New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Another right-wing Democrat enters the 2020 race
By
Leslie Murtagh and Philip Guelpa
29 January 2019
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York announced January 15 on “The Colbert Show” her intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. With eight declared candidates already, and as many as eight more expected to join the race, the number of Democrats hoping to cash in on President Trump’s unpopularity could well set a record.
But no matter what mask they don, or what “lane” they hope to occupy in the race, these Democrats represent the interests of business and finance, and espouse different versions of anti-working-class politics. Gillibrand is no exception.
One prominent aspect of her campaign is an emphasis on identity politics. She is the second female senator to join the race, following Elizabeth Warren and preceding Kamala Harris. The video on the front page of her campaign website starts with her name being typed into a Google search bar, cutting to her children’s names on her Wikipedia page, followed by “mom” being typed into a new search bar, which brings up photos of her family and her cooking in a kitchen for them.
Answering host Stephen Colbert’s question, Gillibrand spoke of wanting to be the president of the United States because she is a “young mom,” who will “fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own.” After making brief and hollow statements of her support for better public education, healthcare, and jobs, Gillibrand stressed that these issues will be impossible to accomplish without “taking on institutional racism” and “taking on the corruption and greed in Washington”—the latter, soon highlighted, being something with which she has…