00:00:38.460and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:43.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:00:47.300Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:00:51.020abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:00:54.640These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:00:58.680Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:10.340There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:18.460I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:21.200Friday, March 8th is International Women's Day.
00:01:26.640And here at There Are No Girls on the Internet, we're celebrating by taking part in iHeartRadio's Women Take the Mic initiative.
00:01:33.960International Women's Day has always kind of meant a lot to me.
00:01:36.920It is so important to me to be honoring and lifting up women all over the world.
00:01:41.880And I think this year I'm doing that while also really wrestling with the fact that women, both here in the United States, but especially globally, are facing a lot right now.
00:01:50.800you know, in times of war, in conflict, we know that it is always women that really bear the
00:01:56.540brunt. And I guess that's just sort of weighing very heavy on my mind as I reflect on what
00:02:01.520International Women's Day means to me this year. I do also just want to take a moment to honor the
00:02:06.660women who have supported me and helped me to get where I am today. You know, I know that I would
00:02:11.240not be doing any of what I am doing if not for the women that came before me. You'll hear a bit0.85
00:02:16.200more about that later in this episode, but the woman that I kind of modeled my career after was0.96
00:02:21.660the late, great Gwen Ifill, a journalist and correspondent on PBS. Gwen Ifill was the first0.77
00:02:28.040woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program with Washington Week in Review.
00:02:34.000I actually have a picture of her hanging on my fridge right now. My parents always watched her
00:02:39.080on PBS, and when I was a kid, it was the first time that I saw a Black woman have this big career
00:02:45.060on television. And I always wondered, wow, I wonder if I could do that too someday. You know,
00:02:50.320she really had the quintessential big career that I always wanted for myself. Like, she did it all.
00:02:56.580She moderated presidential debates. In fact, in February of 2016, Gwen Ifill, alongside Judy
00:03:02.760Woodruff, became the first team of women to moderate a Democratic presidential debate,0.57
00:03:07.740moderating the debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. You know, some little girls0.99
00:03:12.460dream of being president. Well, I did not dream of being president. I dreamt of being the woman
00:03:17.300who asks the person who wants to be president hard questions on television. And I might not
00:03:23.060ever have a big career like Gwen Ifill's, but she really inspired me to want to ask questions
00:03:29.060and challenge myself and others. As women, we should be seeing ourselves reflected in government,
00:03:34.840politics, media, journalism, culture, art, and every other place where decisions are being made,0.97
00:03:40.440including the White House. NBC's Ali Vitale has been covering elections from the campaign trail
00:03:47.280for years. Her book, Electable, Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House, dot dot dot, yet,0.91
00:03:55.000takes a sweeping look at one of the lingering questions of American elections at a time when
00:03:59.980more women have run for president of the United States than ever before in our history. Will we
00:04:04.360ever see a woman president? Ali and I have been friends for years, and I hope that you'll enjoy
00:04:09.880our conversation about women and our White House ambitions throughout history as much as I did.
00:04:20.960So Allie, you have been covering the campaign trail pretty much like since I've known you.
00:04:26.560So for years, what has that been like for you?
00:04:30.060It has been like, I don't know, six or seven years now straight of just traveling from Iowa
00:04:36.020Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida, everywhere in between, constantly just following candidates,
00:04:41.920Republicans, Democrats, midterms, presidentials, we do it all.
00:04:47.700Yeah, I mean, one of the big questions I have for you is, having done this for so long,
00:04:53.040what changes have you seen in the way that we talk about candidates, especially women,
00:04:56.900people from marginalized backgrounds? Have you seen a change since the beginning of your time
00:05:01.880doing this to now? Gosh, I hope it's changing for the better. I think it's changing for the better
00:05:08.260in large part because I think that media is more comfortable calling out sexism and racism.
