Any emphasis on female virtue segues readily into the idea that women are natural consensus-builders, driven to make peace in many realms where men wreak havoc and destruction. Soon, however, adherents of this essentialist view will be confronted with a contrasting—and bracing—image: women taking to the debate stage to poke holes not only in one another’s policies, but also in the idea that women are by nature more congenial and collaborative. “I think what’s going to be very interesting for people is to see the women take each other on, because they’re all ‘friends,’” Dolan said. “We’ve read endlessly for years how close the women in the Senate are; they get together, the baby showers, the dinners. I think that’s all true. I don’t think that’s disingenuous. But at the same time, they are connected, respected colleagues who are running against each other.”

As a result—and this is important—we are going to be able to watch as women seek to define themselves against one another, to differentiate themselves. We’ll witness Klobuchar and Harris compare their experience fighting crime—“My crime bill is better than yours, tougher,” as Dolan put it. In the 2016 election, Dolan pointed out, the nation saw Hillary Clinton holding her own as Trump stalked her on stage. What we haven’t observed is “women interacting with other women.” That, she said, is the final frontier: the scene “when Klobuchar says something snappy and tries to put Gillibrand in her” place. “This frame of exposure—seeing really smart, really accomplished, really qualified women saying ‘Elizabeth, do you really think you’re going to dismantle the banking system? I’m Gillibrand, I represent New York, you’re coming at my constituencies.’” The upshot will be to encourage the healthy idea that women can be as bold, eloquent, original, irritated, aggressive, vacuous, and vague as men. This is progress. It cements the truth that women are individuals, not monolithic vessels of imputed gender-defined virtue.

The specter of a crowded, fractious field of women candidates stands in contrast to the serenely managerial mien of Hillary Clinton, who confessed in her 2017 memoir about the previous year’s election that she was often bewildered by the “anger” of the masses and was prone by temperament and training to assuage public outrage with calm wonkery. This time out, there are some ways in which assured female outspokenness can be an advantage—maybe even more so against a bully like Donald Trump. Jennifer Lawless has conducted studies asking campaign managers to what extent it mattered that the candidate was female. Often, the managers reported, it did not. They tended to run the same campaign when their candidate, or their opponent, was female or male. The time when gender matters most, they said, is during debates, when male candidates must take care not to look like they are bullying the women or invading their space, the way Rick Lazio did to Hillary Clinton in the 2000 New York Senate race. In other words, there may well be an upside here for an eventual Democratic female nominee. When women stand up to a bully like Trump, they can come across as measured and tough.

As the women candidates poke holes in one another’s policies, they will also be puncturing the idea that women are by nature more congenial and collaborative.

And these women have another advantage Clinton did not. Back in 2016, Hillary Clinton was hamstrung in her ability to attack Trump for his crude and misogynistic remarks on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, because her husband had glaring problems of his own, which she, back in the day, had defended. None of these women need pull any punches on that front—a freedom that could well be an asset if the Trump organization’s payoff to porn star Stormy Daniels (to name just one of many women accusing him of sexual harassment or misconduct) to keep silent about her alleged affair with the president continues to play out in the next campaign. If Trump elects to fight back—as he is notoriously likely to—with a series of fulminating and belittling tirades, this might afford his female challengers in the 2020 field the opportunity to seem strong and presidential. The visual impact of a woman weathering male bluster was captured vividly by Klobuchar’s restraint during the Kavanaugh hearings; there was a prolonged, riveting moment when she asked Kavanaugh the relevant question of whether he’d ever blacked out from drinking too much, and—in a stunning display of disrespect—he turned and asked if she had. Her calm, when he came back at her not once but twice, was remarkable, and in pointed contrast to Kavanaugh’s haymaker punches before the Judiciary panel. “I have no drinking problem,” she averred in a steady tone.