Kirsten Gillibrand

I'll preface this by saying that any of the Democratic candidates would be worlds better than Donald Trump, but I must say Kirsten Gillibrand, who announced her candidacy for the presidential sweepstakes on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, is not one of my favorites.

Gillibrand has worked tirelessly on some issues that are important to women and families, especially sexual assault in the military, family leave, and single-payer health care. But on other issues she seems to be a finger-to-the-wind candidate, ambitious and opportunistic. Of course, anyone running for president is ambitious, but there is an air of calculation about her.

She burst onto the scene on an opportunity: when Hillary Clinton resigned from the senate to take the Secretary of State position, Gillibrand was tapped by New York governor David Paterson to take her place. I was living in the tri-state area at the time, and it was quite the circus, with Caroline Kennedy openly campaigning for the position. Gillibrand was working behind the scenes, and though she was from upstate (almost all of New York's state-wide positions are held by downstaters) and a conservative district, she got the job.

She then drifted to the left, sensibly figuring that the state as a whole was much more liberal than her district. Her views on gay marriage, though fairly modern, got even more so when she changed from supporting civil unions to marriage for same-sex couples, and fought against the Defense of Marriage Act. But her most radical transformation has been on gun control. She had a 100 rating from the NRA as a congresswoman; by 2010 she had an F rating from the same organization.

So what does Gillibrand actually stand for? What will her views be if she were to win the White House? It's hard to tell. It is clear that she is a defiant champion of victims of sexual harassment, not only in the military but elsewhere. I was a bit surprised to see, on a Facebook post from her campaign, a long string of comments from folks indicating they would not vote for her because she pushed Al Franken out of the senate for his impropriety some years ago. In the heat of the #MeToo movement I find this interesting. I think Franken did the right thing, even though he had become a very articulate voice against the madness of Trump, but a lot of people think Gillibrand was the one who held the door open for him.

Who will her supporters be? The Blue Dog democrats--moderate to conservative--that she once was? Will she capture the feminist vote? With three women running already and one or two more sure to join, that doesn't seem too likely. I don't see Gillibrand going anywhere in the race. If she wants, though, she could be a long-time fixture in the Senate, as she won re-election twice with landslide victories.