The Daily - Special Episode: The Last “Year of the Woman”

Episode Date: August 25, 2018

More women are running for office in the 2018 midterm elections than in any other election in American history. “The Daily” speaks to Senator Dianne Feinstein about what this moment shares with 1992, another record-breaking “Year of the Woman.” Guests: Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Kate Zernike, a political reporter for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. More women are running in the 2018 midterm elections than any other election in American history. What this moment shares with the last time that happened. shares with the last time that happened. It's Saturday, August 25th.

Coming up, will 2018 be the year where women, many of color, decide the fate of the midterm election? The answer in just a moment. Senate classical. I have the senator. Great. Yeah, hi, Michael. Hi, Senator. How are you? Yeah, I'm good. I'm going to put you on hands-free.

Ashley's in the room. Okay? Okay, here we go. Hello? Sure. You know what, Senator? I think from an audio perspective, it might make a meaningful difference if... Is this audio?

I thought it was... Yes. Yeah, no, it's an audio interview for a podcast, for an audio show that's listened to by New York Times audio listeners. I'm taking you off of hands free. Hello. Hello. Yes.

This is great. Okay. Thank you for being so accommodating. Oh, no problem. We spoke to California Senator Dianne Feinstein from her office in Washington. My guess is that you know this at this point. The reason we're talking to you today is because we're doing a wonderful kind of documentary story about what's now being called the Year of the Women, and we're going back to the last time that an election was called the Year of the women, which was 1992.

Can I just start with one sort of fact here? Sure. And that is that in 92, there were only two women in the Senate. One of them was Nancy Kesselbaum. Right. The other was Barbara Mikulski. So just two. Believe it or not, two women.

So that's what made this 1992 so unusual. The White House, the Congress, the prospect of change. Our focus tonight, Election Night 92. And that is what tonight is all about. In this, the so-called year of the woman, this culmination of years of sacrifice and hard work, we women have been saying for a long time that if we were in power, we would do it differently. You had George H.W. Bush running for re-election, a Republican sort of grandfatherly figure who had replaced another grandfatherly Republican, Ronald Reagan, in the White House. And you had very, very few women in Congress. You had less than 10 percent overall.

Kate Zernike covers politics for The Times. But by far the biggest motivator for women running that year and the reason that it was the year of the woman was the events of the previous year, 1991, with the Anita Hill hearings. I believe the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearing was a big turning point in this country. What about Mr. Marshall? It just happened. I mean, we'll move promptly. We'll move very swiftly. I paid my respects to Justice Marshall in a statement that we put out. He served his country with great distinction. It starts with the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who's a legendary figure, African-American Supreme Court justice. And George H.W. Bush, the president, nominates another African-American man who's only been a judge for a year. I have followed this man's career for some time, and he has excelled in everything that he has attempted. He is a delightful and warm, intelligent person who has great empathy and a wonderful sense

of humor. And he's earned the right to sit on this nation's highest court, and I am very proud indeed. A conservative judge named Clarence Thomas. I'm honored and humbled by your nomination of me to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. As a child, I could not dare dream that I would ever see the Supreme Court. So it seemed like this was going to be smooth sailing,

that this confirmation was going to go right through. Clarence Thomas would be seated on the Supreme Court. In an affidavit filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee, law professor Anita Hill said she had much in common with Clarence Thomas. He hired her as his personal assistant 10 years ago. Then an FBI report was leaked to NPR's Nina Totenberg. According to Hill's affidavit, Thomas soon began asking her out socially and refused to accept her explanation that she did not think it appropriate to go out with her boss.

The relationship, she said, became even more strained when Thomas, in work situations, began to discuss sex. Nina, what impact do you think this is going to have? I mean, this is bombshell timing. Well, I really don't know. The allegations were so striking and so completely out of the ordinary that the Senate Judiciary Committee had little choice but to reopen the hearings. Welcome, Professor Hill.