00:05:15.140There's not necessarily any more of this knee-jerk reaction to both sides, things that just
00:05:20.460shouldn't be both sides. So I look at it, especially through the lens of someone like
00:05:25.080Hillary Clinton, right? In 2008, the media ecosystem didn't necessarily know how to deal0.98
00:05:31.700with a moment about like, are you likable enough Hillary, right? Remember that moment on the debate
00:05:36.740stage with Barack Obama and her in New Hampshire? Everyone remembers the Obama piece of that moment,
00:05:42.040and he got a little bit of criticism for that. But few people remember the fact that it was a
00:05:48.000media moderator who teed that moment up by asking Hillary Clinton, voters say that you are qualified,
00:05:55.480but they say that you're not likable. How would you reassure them? I think likability is something
00:06:00.680that you need to be president. It's nice to have, but like, I don't think you need to be president
00:06:05.320if you're only if you're a likable person. So people forget that. I think that we have come
00:06:10.960further, thankfully, in the decade since that moment, or less than a decade since that moment,
00:06:16.920At least not asking those questions anymore. But the thing about sexism, and you know this, is it's persistent. If it's not likability, it becomes something else. And I would argue that in 2020, likability became electability. And that's sort of the whole premise of my book. And that's really where I start out.
00:06:37.100the whole thesis is that it's fair to want a candidate who's electable, who can win because
00:06:42.560everyone wants to pick a winner. And certainly in 2020, every single Democratic voter that I
00:06:47.140talked to just so badly wanted to pick the person who could beat Trump. But the thing about
00:06:53.060electability is no one knows who can actually win until voters vote. And so it's really where
00:06:59.260are you assigning your benefit of the doubt? And I think the upshot of the book is in a whole bunch
00:07:04.360of different ways, we give male candidates much more benefit of the doubt than we do female
00:07:09.640candidates. It's fascinating. The book is fascinating. Can you talk us through some of
00:07:13.940the ways that you see this playing out for women, that women are not given the benefit of the doubt
00:07:18.600the way that men are? Because, yeah, I can think of some recent male presidents who I might say
00:07:24.580were not the most likable, and yet that didn't stop them from getting to the White House.
00:07:29.140I mean, the first person that I thought of was Donald Trump, because I would go out on the campaign trail.
00:07:35.100I covered him in the 2016 election and his first year and a half in the White House.
00:07:39.040And what voters would say to me all the time was, I don't like him.
00:07:42.440I don't like the way he talks. I don't like the way he acts towards people.
00:07:45.940But I also like that he says what is on his mind.
00:07:48.980And I also like that he tells it how it is.
00:07:51.260But I like the policies. I like the judges.
00:07:53.320They found ways to rationalize the fact that they didn't like him, but he was strong.
00:07:58.080and they wanted him to be president. And with women, what a study that I point to in my book
00:08:03.040has found is that it's not just, oh, nice to be liked, everyone wants to be liked. It impacts
00:08:08.780the way that people won't vote for female candidates. Because in the case of someone1.00
00:08:12.860like Trump, voters will vote for a man that they don't like, but they are less likely to vote for
00:08:17.600a woman who they don't like. And so it's not just nice to have, you have to have it. You have to be
00:08:23.140likable, but then you also have to be strong. And the moment that I come back to a lot from 2020
00:08:27.960was this seminal moment on the debate stage
00:24:08.060the first thing I did was pick up a book
00:24:09.940that I had read about Pelosi six months ago
00:24:12.020that I didn't remember every detail of,
00:24:13.920But I was like, okay, how can I scan for the fine points that I had marked off the pages on? Like, it's okay to do your research. Like, to anyone who's listening, like, I would never be able to show up on television every day and know random facts about the legislative push that Nancy Pelosi made in 2008, just off the top of my head.
00:24:35.120And you have to work at it. And I actually think the more that we normalize that for other women, the harder it becomes to ding people for working hard and for showing up and being smart. And, you know, we can kind of take that back. Like, I do want to believe that that power is within us. So I'm not willing to cede the space to the patriarchy on that one for me or for anyone else, like who's running for president or who's just like, you know, going about their day trying to be the best version of themselves.
