Jim Webb Launches Exploratory Committee

[Content Note: Misogyny; racism.]

Former Democratic Senator from Virginia Jim Webb has launched a 2016 presidential exploratory committee:

Webb became the first well-known Democrat to launch an exploratory committee to run for president on Wednesday night, saying the nation is at a "serious crossroads."

"I have decided to launch an Exploratory Committee to examine whether I should run for President in 2016," Webb said in a four-page letter on his website, Webb2016.

"I made this decision after reflecting on numerous political commentaries and listening to many knowledgeable people. I look forward to listening and talking with more people in the coming months as I decide whether or not to run."

...Webb, who was Ronald Reagan's Navy secretary and who has held centrist views on a number of issues, has been bolstered by progressive news outlet The Nation as a potential challenge from the left to Hillary Clinton, the dominant front-runner who hasn't yet said if she will launch a second national campaign.

Many knowledgeable people have told him to run. No doubt many of the same knowledgeable people who advise Democrats to run further to the right if they want to win elections.

Webb, a former Republican, wrote an essay for the Washingtonian in 1979 titled "Women Can't Fight," in which he argued that there was no place for women in combat and therefore no place for them at the Naval Academy. By 2006, he had changed his mind about women in the military, and chuckled as he said he regretted saying "the Naval Academy is a horny woman's dream."

What Webb has not, to my knowledge, been asked if he regrets, from the same essay, is asserting that changing gender roles (i.e. feminism) is responsible for increased violence against women:

The United States also has one of the most alarming rates of male-to-female violence in the world: Rapes increased 230 percent from 1967 to 1977 and the much-publicized wife-beating problem cuts across socioeconomic lines.

These are not separate issues, either politically or philosophically. They are visible peaks in what has become a vast bog. They are telling us something about the price we are paying, in folly on the one hand and in tragedy on the other, for the realignment of sexual roles.

Emphasis mine.

More recently, in 2010, Webb penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about "the myth of white privilege."

So, basically, he's a dreamboat candidate for liberals who believe that a winning strategy for Democrats is to go after conservative white men.

Anyway. Now that Webb has officially entered the fray, maybe we can call a moratorium on think pieces about how Hillary Clinton's failure to announce her candidacy is ruinous for all the menfolk who want to run.

Looks like men can make their own decisions independent of Hillary Clinton after all. Imagine that.