As the waters close slowly over the incandescent blonde head of Kirsten Gillibrand, floating dead at around 1% in the race for the Democratic nomination, it is worth pondering the eternal political question of whether it ever is possible to pander too much.
In 2009, when Gov. David Paterson picked the unknown member of Congress from upstate New York to become his state’s newest United States Senator, it seemed like a masterstroke and a welcome corrective to Hillary Clinton. Gillibrand was a no-nonsense upstater of the centrist persuasion, who could bridge the divides in the state. As Vogue magazine would say a year later, city voters viewed her conservative streak – including a 100% approval rating by the National Rifle Association – as a cause of trepidation. She called herself “a small-town girl with rural American values,” and described her voting record as one of the state’s most conservative.
That didn’t last long. As her hair became ever more and more platinum, her ideas and her issues moved more and more southward, aligning more with values of Manhattan and Brooklyn and Hollywood than with those of the voters back home. Her first mistake was to frame herself as a spokeswoman for women, everywhere, though it was perfectly clear that as a voting group “women” agree on practically nothing. Not all of them feel aggrieved by men and the system, and some don’t even support abortion.
Nevertheless, she persisted, first throwing her weight behind Mattress Girl. This was the Columbia student who became enraged when courts dismissed her dubious rape charges against an old boyfriend. She received college credit for hauling around campus the mattress upon which she claimed to have been raped. Gillibrand invited her as a guest to the State of the Union, which she at least attended sans mattress.
Next, Gillibrand threw all her weight behind the issue of late term abortion, which is supported by 15% of all men and all women, going down south and screeching her head off on national television when state legislatures banned the procedure.
With “#MeToo,” she tried once again to be “out there” too soon, driving Al Franken out of the Senate, which a great many Democrats later regretted. She then said that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency when the Lewinsky scandal took hold. This of course enraged both of the Clintons, along with their legions of friends. “Clinton…famously nurtured Gillibrand’s political career until Gillibrand threw her mentor under the bus,” Vanity Fair reported, citing Hillary aide Philippe Reines saying harshly, “Over 20 years, you took the Clintons’ endorsements, money and seat.”
This aligned the view of the Clintons with the Trump view of Gillibrand, with aide Brad Parscale saying, “Her only core belief is that her positions can be completely reversed to meet the mood of the progressive Left.” Who says the Left and the Right can’t agree about anything? In her case, the verdict is in.
Put Gillibrand down as a failed opportunist, who tried really hard to exploit things and people, but misjudged them and she played her hand badly. She traded short bursts of headlines at the start of a venture for the blowback that followed, when her universal loss of credibility set in.