00:25:01.300yeah and it goes back to what you were saying about the we have our back coalition you know
00:25:06.600I do think that I mean on the one hand I hate that it's kind of on us as individuals to combat this
00:25:13.400this stigma that I think is like highly institutional and like systemic but I do
00:25:18.740think like modeling how you can talk about other women who are ambitious and like not not give0.69
00:25:55.400for this this stigma that i think holds us all down as women and so even even if we're saying
00:26:01.300like oh this woman we don't like her if we say that she's unqualified or this or that or this
00:26:05.740that can come back to get us because we're all women and all of our all of our oppression is0.70
00:26:10.380really linked in that way we're just we're just adding fuel to that fire to have somebody be able
00:26:14.440to lob that another woman and keep her down yeah look so much of this is systemic too like i always
00:26:21.180think about the idea of a lot of my friends, I feel this way a lot, the idea of imposter syndrome.
00:26:27.600And really, that almost puts the onus on us. Like it's our fault that we don't feel like we are
00:26:32.580qualified enough or that we are taking up space in the right way. And really, like the onus should
00:26:38.420be on the systems in which we are operating, because I can guarantee that every single one
00:26:42.960of my friends who has the feeling of being an imposter in the spaces that they're in,
00:26:47.700that's not the case. They are more than qualified to be there. Their voice should be valued there.
00:26:52.940It's the systems that we need to push back on and the systems that need to stop making us feel like
00:26:59.000we are outsiders to them. So I think that that's really important. It's not fair that we have to
00:27:03.860reshape these structures, but that's sort of the onus that we have right now, whether it's fair
00:27:09.940or not. Yeah. I mean, it's like, that's the trip of living in a patriarchal society, I guess. It's
00:27:15.500like, it shouldn't be on us, but it is. And like, it's like part of the work part of part of showing
00:27:20.500up part of the and what a trip it is. And what a trip it is. But you know what, you bring up
00:27:27.340something that's so interesting, too, because there is in the book, I do explore a lot about
00:27:32.840Democrats, in large part, because six of them ran for president in 2020. But I also talk about
00:27:40.020Republicanism and gender and identity. And there's a really fascinating thing happening on the
00:27:44.720Republican side right now where they are electing more women, but the groups that exist on the
00:27:51.000Republican side to try to get more women in their pipeline. Thankfully, now there's a recognition0.90
00:27:57.340among Republicans that women can run in really tight races. They're a large part of the reason1.00
00:28:02.760they flipped so many seats in 2020. A lot of the competitive seats this cycle had women running in1.00
00:28:08.380them on the Republican side, especially. So all of those things are true, but they're having a0.99
00:28:14.960kind of debate about, can we call other women unqualified or unviable? And they're having it
00:28:21.640because of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who have embraced non-reality
00:28:27.560and who have embraced conspiracy theories and election denialism. And it's a thing that the
00:28:34.100whole Republican Party is dealing with right now, like the role of Trump, the role of election
00:28:39.840denialism, the role of the fringe of the party. They're all figuring it out right now. But when
00:28:44.760it comes to women, I've watched these women's groups try to draw the line by using words like0.99
00:28:50.740we only endorse viable female candidates or we only endorse qualified female candidates.1.00
00:28:56.780They're trying to make that delineation because they think that some of the women who have risen
00:29:02.040to popularism in recent years and months are not qualified and should not be indicative of the kind
00:29:08.600of Republican women serving. So it's fascinating that those are one of the words that you guys
00:29:12.540think about actively, because in watching it on the Republican side, that's one of the words that
00:29:18.120they use as sort of like a line of demarcation. Like we only support serious candidates, which
00:29:23.580is to say they don't support the conspiracy theorists. And like, that's a line that needs
00:29:28.660to be drawn in republican politics right now but it's fascinating the way that they're drawing it
00:29:33.160that's so interesting and it's like i mean especially coming out of midterms where people
00:29:38.060were like oh there's gonna be a red wave and i would say that like people kind of rejected
00:29:42.900that like election denialism vibe but i think people kind of the voters kind of were like no
00:29:48.960thank you and i do think like figuring like it's interesting how they're they're using these i
00:29:54.680don't know if euphemisms is the right word but using these ways to draw a line in the sand and
