Democrats Need to Chill About the Electability of Women

[demmiblue]

When you spend as much time around Democratic Party people as I do, you find that everybody is worried about something. The specter of 2024, and the reign of Trump terror that has followed, has the party on edge. The polls are mostly in Democrats’ favor, but, they worry, what are we not seeing? What are we not hearing? They’re worried they’ve lost their mojo in the face of MAGA.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the governor’s race in New Jersey. Representative Mikie Sherrill, the Democrats’ great-on-paper centrist nominee, is ahead in the polls but still being second-guessed.

I felt this skittishness for myself when I attended a “No Kings” rally last weekend in the blue town of Montclair. It’s a community full of commuters but also the home of Ms. Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor who flipped her reddish district in 2018. Her opponent is the suspiciously well-tanned Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who is running for governor for the third time in a row.

Ms. Sherrill is ahead in the polls, but that doesn’t quiet the doubters. The pollster G. Elliott Morris of Fifty Plus One put it best when he texted me, “It would be surprising if Ciattarelli won, but bigger upsets have happened before.”

New Jersey is a Rorschach test for a party in full freakout. This was clear to me as I milled around the area of the Montclair park cordoned off for speakers. Brendan Gill, an Essex County commissioner, wore a shirt defiantly emblazoned “New Jersey vs. Everybody.” Maybe it should have said “Democrats vs. Themselves” instead.

Ms. Sherrill has a reputation for being stilted, inauthentic or too rehearsed. Women of course often get critiqued in this way when they run for office. The not-at-all-sexist Republican talking point about Ms. Sherrill is that she is the Kamala Harris of New Jersey.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/opinion/mikie-sherrill-new-jersey-governor.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vU8.8xN4.nT1oJi8OE3Ca&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

One of the biggest problems facing Mikie Sherrill’s bid for governor may have nothing to do with Mikie Sherrill and everything to do with a certain pundit-class miasma about the supposed unelectability of women.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) 2025-10-22T10:53:47.666Z

[J_William_Ryan]

1. "The specter of 2024, and the reign of Trump terror..."

The problem isn’t Democrats.

The problem is a fundamentally sexist, misogynist electorate hostile to, and mistrustful of, women.

[Orrex]

3. "I just don't like the way she laughs." "But her emails."

Democrats fielded two rock-solid women candidates, and the electorate still chose the rapist and felon.

[Scrivener7]

2. This is typical NYT bashing of Dem voters. Sherril has made a few unforced errors

and her opponent has been catching up. This is what worries Democrats.

It isn't some irrational "skittishness" as described in the article. And this has nothing to do with "Democrats vs. themselves." Democrats are not "in full freakout." Democrats are, very rationally, worried about this particular race. This is Democrats worrying, very rationally, that the bright blue state could go red.