This morning I listed to the Trumpies trying to smear Hillary because her husband has had sex with other women. “Hillary Clinton is a lousy role model for women.”
Now here in ohso liberal Seattle, Pramila Jayapal, a straight woman, is using the gender card to run against Brady Walkinshaw, a gay male, for Congress. Do we really need to live through the Trump campaign here too?
How bizarre! Jayapal has played this game of identity politics well in the past. Coming from an upper caste Hindu family to Seattle she identified herself as a “person of color” to work as an organizer in Seattle’s immigrant community. Ms. Jayapal did a great job with Somalis and Ethiopians.
That effort by Ms. Jaypal led to Pramila’s greatest success. She led the effort to redistrict the south side of Seattle so that the African American community was merged with adjacent immigrant communities to create a “majority minority district” District 9. My African American friends, however, were upset by the redistricting because it cost them leadership in the affluent part of Seattle. To these friends .. and to me .. an upper caste Hindu is not not white just because of the tint of their skin. To add to the pain, Pramila now lives in District 9 but chose to run in District 7 when Jim McDermott stepped down.
Now her ad, below, is saying that we need Pramila in Congress because she is a woman. Maybe we need a table of equivalency. Brady Jayapal lives in the 7th District, Pramila Jayapal does not. Brady is gay. Pramila is straight. He is he, she is she. His mother fled Cuba, Pramila immigrated her for an education. She has 100s of thousands of contributions from out of state, he not so much.
Both, however, are married to guys.