00:29:59.660to sort of like explain like oh these are the kind of candidates that we're looking to support and
00:30:05.680uplift not these other ones they're not gonna they're not gonna come out and say we don't want
00:30:09.560to you know get in bed with an election denial denial candidate or a conspiracy theory candidate
00:30:14.940but like the way that they're using language to sort of like but you know what we're trying to
00:30:18.820say you know yeah yeah well well and some of them will say that i mean some of the women that i
00:30:23.740talked to and quote in the book will say that is not the kind of female candidate that we want1.00
00:30:30.120to put our money behind, to put our resources behind, to help out of primaries. And I specifically0.99
00:30:35.200say to help out of primaries because a large part of the reason that groups are so important in
00:30:41.040elevating female candidates and people of color, basically anyone who's non-white and non-male,
00:30:46.940the reason it's important is because they're operating in structures that are just tilted0.99
00:30:50.480against them. Like this is a system at the end of the day that was built by men, built by white men0.59
00:30:55.520for white men to keep power for white men. So anyone who's not that is already kind of going
00:31:01.400against the system as it was built. But in primaries is really where we see gender and race
00:31:07.800play a role that can be counterproductive to the candidate. And that's why it's so important to
00:31:14.900focus on primaries, because when people get to general elections, they're tribal. If you're a
00:31:18.920Democrat, you'd probably vote in Democrat. If you're a Republican, you're probably voting
00:31:21.740Republican. I love independent voters, but increasingly it's a smaller and smaller slice
00:31:26.540of the pie. And so that's why the focus is so important on primaries just generally, because
00:31:31.260that's really where the dynamics are. It's not as tribal there because you're picking among
00:31:35.760multiple people in your own party. Yeah, this is going to be, I'm not even really sure how to ask
00:31:40.940this, but it fits so nicely in the intersection of your work. There are so many women candidates1.00
00:31:46.180who do embrace things like election denialism and conspiracy theory there are men there are a lot of
00:31:51.220men who do it too but plenty of women become like rising stars and have big platforms and big
00:31:55.880profiles on the basis of their embracing conspiracy theory and election denialism do you think there's
00:32:01.640something about women where when they have embraced this this ideology it like helps them
00:32:08.580more like what do you what do you think is going on well on the republican side definitely i mean
00:32:13.640But again, it's not just women on the Republican side who are being forced to grapple with what I would call like Republicanism in the age of Trump, because the more I'm out, the more I hear voters who say that like the word Republican doesn't mean conservative anymore to them.
00:32:30.420The word Republican means Trump. So the party itself is going through a reckoning. The fact that there are women at the forefront of that movement, but there are also men at the forefront of that movement.
00:32:41.920You know, like, I don't know if that's necessarily a gender question, but I do think that it speaks to something that Secretary Hillary Clinton said to me when I was talking with her for this project, which is the entire idea of electability has changed, right?
00:32:57.020Like the idea and she brought up an example, not using a specific candidate, but she pointed to the Republican side where she thought at one point that a woman holding a gun prominently in a campaign ad might not have been viewed as electable several years ago, but certainly helps a woman's electability now in the Republican Party.
00:33:18.220So look, the upside of that is that we are starting to see more kinds of women as electable. The downside is that right now in Republican politics, it is also popular to deny results of legitimate elections, proffer lies to an electorate about those elections.
00:33:39.500um that that's problematic from a small d democracy standpoint and that's just like a
00:33:45.960republican thing that they're dealing with right now gender aside yeah that is so so interesting
00:33:51.580and it's like even even though that's not necessarily you know particular to gender0.96
00:33:57.020i do see it as just like another way that it can become a trap for women right like another way
00:34:02.400that like it can be this tightrope that women are expected to walk that men just are not
00:34:09.500Yes. Yeah. Well, there's also something interesting on the Republican side of this, too, where I found a study in my book where if you are female or a person of color, and I think the study was was around demographic biases that may exist within conservative voters.0.81
00:34:27.640One of the ways that candidates of color and female candidates can overcome any demographic biases that exist is by being more hyper conservative.