Thank you. Professor, let me explain what the procedure will be while your family and others are being seated. So you have these televised hearings. The whole world is watching. Mr. Chairman, Senator Thurman, members of the committee, my name is Anita F. Hill,

and I am a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma. I was born on a farm in Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, in 1956. I am the youngest of 13 children. And what the whole world sees is a panel of all white men hearing testimony from this black woman who is really nervous. She's not eager to testify. She's not eager to relive this chapter in her life, but she's come forward to do this. His conversations were very vivid. He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.

Because I was extremely uncomfortable... I happened to be returning from a trip to Europe. I was in Heathrow, the airport in London, and all of a sudden I saw this big crowd gather, big crowd, maybe 200 people gathered around the television set. And I went over. Professor Hill, you said that you took it to mean that Judge Thomas wanted to have sex with you, but. And what it was, were the hearings. In fact, he never did ask you to have sex, correct? No, he did not ask me to have sex.

He did continually pressure me to go out with him, continually. And he would not accept my explanation as one as being valid. And that's where I heard her testimony. Wow. Standing in the airport in Heathrow. It was a silent crowd, but it was a big crowd, and that said something. Now, in trying to determine whether you're telling falsehoods, I've got to determine what your motivation might be. What I remember was an all-male table.

Are you a scorned woman? Are you a zealot? And I watched her being somewhat berated and asked some demeaning questions. Do you have a militant attitude relative to the area of civil rights? No, I don't have a militant attitude. And she was even accused of lying. If what you say this man said to you occurred, why in God's name, when he left his position of power or authority over you,

why in God's name would you ever speak to a man like that the rest of your life? That's a very good question. I have suggested that I was afraid of retaliation. I was afraid of damage to my professional life. And I believe that you have to understand that this, and that's one of the things that I have come to understand about harassment, that this response, this kind of response, is not atypical. And I can't explain. It takes an expert in psychology to explain how that can happen. But it can happen because it happened to me.

I remember being a graduate student in the student lounge at Columbia School of Journalism and this being on television and people watching it and just seeing the looks of disgust on women's faces and sort of this sense of like, really, this is where we are? This woman is being treated so disrespectfully. And what was that incident again? The incident with regard to the Coke can that spelled out in my statement. Once again, for me, please. The incident involved.

You know, you have Joe Biden, who has made one run for the president at this point, is gearing up to run again, and he's questioning her about what Clarence Thomas said about his penis. Now, again, for the record, did he just say, I have great physical capability and attributes, or was he more graphic? He was much more graphic. Can you tell us what he said? Well, I can tell you that he compared his penis size. He measured his penis in terms of length. Those kinds of comments.

And then you have Arlen Specter, who is the leading Republican on the committee. That the most embarrassing question involved, this is not too bad, women's large breasts. That's a word we use all the time. And so you have this picture of Washington where it's dominated by men. Women's voices, if they're there at all, aren't really heard and are sort of treated with, you know, okay, we have to get through this, but can't we just get this over with? You are not now drawing a conclusion that Judge Thomas sexually harassed you. Yes, I am drawing that conclusion. That is what I don't understand. Pardon me? That I don't understand.

Every woman that watched that changed. I think change happened at that moment. What I am thinking to myself is, can I change this? Well, I think politically, one thing that women thought was they looked at the Judiciary Committee, again, all older white guys, and thought, maybe one problem is that there aren't enough people who look like me in our government. And what happened then was kind of a groundswell. You know, the saying goes, the rooster crows, but the hens deliver. So you had this surge of women running for office across the country. I got a few friends I want you to meet tonight,

across the country. I got a few friends I want you to meet tonight, including some candidates that have not been nominated yet. But in the prerogative of the chair, I've insisted that all of the women be introduced. And let's begin with Carol Moseley Brown. Did it move me to action? Yes. And the action was to run.

