Powerful Socialist One Percenter plays age and sexism victim card:
She also hinted that there was implicit sexism in the constant rhetoric of “will she or won’t she.”
“When was the last time you asked Mitch McConnell … ‘aren’t you getting a little old, Mitch?’” said Pelosi of the Republican senator from Kentucky.
McConnell, who is 72, has been in Senate GOP leadership since 2003 and the minority leader since 2007. He was earlier on Thursday elected Senate majority leader for the 114th Congress.
At 74 years old, Pelosi has been in House Democratic leadership since 2002 — and has been at the very top of the caucus power structure since 2003.
When was the last time that McConnell’s age was pointed out? Likely in every article written by Pelosi’s fellow Democrats with bylines, whenever they profiled McConnell’s hapless would-be opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes age 35, and while she was dallying with running against McConnell, Ashley Judd, age 46. Check out this Atlantic puff-piece on Grimes from last year:
Besides her staunch opposition to requiring a voting ID and an unsuccessful legislative push this year for online balloting for overseas military, Grimes is bereft of public-policy positions. “She doesn’t like to deal with the press. They keep her in a pretty tight cocoon. You tend to run into a wall unless the issue is on her terms, which is odd for a secretary of state,” observed one longtime political reporter in the state who requested anonymity to speak without restraint.
But the generational and demographic contrast with the dour, characterless 71-year-old McConnell couldn’t be brighter. In her first campaign email to supporters, she began to outline her frame of McConnell as a stick-in-the-mud, promising to “build a Kentucky that we can all be proud of. One that isn’t dead-set on obstructionism.” The frame Grimes hopes to construct: She’s for what works for Kentucky; he’s Senator Gridlock.
“While McConnell’s certainly a formidable opponent, people are tired of the same old thing. They’re going to associate McConnell with some of the problems. That’s baggage he has,” said Johnson. “I think the energy’s going to be on her side. She’s an up-and-comer in the party. I don’t think the Tea Party’s going to come out energized for McConnell. I think she can win it.”
In retrospect, so much for that idea, but as with how the MSM framed the 2008 election as being between rookie Senator Barack Obama and his dissipated opponents Hillary Clinton and John McCain, the media had no problems pointing out McConnell’s age.
On the other hand, Pelosi’s tone-deaf effort at playing the victim card was far from the dumbest gaffe she made today.
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