00:34:37.080So if you're Carly Fiorina or if you're Ben Carson, and those were some of the names that were tested by in this one study, their hyper-conservatism showing that ideologically they ascribe to all aspects of republicanism, that can overcome any bias that might exist because they are black or because they are female.
00:34:58.160And I thought that was a really interesting study that sort of explains why you have the rise of certain very hyper conservative women on the right.
00:35:08.140It kind of explains Sarah Palin and Marsha Blackburn and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
00:35:16.380Like there at least is some explanation for it, because on the Republican side, otherwise, they do not want to talk about gender and identity politics.
00:35:23.980That is like a bad word. Don't get into it. Don't talk as a woman. Don't talk. You know, they don't want to hear that. It's just, are you, you know, their metrics for assessing candidate viability are just different.
00:35:35.600that is so fascinating so i have to ask though the book is called electable by america hasn't
00:35:43.240put a woman in the white house dot dot dot yet and that title makes me think that you are so
00:35:49.620so like what are you what are your thoughts do you think we're gonna see a woman president in
00:35:53.120your lifetime our lifetime like are you hopeful what do you think i need to see it we have to
00:36:00.120see it we're gonna see it i mean i was so like i thought i thought we had our time and then then
00:36:09.520you know i mean look i i say yet because a i i need to be optimistic about this i do think that
00:36:19.920you have people even liz cheney right now who have made the point in recent months that men
00:36:25.180have been running things for a while and it hasn't always gone so great, I do think that it's time to
00:36:30.700maybe try something else. At the same time, though, too, there have been just systemic issues with
00:36:38.660why a woman has not been able to ascend to the White House. And in large part, it's because
00:36:43.480we haven't seen a ton of women serving an elected office until like the last 40 or 50 years. And I
00:36:50.360know, that sounds like a long time, but it's actually not that long. And women are filling1.00
00:36:55.800the ranks of both parties so much right now, that finally, there are long lists of women who we can1.00
00:37:02.300say, okay, they can run for president on the Republican side, they can run for president on
00:37:05.800the Democratic side, to the point where I think in 2024, and 2024 is tough, because two men still
00:37:14.880govern this process. And so at a certain point, it becomes a numbers game. And I think that gone
00:37:19.960are the days where you're just going to have only fields of dudes running for president.1.00
00:37:24.160There are going to be women who are running. I also think that what Biden did by electing,
00:37:29.340by choosing Kamala Harris and then Kamala Harris and Joe Biden being elected in 2020,
00:37:34.680the fact that we have our first female vice president is huge. Women of both parties that
00:37:39.880I talked to for this book agree that she makes it easier for those who come after her simply0.99
00:37:45.120because she goes to work being who she is every single day. And it allows the American mindset
00:37:50.560to see female leadership at its highest rungs, quite frankly. And that's also something that1.00
00:37:56.320Speaker Pelosi has done for this country, because she was elevated first. But I also think that
00:38:03.420especially if it's Biden and Harris again in 2024, it's gonna be really hard for Republicans to just
00:38:09.340nominate another ticket that looks like Trump and Pence that just looks like two older white men
00:38:14.640again. I do think that we're now in a place where gender and diversity is an asset. And I look at it
00:38:23.020in 2020 when Biden chose Harris. I mean, the fact that he had just consolidated his power,
00:38:30.100he had just won the primary, and he comes out and he says, I'm going to choose a woman.0.94
00:38:35.260To me, it was a sign that times had changed. Because if you look at the last few times that0.99
00:38:42.840men had selected women as their running mates. We're talking about Walter Mondale in 1984 when
00:38:48.060he chose Geraldine Carraro. And his campaign was in the tank. He was not doing well. He did
00:38:53.900something that could excite his base. They thought, hey, we'll do a woman. And it was sort of a throw0.96
00:38:59.260spaghetti at the wall kind of moment, see if it sticks. It didn't. But it was also the mindset
00:39:04.380the next time we saw that happen, which was on the Republican side, 2008, John McCain picking
00:39:09.020Sarah Palin, shocking everybody. But the mindset was the same. He was falling behind Obama in the
00:39:14.200polls. He needed something to excite the base. He chose someone who was female, who used phrases
00:39:21.340like she wanted to finish the work that Hillary Clinton had started because Clinton ran in 080.99
00:39:25.700and fell short to Obama. I mean, it was very throw spaghetti at the wall, see what sticks.
