With a diverse influx of candidates, the Democratic presidential race is already being framed in historic terms. When Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren announced their campaigns, making it the first time two female senators would be running for a party’s presidential nomination at the same time, outlets declared that “women have already made history in the 2020 Democratic primary”.

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And when she entered the race on Martin Luther King Jr Day, Kamala Harris’s campaign logo paid tribute to Shirley Chisholm, the first black person and woman to run for a major party presidential nomination. “This moment is more than a milestone – it’s a ground-gripping convulsion,” Swanee Hunt wrote for CNN.

That the Democratic primary field is already one of the most diverse in history is a welcome fact for sure. Yet we are hardly a month into the race and the pervasive argument of representation over policy has already begun to surface.

Reporters have posited that January 2019 could be the month “that Democrats truly become the party of women” simply because more women are running. And others have dismissed criticisms of Harris, whose prosecutorial record has become a target of progressives, implying that they are a leftist conspiracy or simply unfairly weighted attacks against a black woman running for office. (This is despite the fact that some of Harris’s harshest and most comprehensive critics have been black women.)

This reductionism skates over the opportunity that the diverse Democratic field actually presents: a chance to push for the candidate not with their preferred identity, but with the most comprehensively feminist and anti-racist policy positions. For one, the person who ultimately wins the nomination will face off against a historically unpopular president. While much of this could change over a years-long campaign, early polling shows that all of the Democrats’ favored candidates are likely to beat Donald Trump.

Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) Democratic firm @ppppolls surveys early 2020 head-to-head contests:



Biden 53%, Trump 41%

Sanders 51%, Trump 41%

Harris 48%, Trump 41%

O’Rourke 47%, Trump 41%

Warren 48%, Trump 42%

Booker 47%, Trump 42%

Gillibrand 47%, Trump 42%



**



Trump approval: 40/57https://t.co/bATutAFANR

As Eric Levitz has argued over at New York magazine, this means that voters should be wary of arguments claiming a candidate’s electability. “Barring a sharp change in the political winds (or Trump’s removal from office), Democratic voters should ignore such punditry, and simply vote for whichever candidate they would most like to be president,” Levitz wrote. In other words, better to ignore media and political operatives who think Warren is “unlikable” – especially if she can both win and do so on a substantively feminist policy platform.

For progressives, this means the opportunity to push for the candidate with the policies they want. Harris should be criticized, not only because she has harmed marginalized communities in her time as a prosecutor, but also because she has shown very little willingness to grapple with that record. As the Atlantic’s Hannah Giorgis wrote in her review of Harris’s recent memoir: “It is tempting for some to view Harris’s marginalized identities as evidence enough of her progressive politics. Throughout The Truths We Hold, Harris fans this ideological beatification without deeply interrogating its roots or its consequences.”

And often, representation-first praise of candidates can help to conceal hidden policy agendas. Take Hunt, who wrote that Harris’s run “gives us a glimpse at a new reality – a leader who embodies the convergence of race and gender in America”. As journalist Melissa Gira Grant pointed out on Twitter, Hunt conveniently failed to mention that she and Harris align on policies that undermine the rights of sex workers.

Melissa Gira Grant (@melissagira) Swanee Hunt, whose private foundation bankrolls anti-sex work prosecutions and lobbied hard for SESTA and against Backpage, somehow forgets to mention that she shares those convictions with Harris. https://t.co/XYMxnaYK7Q

Gillibrand also has to answer for less-than-feminist spots on her record, perhaps most significantly on her Wall Street-friendly stances. Empowering big banks has only resulted in disastrous consequences for women and people of color. Yet before she even announced her bid, it was reported that Gillibrand was calling up donors within the financial sector to seek their support.

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None of this is to dismiss the fact that the female candidates are sure to face a barrage of sexist attacks that (potential) white male candidates like Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders won’t. When Warren announced her campaign, her “likability” was immediately questioned. Gillibrand has been continually branded as an “opportunist” for speaking out against former senator Al Franken’s alleged groping and forcibly kissing numerous women. On Monday, she was described by Fox News hosts as having a “mental illness” because of her shifting policy positions. Harris only threw her hat in the ring a few days ago and has already faced a redux of racist birther conspiracies.

But one can simultaneously acknowledge that these obstacles exist, while also holding candidates’ feet to the fire when it comes to their policies and records. This applies across the board – if Sanders ends up running, he will need to ditch the line that people working “40 hours a week” shouldn’t live in poverty. It’s harmful rhetoric that only plays into welfare reform-era ideas of deserving and undeserving poor, targeting poor black women.

With the nomination still up for grabs for any of the candidates, it’s imperative that we don’t fall for symbolism over substance. We’ve already seen that strategy fail just two years ago. Energy on the left has only grown since the 2016 election, meaning that we have a chance to see history being made: a Democratic nominee with a truly progressive policy platform.