McCaskill: Urging women to run, and predicting Clinton would beat Biden

WASHINGTON — Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat whose memoir is intended to encourage more women to run for office, is pretty sure the woman she's supporting for president will be able to dispatch all competitors — including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Vice President Biden, if it comes to that.

"Well, obviously, I have deep respect for Joe," McCaskill says, calling her former Senate colleague "a friend." If he decides to run for the Democratic nomination, "it complicates things, but if you look at the electorate in the Democratic primary, I really don't see how either Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden successfully wrests the nomination away from Hillary Clinton."

For one thing, that race would pit two men against a woman. For another, Clinton and Biden would end up running on similar issues. "So I don't see he pulls the number that he needs away from Hillary," McCaskill told Capital Download as she discussed Plenty Ladylike. "I still believe that Hillary Clinton would prevail and maybe even easily, before it's all said and done."

She expresses concern about the potential impact on Biden's "wonderful legacy" as a senator and vice president if he jumped in the presidential race and didn't win.

And while she says Sanders has tapped "a pent-up angst and frustration that we're not fighting hard enough or smart enough for progressive values," she doubts he could win a general election: "I don't think he can get elected as president of the United States, being a self-proclaimed socialist."

McCaskill is nothing if not blunt and analytical, characteristics that propelled her in her first electoral bid. That would be her secret campaign for homecoming queen at Hickman High School in Columbia, Mo., after she lost her spot as cheerleader. The story of methodically cultivating friendships with linemen on the football team is "a little embarrassing" but one she opens with in her 261-page book, being published next week by Simon & Schuster.

"This book is supposed to be about giving young women permission to be strategic and ambitious, and this is a good example of me being strategic and ambitious at a very young age," she says. "I learned how to count votes, and I also learned that sometimes elections aren't as straightforward as they might appear to be."

Also, she won.

'LEGITIMATE RAPE'

McCaskill, now 62, won a seat in the state legislature, worked as a county prosecutor and was elected to be Missouri state auditor before losing an election for governor in 2004. Two years later, she became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right from the Show Me State. She was re-elected in 2012 over Republican Todd Akin in a contest that spotlighted the vulnerabilities of the rising Tea Party movement.

During the campaign, Akin sparked headlines across the country when he told a radio interviewer that pregnancy is rare as a result of "legitimate rape" because "the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down." He later said he misspoke.

He also gave McCaskill the title of her memoir when he complained after a debate that she hadn't been as "ladylike" as she had been in her first Senate campaign.

"I had heard that before," McCaskill told USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series. "I had heard that from teachers when I was in middle school, that if I wasn't more 'ladylike,' boys wouldn't like me." Young women are told that "certain behaviors are going to make you unattractive to men, those being ambition and aggressiveness and being opinionated" — characteristics she proudly claims.

She argues the adjective "ladylike" should be recast to mean "strong, assertive, ambitious, (able) to change the world." And she urges more women to "get comfortable with the rough and ugly side of modern political campaigns" and to be willing "to fight in the no-holds-barred races that will give them their fair share of power in our democracy."

In her case, she says that has included having then-Missouri House speaker Bob Griffin joking ask, "Well, did you bring your knee pads?" when she asked how to get her first bill out of committee, and demanding an apology when then-state Senate minority leader Dick Webster called her a "whore." Decades later, she says sexual harassment remains an issue in Jefferson City.

Last month, state Sen. Paul LeVota resigned after an investigation into allegations he sexually propositioned an intern. After a series of scandals in the state capitol, McCaskill is joining efforts to establish an advocacy group to help victims of sexual harassment there.

The fact that 20 women now serve in the U.S. Senate reflects changes in the right direction, she says, though she adds that record number isn't enough. "I would prefer 60," she says. "I think we would would get a lot more done. I think we wouldn't be as political. I think we'd be less partisan, and I think America wouldn't be quite as frustrated with Congress."

THE APPEAL OF TRUMP

In the 2016 presidential race, she says Clinton's gender is an electoral asset, and she downplays concern about polls that show a majority of Americans don't see her as honest and trustworthy. "All you have to do is look at the ratings for Congress and then you can really walk a mile in 'low,'" she says.

But she doesn't dismiss the appeal celebrity billionaire Donald Trump has shown in the Republican field, though she says his outrageous statements on serious issues aren't "good for our country."

"I respect the frustration that people have with what's going on in government right now," she says. "I respect the fact that people feel removed from their government, and that there's a little bit of a fatalistic attitude: 'Well, why not Donald Trump? All you guys can't do anything. How can you say Donald Trump can't do anything?'

"The trolls on my Twitter feed are busy telling me that I can't criticize Donald Trump, that I'm the one who's lame." She mimics them: " 'You're fired, Claire!' "

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