00:39:31.180Now in 2020, you have Biden purposefully choosing a woman saying that her gender, her lived experience
00:39:39.020The different things that she brings to the table are assets.
00:39:43.060It's not just, we'll see what happens.1.00
00:40:11.900I'm happy that you're doing this work of like modeling the progress that we have made and signaling to the progress that is yet to be made in the future.
00:40:19.860You know, I do think this book came about at a dark time for everybody because the pandemic happened.
00:40:26.960I was asked to do this book in March of 2020.
00:40:30.680And a week later, I flew home from being on the road with Biden in Ohio and Elizabeth Warren had just dropped out.
00:40:37.180And all of us never left our houses again for the next few months.
00:41:00.460Like, I feel like it's going to happen.
00:41:02.060Point me to some examples that make you feel like it's going to happen.
00:41:05.360And I came out with a lot of examples. And yes, it's important to show why it hasn't happened yet and to shine a spotlight on moments where, unfortunately, the isms, sexism, racism, all of the others won out. But I think once you show people that those moments have happened, once you see it, you can't stop seeing it. And that's part of helping this road to progress, too.0.58
00:41:29.960that's so powerful and ali i have to say not to get too like
00:41:34.040sappy or whatever but you and i like we kind of came up in the in the sort of political media
00:41:42.300space together and i remember when we were working together at msnbc i you just i could
00:41:48.380just tell that like you were going to be a real mover and shaker in the space and so
00:41:54.700watching you like you were on the campaign trail you were like i i follow you on instagram and i
00:41:59.360see these images of you like you know setting up producing like shots and setting up shots like
00:42:05.480talking like you are in it and watching this trajectory has been really incredible and
00:42:11.240powerful it's like I can't help but wonder how many little girls like when I was a kid I used
00:42:16.340to watch Gwen Ifill on tv and be like I could be her someday and I wonder like are you the Gwen
00:42:21.380Ifill for a new generation of women finding their voice in political media I say yes
00:42:26.660first of all you just gave me chills second of all my god immeasurable immeasurable goal for me0.83
00:42:34.720to put up i mean my god but i i think about it too as like there's just more of us now right
00:42:41.240like there are just more women who are out there who are empowered to be experts who are empowered
00:42:47.920to ask good tough questions um i think that's good for everybody i mean i love looking around
00:42:55.660and seeing in a scrum or in a gaggle when I'm with a candidate like a bunch of other women around me
00:43:03.860I think that that is just such an amazing thing and I love it even more when it's a female candidate
00:43:09.460it's the center of it um but I I mean yeah you you and I both I think have have really
00:43:16.020climbed through our industries and and I think about the way that we first met too I mean right
00:43:22.340We were doing a shoot for Liz Plank, right?
00:43:27.300Liz Plank brought us all together, the queen, to talk about hate online and like the nasty things that people said to us.
00:43:37.620And it sort of brings us full circle a little bit too, right?
00:43:40.960Because we were there trying to reclaim some of the nasty words that people were throwing at us just simply for being smart and female and online, right?
00:43:53.280Thankfully, there are girls on the Internet now, right, who can have each other's backs and, like, you know, not let that stuff just go unchecked.