his question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised and it’s time for us to attack it head-on. And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump?
“Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women: Amy and me.”
Applause rang out.
“So true,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said with a chuckle. “So true.”
Later in the debate, Warren made another pass at the electability question: “I do think it’s the right question: How do we beat Trump? And here’s the thing: Since Donald Trump was elected, women candidates have outperformed men candidates in competitive races. And in 2018, we took back the House, we took back statehouses, because of women candidates and women voters,” she said.
And back on the plane in the hours following the January 2020 Iowa Caucus, hurtling into New Hampshire and toward the next primary — down but not yet out — she knew at least one explanation for why. Deepa Shivaram, NBC’s Warren embed, brought up the “women win” messaging and the fact that, at least in this Iowa Democratic Caucus … they didn’t. Where did that message come from, Deepa asked,and why was it important to speak to gender now?
“I’m responding to what people wanna hear,” Warren told us plainly, with a characteristically biting edge in her voice. She spoke sometimes as if all the annoyance and frustration she had about the political system simmered right on the edge of her words, teeming on the top of her teeth, threatening to spill over.
We’d talked about the dynamics of Iowa, her competitors and the pressure she put on herself not “to screw this up.” But here and now she offered her plainest view of the landscape yet: “Everyone comes up to me and says, ‘I would vote for you, if you had a penis.’”
