The Candidates Were Told to Give a Gift or Ask Forgiveness. Guess What the Women Chose. - The New York Times

It was the last question of the debate, traditionally a softball, and the candidates on Thursday were thrown a curveball. They could give a “gift” to someone else onstage. Or, in the “spirit of the season,” they could ask for forgiveness.

The five men chose to give: an appreciation for teamwork (Tom Steyer), a different vision for the future (Bernie Sanders), a copy of a book (Andrew Yang).

The women chose to seek forgiveness: for being too forceful. Too passionate. Too much.

“I know that sometimes I get really worked up, and sometimes I get a little hot,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said. She didn’t “really mean to,” she said. It was just that she heard so many voters’ painful stories every day.

WARREN: I will ask for forgiveness. I know that sometimes I get really worked up. And sometimes I get a little hot. I don’t really mean to. What happens is when you do 100,000 selfies with people, you hear enough stories about people who are really down to their last moments. I met someone just last week in Nevada who said that he has diabetes, and that he has access to a prescription because he’s a veteran, but his sister has diabetes and his daughter has diabetes and they simply can’t afford insulin. So the three of them spend all of their time figuring out how to stretch one insulin prescription among three people. When I think about what we could do if we get a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and get back the White House, we could make this country work for people like that man. And that’s why I’m in this fight.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, for her part, wanted to “ask for forgiveness any time any of you get mad at me.” She could be “blunt,” she said. “But I am doing this because I think it is so important to pick the right candidate here.”

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I would ask for forgiveness any time any of you get mad at me. I can be blunt. But I am doing this because I think it is so important to pick the right candidate here. I do. I think when you see what’s going on around the country, yes, it’s the economic check that Elizabeth and Bernie have so well pointed out on this stage, but there’s something else going on here, and it is a decency check. It is a values check. It is a patriotism check. When you see people, and we’ve all had this happen, that come to our meetings and say, “You know, yeah, I voted for Donald Trump, but I don’t want to do it again, because I want my kids to be able to watch the president on TV and not mute the TV” — we have to remember as Democrats, and if I get worked up about this, it’s because I believe it so much in my heart that we have to bring people with us and not shut them out. That is the gift we can give America in this election.

Senator Amy Klobuchar also asked for forgiveness. — Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

These responses, in the last minutes of a two-and-a-half-hour debate, threw into stark relief a dynamic that is not often so visible. Many women feel a sense of obligation, reinforced by daily double standards, to apologize for taking up space. Physical space. Political space. Rhetorical space.

Ms. Warren is from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and Ms. Klobuchar from the more moderate wing. They often disagree on policy and strategy. But when it came to this choice, their instincts were alike: not only to apologize, but to apologize for the same thing.

It was one of those moments, as Rebecca Solnit wrote in her 2008 essay “Men Explain Things to Me,” in which “forces that are usually so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say, an anaconda that’s eaten a cow.”

Spokeswomen for Ms. Warren did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the debate, while a spokesman for Ms. Klobuchar referred to her post-event interview on CNN.

In that interview, Ms. Klobuchar — who spoke after Ms. Warren — said she had already settled on her response before Ms. Warren gave hers.

“Maybe we are humble,” she said. “And maybe with the guy in the White House right now, maybe we need a little humbleness instead of the loudest voice.”

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