Diane Bernstein. Barbara Boxer. Jean Lloyd-Jones. You have a record number of women running for the House and Senate. 222 women filing to run for House seats and 29 women running for the Senate. That was a very big deal. It had never, ever happened before. I feel like I've just given multiple births

and how wonderful it is to see this stage filled with these outstanding women. And I was one of them. Mr. President, members of the Senate, ladies and gentlemen, we are assembled to attend the swearing in of Senator-elect Dianne Feinstein of California. Senator. It wasn't a lot of us, but four women were elected in that election to the United States Senate. Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, Carol Mosley Braun, and myself. I realized it was a combination of one very great honor as well as an enormous challenge. I wonder, Senator, if you could describe for me a moment in this time when women are fairly new in this scale to the Senate, where you interacted with a male senator, if you can remember one, and it was clear that your gender was present in the conversation. And perhaps you were being treated a little bit differently because you were a new

woman in the Senate. Oh, I do remember one. And as a matter of fact, it was over assault weapons. The senator from California in her arguments tonight, I must say, was somewhat typical of those who study the issue for the first time and then, in a very sincere and honest way, and I don't question that in any sense of the word, began to make statements. There's a story to it because I wrote the assault weapons bill in 1993. Earlier this evening, Senator Feinstein said that street sweeper shotguns can be purchased through the mail

without any restriction at all. Well, that's simply not true. So, we're debating it, and Larry Craig stands up and says... So the gentlelady from California needs to become a little more familiar with firearms and their deadly characteristics. What do you know about guns? I know nothing about guns. And I responded. A personal privilege for a moment, please. Yes, certainly. I am quite

familiar with firearms. I became mayor as a product of assassination. I'm aware of that. I found my assassinated colleague and put a finger through a bullet hole. I was trained in the shooting of a firearm when I had terrorist attacks with a bomb at my house when my husband was dying, when I had windows shot out. Senator, I know something about what firearms can do. Senator, I know something about what firearms can do. Senator, I am not accusing you of not knowing. So, Senator, let me just make sure I understand. You felt that this male senator, this colleague of yours,

said this to you. What do you know about guns? Because you were a woman, and he presumed you couldn't possibly know anything about guns. That's right. And what I was trying to say is this experience, I thought, dispelled that notion. There was this feeling that this was the start of something, that soon we would have equal representation of men and women in Congress.

But in the 26 years since then, that really hasn't happened. The number has kind of crept up, but women still make up just 19% of Congress. And as one candidate pointed out to me this spring, women make up 19% of the legislature in Afghanistan. So 26 years later, the number is 19% in Congress. Yes. We'll be right back. conqueror who transformed her rebellion into an art. Choose your destiny even if you have to reinvent your path. Let passion inspire you. Desire that women have the freedom to walk, run, move, be authentic, sincere, and natural, just as Gabrielle did. Gabrielle, a rebel at heart. I think 2018 is going to be the year of the woman on steroids. I think it's going to be bigger than 1992. I think a lot of women are going to get elected to the House. There is going to be a culture change. So far in midterm primaries,

120 women have won elections amid a record number of women running for office. And more victories are likely ahead. The new NBC News... So if in 1992 there were 222 women running for the House, this year there are 468, and there are 51 women running for the Senate. There is a wave, and we are 51 women running for the Senate.

There is a wave, and we've been calling it a blue wave. I think last night it was a pink wave. Can we not call it a pink wave? Like, come on. Well, I mean, it's a female. This is a woman-powered... Oh, you know, the numbers are astonishing. We have these numbers, and we ought to get them to you. These are numbers of people that are running women this year in the thousands. Oh, here it is. 34,000 women have contacted Emily's List about running for office since the 2016 election. It's a record number, a lot of women running. Yeah, 527, I think by our our count. I think what's happened with Trump, he has been a kind of spur for women to run. And increasingly, women are getting elected. It feels a little bit like what you experienced back in 1992 after the Anita Hill judicial experience. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't thought about that, but I think you're right.

Do you see any parallels? Is there a connection between these two experiences and what motivates women now? I think how women perceive the world, and then all of a sudden something cuts through the perception, whether it's Anita Hill testifying before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee looking askance at her or a me-too situation. Younger women were immediately galvanized by that. And we see an open door. I think in both cases, it was women who'd been kind of going about their lives, working their jobs, raising their kids, whatever they're doing, thinking that they were making more progress than they had. And one day they look up on their television. The number of women now accusing Harvey Weinstein of some kind of sexual misconduct is more than 20. Actor Ben Affleck, a day after condemning Weinstein. And whether it's Anita Hill or whether it's now Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump. Minnesota Senator Al Franken

is accused of kissing and groping a woman without her consent. The fifth woman to come forward to say Roy Moore sexually assaulted her. He was sexually assaulted by John Travolta. Sylvester Stallone is facing some serious allegations. Actor Jeffrey Tambor. Comedian Louis C.K. Garrison Keillor. George H.W. Bush. Actor Jeremy Pippen.

