2020 a more predictive election than 2016 mean in terms of how women will fare in the future as presidential candidates? gosh i think 2016 and 2020 both had such a replicable factor as part of them. i mean in 2020, it was pretty jarring to me to see that the lesson that people took away from 2016 wasn't that america

was majority wise ready to elect female executive instead of the takeaway that i found very vexing seemed to be that one woman lost to one man once. and so the whole endeavor needed to be called into question, despite the fact that trump himself had beaten 16 or 17 men on his path to the as well. and none of those men were ever posed. do you think that a man could ever beat trump? that was never going to be the deduction. but because one woman lost once was seemingly a cloud over this entire endeavor. so i think trump is a really irreplaceable factor in 2020. i don't if he can be predictive, but i do think the thing that i found instructive is this idea that in 2020, electability and there were multiple studies about this that i that i that i point to is because electability seemed like such shaky metric for the women. people were actively changing their votes because they had questions about whether not

these women could win. and it wasn't just a metric that you needed to clear theory. it was one that was actually impacting electoral bottom line. and the bright spot is that when stanford did that study about, the 2020 field using specific of candidates warren inherits. i think who they pulled. they found if you disrupted those narratives around not being electable, framing them from a negative, if you just said you vote for the person that you like, they can, then people change their votes less. and that's instructive for whoever comes next. well, and you write about this notion of kind of normalizing, i think, success and julie conway, you've had a republican pac to that elect helps to elect women republican women in primaries. she said, you know it has to stop kind of the year of the woman or the year of the democratic women or republican women. it just has to evolve to like we've.

up five seats a cycle. we picked up seven seats this cycle like and same goes in many ways for like being the first four something like is there a way we just normalize this eventually it is a numbers which i think is a good thing because at this point you look at both parties, they both have pipelines full, really good potential candidates. we just looked at listed off just a few on each side. but it's a testament to the fact that both have begun to invest in filling ranks with good women who can build long careers in politics, have solid resumes to eventually run for president on if they so choose. and so i think that a certain point it is a numbers game but i also think that 2020 normal lies a whole bunch of different ways to run for president. female. a lot of the women in field were tagged with the baggage of hillary clinton and many of them various points were just compared to her a knee jerk way because they all happened to. be women who ran for the same office. but now at least there are more touchstone ones. if you are a moderate woman running, you are probably going to be compared to any klobuchar

if you are a progressive, you'll probably compared to elizabeth warren know there is a number of different people now who can be compared to you. don't just have to be, oh, well, you're a blond woman and hillary was a blond woman, so everyone's just like the ghost, hillary. right. right. i mean, a night of progress in and of itself, just being able to expand americans idea of what it can look like, but also having it normalize that you are actively looking at your ballot and considering female candidates at the top of your ticket potentially. and that's something to normalizing this practice is. really important. exactly. we have a question from julie who asks about ranked choice voting and whether you think it would yield more women in elected office. it's a great question and actually, i was in alaska for special election for the house that mary tola ended up winning. sarah palin was also on the ballot there. and then, of course, lisa murkowski is another is on the ballot there. and that's the senate that we're watching very closely.

but what i was talking to about ranked choice voting say that it is a system that can benefit women because of the quality that are generally stereotypically assigned to female candidates, which is they can build consensus and the whole in a ranked choice voting system is to be, you know, at palatable to your supporters so that if i ranked betsy first at least people don't hate me so much that they won't rank me second. and so if that doesn't reach the threshold, i then pick up a lot of her voters. and palin, although she is a woman, has always campaigned as a firebrand. and so politically ideologically she doesn't necessarily work in a system like ranked choice voting. but someone like mary pell tola who won there but campaigned so congenial to the point where would whisper to us, she's just so nice. it really worked for in being able to not just coalesce the democrats there, but also pick up some republicans as well.

right. because they're not as polarized as somebody like. palin exactly. whoever hate her in many ways, right? yeah, exactly. exactly. but yeah, experts say that this is one system that tends to benefit or could benefit women candidates. okay. so we wrap up here. we have a final question also from julie about your sweater and she wants to know, is it a custom design or? can a school sweater. this this was gift from a friend of mine. i'm pretty sure she ordered it custom somewhere, but i think there has to be a flexible sweaters on the internet. i mean, that has to be a thing. and if not, i think i just found what i'm doing my wednesday night. yeah, i was looking for a good bag around here, so really, let's get some good works. yeah, exact. exactly. well, ali, thank you so much for this discussion and for this

book, which i just think is a great contribution to studying women in politics and congratulations on that. we appreciate you spending some some time talking with us about it tonight. i'm going to let everybody know, too, in two weeks on the 26th, we are to have dr. bonnie morris here. she's actually an aew alum. she is to discuss her new book, what's the score? 25 years of teaching women's sports history, which will be interesting and of the 50th anniversary of title nine, of course. and then on the day after the midterms on the ninth, we are going to convene a panel with, amanda hunter from the barbara lee foundation, who partners with us on a lot of things and who ali mentions, their research in the book and, christine matthews, a pollster, a team, aurora, a strategist. and we're going to break down the midterm elections and talk about who won women candidates, how they fared and, of course,

women voters as well. so we hope you all will join us for those two discussions to round out the semester. but thank for everyone for being with us tonight and. again, ali, thank you so much. thank so