The Stillbirth of Kirsten Gillibrand's Presidential Candidacy

New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced her presidential candidacy on Stephen Colbert Tuesday night.

The New York Times has been lavishing attention on Gillibrand far out of proportion to her merits. Shane Goldmacher has been handed the portfolio for "the newspaper of record." His reporting has been decent; it manages to spotlight and promote the junior senator from New York while at the same time providing the discerning reader with everything one needs to reject Gillibrand's candidacy outright; for instance, Gillibrand -- who owes her senate seat to Hillary's ascension to Obama's Foggy Bottom, followed by an appointment from David Patterson, who himself had recently risen to governor thanks to the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal -- was a Blue Dog Democrat congressional representative of an upstate district with an A-rating from the National Rifle Association.

Gillibrand is a scion of a powerful Albany family, a corporate lawyer with a knack for fundraising. Goldmacher summarizes:

Born in Albany to a political family, Ms. Gillibrand was greatly influenced by her grandmother, Dorothea Noonan, known as Polly, a powerful figure in the political machine of the longtime mayor of Albany, Erastus Corning.

Ms. Gillibrand began her career as a Manhattan lawyer in the 1990s, and has said she was inspired to get into politics by listening to Mrs. Clinton, then the first lady.

She eventually ran for Congress, in 2006, in what was seen as a long-shot race against an entrenched incumbent, John E. Sweeney. The district was 93 percent white, and Republicans vastly outnumbered Democrats.

She easily secured re-election in 2008 in a House race that was the most expensive in the nation that year.

It's interesting that while The Times was rolling out the red carpet for Gillibrand it was smearing Bernie and Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard's candidacy was scotched for her past support for traditional marriage. Liam Stack reported in "Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic Presidential Candidate, Apologizes for Anti-Gay Past":

“We would hope that people have lifelong values of equality and inclusion that have been demonstrated over their lifetime,” said Stephanie Sandberg, the president of LPAC, an advocacy group for L.G.B.T. women. “From my point of view, this does not make good presidential material, especially from a progressive perspective.”

[snip]

Mr. Gabbard, who has been a state lawmaker since 2006, has been an outspoken anti-gay activist. In addition to the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, he also ran a group called Stop Promoting Homosexuality America and hosted an anti-gay radio show called “Let’s Talk Straight Hawaii,” according to Honolulu Civil Beat, a news organization.

Why not have a quote from a Parkland survivor in one of the Gillibrand stories saying "We would hope that people have a lifelong value of peace and well-being that have been demonstrated throughout their political career"?

But the Bernie smear is even worse. (See "Sanders Meets With Former Staff Members, Seeking to Quell Anxiety Over Sexism" by Sydney Ember and Katie Benner.) To target one campaign, Bernie's 2016 presidential run, as institutionally sexist, because some men were paid more than women for performing the same tasks and some women were hit on by male supervisors, without looking at Hillary's campaign organization or Jeb Bush's or Trump's or Marco Rubio's, is absurd. Pure disinformation and dirty tricks.

Unfortunately for Gillibrand, no matter how much puffing from The Times, her candidacy is going to be a bust. Gillibrand's gambit was to ride the #MeToo wave. But with the splitting and implosion of the Women's March over allegations of anti-Semitism (same counterintelligence tactic used to target Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party), and second-guessing within the Democratic National Committee's upper echelons over Gillibrand's taking Al Franken's scalp, Gillibrand is having to pivot and sell herself as a rural politician who can reach across the aisle to bring us all together and get things done; a 52-year-old "young mom"; a kinder, gentler Hillary; a female Obama in whiteface; "a winner who can beat Trump" -- in other words, a dud.

Any Democrat -- and I'm thinking at this point even Joe Biden and Kirsten Gillibrand -- should be able to beat Trump.