CNN's Athena Jones agrees with Sen. Harris that having women who support female candidates is not enough. Men must step up and be loud and clear about their allyship.
March 5, 2020

Discussing the news that Senator Elizabeth Warren has suspended her campaign for the Democratic nomination for president, John King and his panel listened to words of wisdom from Senator Kamala Harris — another former candidate who ended her campaign in December. Sen. Harris absolutely slammed the misogyny that STILL, in 2020, has such a large majority of voters doubting the capability and strength of a woman to lead this nation.

SEN. HARRIS: This election cycle in particular has also presented very legitimate questions about the challenges of women running for president of the United States. Look at what's happened. There are no women currently in this race. And, you know, we can have a longer discussion about it, but the reality of it is there is still a lot of work to be done to make it very clear that women are exceptionally qualified and capable of being the commander-in-chief of the United States of America.

CNN reporter Athena Jones was even more explicit, as she expanded on what Senator Harris said.

JONES: I think it is a fair point, I mean we saw this last time around, we saw this in 2016. There are a lot of people who might support an Elizabeth Warren or an Amy Klobuchar, but in the end, when it comes down to the voting booth, they're concerned that others won't support them. I can tell you that a lot of the support that I heard on the ground, I talked to almost a hundred voters between New Hampshire and South Carolina, kind of evenly split, almost every single person who said they were supporting Elizabeth Warren was a woman. And oftentimes they pointed to the idea that she was a woman, they wanted a strong woman to lead, and they were very proud about that. But it's looking like you can't win the nomination just with the support of women, even though she had a lot of that.

It's not enough to have the support of women. It's imperative that female candidates have the vocal, outspoken support of men, too, if there is ever to be a hope that a girl's dream of seeing a woman in the Oval Office — or sitting there herself — might one day come true.

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