Russell Simmons has no intention of resigning. They think, oh my God, this is where we are. This is how little progress we've made. And they think, oh, my God, this is where we are. This is how little progress we've made. And they think, well, OK, if we're going to change this, I have to be the one to change it myself. If there's going to be progress, we need to change what Congress looks like. And I may as well be the one to run. Rashida Tlaib won the Democratic primary and is unopposed in November's general election. And that means she will become the first Muslim woman in Congress. In 1992, the women who won were, for the most part, white women.

This year, we're seeing just a much more diverse group of women. Selected Ilhan Omar, the nation's first Somali-American lawmaker. I talked about what my win would have meant for that eight-year-old girl in that refugee camp. Today, I still think

about her, and I think about the kind of hope that all of those 8 year olds around the country get from seeing your beautiful faces elect and believe in someone like me. So I humbly thank you. We're likely to see a pantheon of firsts. It's the first woman elected mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire. The first Sikh mayor elected in the state of New Jersey. Danica Rome is Virginia's first transgender lawmaker. Andrea Jenkins is the first openly transgender woman of color elected in the nation. There's a real fundamental difference this year, and that is just that women are changing the way women run for office and women can run for office,

and what we think of when we think of women as leaders. Ten-term Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley was defeated last night in New York by a 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Nobody would think that a real BX Puerto Rican girl would be able to run for Congress in New York City. We all, you know, thought that's it. The big money's there and we don't got it. So that's a wrap. They're speaking much more personally on the campaign trail. They're broadening the issues that are considered women's issues. So they're out there talking about drug addiction,

their experience in their own families with drug addiction. Usually I'd spend Saturdays with my mother. She would be sleeping. And sometimes it was hard to even rouse her. And that was scary. I do have a persistent memory of checking to make sure she was breathing. With student debt. My responsibility is to have conversations, to talk about my personal debt, because debt is not new in America. And they're talking about these issues that women have been traditionally told to stay away from. To talk about the challenges my brother, who has

they're talking about these issues that women have been traditionally told to stay away from. To talk about the challenges my brother, who faces mental health challenges and drug addiction challenges, who's making his life anew after coming out of jail. We need to talk about him because my brother is other people's brothers. There's a certain fearlessness in the way women are running. And I think that's important not only for what numbers we might see in November, but also for what we might see in the future. It's expanding our understanding of what women's issues are, of what women in leadership positions look like. You know, one woman I talked to who studies this stuff said, everyone keeps calling her and saying, what's the story of women this year? What's the story of women running this year? And her reaction is, there is no one story of women running this year.

It's a diverse lot. There are many different stories. Senator, when you look to the future with more and more women in the Senate, potentially many more after this upcoming midterms, I wonder how you think about that hearing back in 1992 of Clarence Thomas and how that would have been handled today and potentially after this midterm? Oh, today, you would have had a press conference with women. They would have written legislation. It would have been introduced, and that remedy would pass. And how about how Anita Hill would have been treated now versus then? Oh, I dare anybody to do that now.

It just won't happen. It won't happen. If it did, I think the ceiling would collapse on them. We just won't tolerate it. We being the women in Congress. We being the women in the Senate will not tolerate abuse of our young, our old, our middle-aged, or any of us. We just won't. And is that, Senator, the legacy of 1992, that first year of the women?

Well, I can't really answer that because it wasn't a focus at that time. So I can't answer it. You know what? I've got to vote and there are five minutes left on it. I've got to go. Oh, hey, that's the job. Okay. Senator, I really want to thank you very much for your time. Oh, you're so welcome. I hope that was helpful. Thank you. It is. Good luck to you. Take care. Okay.

Okay. Bye. Bye. Bye. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.