Q: With women voters electing more women to both gubernatorial and congressional roles, do you feel we may actually break the glass ceiling in 2020 and elect a woman president and who do you believe could fulfill that role? — Carrie Lin Jones, Dubuque, Iowa
A: I think about this all the time, and to be honest, I’m torn. Because I really do believe that sexism hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016, there is part of me that wonders if there is too much at stake to risk running a woman in 2020. I was really dispirited by last year’s backlash against Elizabeth Warren — who, full disclosure, my husband has consulted for — because it reminded me of how people turned Clinton into a caricature of herself.
At the same time, Clinton did win the popular vote, and it wouldn’t take much for a Democrat to flip Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Some of the most exciting potential candidates happen to be women, including Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris. The grass roots of the Democratic Party is hugely mobilized and has shown itself excited about electing women. And it would be profoundly sweet and redemptive if it were a woman who rid us of President Grab-Em-By-The-Pussy.
Q: As a person who hates guns, thank you for helping me understand the argument and perspective of the Socialist Rifle Association. There have been moments where I have wondered if I, too, should consider a gun. Here is my question: I read an article yesterday about the gun restrictions put forth in California and yet they have had three mass shootings, I believe, since 2014? Do we have any proof that legislation, on state or national levels, will do anything to prevent the shootings like we have experienced? —Molly Reynolds Maher, Nashville, Tennessee
A: According to data compiled by Mother Jones, since 1982 California has had more deaths from mass shootings than any other state — 128 fatalities. But that’s because California simply has the highest population. Its rate of firearms deaths is one of the lowest in the country, about half that of Florida’s. State-level gun control can never entirely solve the problem of mass shootings — guns are still legal in the state and are easily available across state lines. But California actually offers pretty good evidence that gun control can curb gun violence.
Q: As a woman, a liberal, a supporter of minority voices, I feel such a sense of sheer panic about the direction I see our culture heading such that I have lost my ability to appraise differing views calmly and objectively. How do you maintain your clear head and not function entirely from a defensive place? —Natasha Brown, Los Angeles
A: I’m not sure I always do! I find it much easier to engage with arguments that I disagree with when they’re made in good faith. I enjoy arguing with Ross Douthat on “The Argument,” the podcast we co-host, because he’s sincere and intellectually honest. I can read a writer like Noah Rothman at Commentary or David French at National Review for the same reason. They don’t write in ways that are deliberately misleading, and it’s useful to think through why I disagree with them.
The people I find maddening are those who don’t really care whether what they say is true or false. I usually can’t bring myself to watch more than a few minutes of Fox News, because it’s just such transparent, intellectually insulting propaganda.
Q: Have or do you ever find that your thinking on a subject significantly changes as you explore the topic? If so, would you share an example? —Lisa Smith, San Diego
A: I’ve written about how multiple visits to the West Bank have really shaken the default liberal Zionism I was brought up with. More recently, as Israel has become increasingly illiberal and has acted to foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution, I’ve become more sympathetic to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It’s not that I’m totally sold on it — I understand the awful historical echoes of singling the Jewish state out for economic punishment, and I hate the way it’s used to shun Israeli writers and academics in international forums. But I feel like I can no longer dismiss BDS or its adherents outright, for reasons I recently wrote about in my column.
I also recently read Alex Berenson’s book about marijuana, “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence,” and interviewed him for our podcast. He didn’t convince me that marijuana should be illegal, but he did persuade me that the drug has more ill effects than the pot lobby would like us to believe.
Q: Michelle, could a third national party ever take hold in the USA? —Barry G. Larocque, Ottawa, Ontario
A: I’m generally skeptical of third parties for reasons I recently discussed on “The Argument.” As long as we have a winner-take-all system, third parties are destined to play a spoiler role, helping the party that is furthest from them ideologically. The history of the last few decades, I think, shows that working within the parties is far more effective than trying to start a new one. Consider how much more the Democratic Socialists of America have accomplished, in terms of building real political power, than the Green Party has. I’m all for electoral reforms, like the ranked-choice voting system in Maine, that would make third parties more viable and practical. But absent those reforms, I think we’re stuck with a two-party system.
That said, those two parties don’t have to be the ones we have currently. It would certainly be fantastic if a rational, decent conservative party emerged to replace the GOP!
Q: What did you learn from your least favorite teacher?—Nancy Barlow
A: I love this question! When I went to graduate school for journalism at UC Berkeley, I was assigned to an introductory class with a notorious hard-ass who ran his seminar like a boot camp. He made us show up at an ungodly hour of the morning, professionally dressed, having read the entire New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle. (He’d give us quizzes that included questions about the sports and style sections, so you had to read everything.) Sometimes he would make us file two articles a day, six days a week. He’d assign us to spend the night in an emergency room and come back with a story, or send us out to cover something he’d heard on the police scanner. If I remember correctly, he had us cover a BDSM fetish ball, which he probably couldn’t have gotten away with today. If you missed a class, you lost a letter grade. If you were late, you lost half of one. If you hadn’t placed a story in a legitimate outlet by the end of the semester, you couldn’t get higher than a C. Sometimes he would say to us something like, “Death is better than failure because at least you don’t have to look at yourself in the mirror.”
It was a brutal experience, and at the time, I hated him. But I learned more in that class than I did in any other that I’ve ever taken. I was only 20 when I started grad school — I’d gone to college early — and had very little real-world experience, and that class forced me to quickly get over whatever hesitation I had about hitting up sources for quotes or pitching editors. Many years later I taught journalism students and found myself wishing someone had put them through at least a light version of that initiation.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.