“They’re gonna do everything they can to turn the American people against her,” Moseley Braun told the Sun-Times. “There are a lot of people out there who don’t like the idea of a woman telling them what to do.”
Former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun advised Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday to “hunker down” for a barrage of political and media attacks rooted in “misogyny” — and avoid the mistakes she made by being “hurt” by it all.
“They’re going to come after her with bricks. . And she should expect no quarter from any of them. . They’re gonna do everything they can to turn the American people against her,” Moseley Braun told the Sun-Times Tuesday.
“You start with misogyny and the fact that she’s a woman. There are a lot of people out there who don’t like the idea of a woman telling them what to do,” added Moseley Braun.” Misogyny is one of the most fundamental things in us in our cultural environment. . You go from a woman to a mixed race one. You take all of those things and put them together.”
Moseley Braun knows what it’s like to be thrust into the unforgiving media spotlight.
In 1992, she became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Moseley Braun’s victory was part of the “Year of the Woman” fallout from the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Those hearings featured the testimony of Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment.
But, Moseley Braun quickly went from media darling to media pincushion. During and after her Senate campaign and her failed 1998 re-election campaign, she was embroiled in controversies of her own making about campaign spending, her own finances and those of her mother and about her junkets to Africa and her somewhat secretive visit to a Nigerian dictator.
