'Mrs. America' makes the case for messy history

In portraying second-wave feminist leaders with the political and philosophical sophistication that women from this era tend to be denied, the show masterfully illuminates some of the fights that shaped the movement -- and that shape Democratic Party politics half a century later.

Take, for instance, the third episode, which is set during the chaotic 1972 Democratic National Convention and focuses on Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba), who that year became the first black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination.

In one scene, "Battling Bella" Abzug (Margo Martindale), emphasizing party unity, argues that Chisholm ought to exit the race and release her delegates to George McGovern, who in the general election went on to suffer a catastrophic loss to then-President Richard Nixon.

"To get a woman into the Cabinet, get the ERA ratified quickly, maternity benefits, day care: We can't afford to alienate our male allies," Abzug says. "I am trying to protect our interests -- put pressure in the places that make real results, not symbolic. I am not gonna let your ego get in the way."

"My ego?" Chisholm snaps back. "If you were running for president, not only would this entire movement endorse you, we would host fundraisers, knock on doors, make phone calls."

Abzug twists the knife: "Because I would go about it in the right way!" Turning to Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), perhaps the most familiar face of the second wave, she adds: "Do you want us to be taken seriously or not? She's got 2% of the vote. She took money from the Black Panthers and their endorsement. Her campaign's a joke."

In addition to pointing up tactical disputes between the establishment-friendly Abzug and the establishment-shaking Chisholm, this exchange highlights the activists' different identity struggles, years before the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality.

Justifiably, Chisholm feels betrayed by white feminists -- as well as by male members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who wonder whether she's "the candidate for blacks, or just for women" -- who are ready to abandon her to throw their weight behind McGovern. While progressive in meaningful ways, he's arguably a standard-issue Democrat for his time.

"Why am I the only one at this convention who thinks a black woman being president is worth the run?" Chisholm asks, angrily, in the same episode.

(When the real-life Chisholm announced her candidacy in 1972, she seemed to nod to this sense of isolation: "I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement in this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that.")

The aforementioned fights could be ripped from today's headlines.

The 2020 Democratic primary eventually narrowed to a scrap between revolution-or-bust Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, the icon of the old guard who in April became the party's presumptive nominee, carried by black voters' support and a broader assumption that he can beat President Donald Trump in November.

There's another parallel regarding the dilemma of "fit."

Over the past few weeks, Stacey Abrams, whose failed but intensely moving 2018 gubernatorial bid brought her national attention, has been mounting a de facto campaign, one that relies on self-advocacy, to be Biden's running mate. Predictably, some have chafed at her perceived political indecorousness. She's drawn criticism for not approaching the process, to use Abzug's words, "in the right way": balancing public coyness with private promotion.

"As a young black woman, growing up in Mississippi, I learned that if you don't raise your hand, people won't see you, and they won't give you attention," Abrams told CNN's Jake Tapper in April, a remark that resembles one Chisholm makes in "Mrs. America": "I didn't get anywhere in my life waiting on somebody's permission."

Together, these comments speak to the pressures -- the raised bars, the double standards, the insistence on being both electable and likable -- that often afflict women, particularly black women, running for office.

Indeed, the series isn't purely an appreciation. It gives the above activists dimension, underscoring how their sometimes dueling political visions and identities affected their common cause, and how these battles echo into the present.

Of course, there's no "Mrs. America" without the archconservative Phyllis Schlafly (played to perfection by Cate Blanchett).

A national security enthusiast who despised feminists (among others), Schlafly built a grassroots network with the sole ambition of thwarting a bipartisan piece of legislation affirming men and women equal rights under the law. And she succeeded, propelled by her resolve and her penchant for weaponizing the privileges of white womanhood.

While some critics have argued that the show flatters Schlafly, this pushback ignores how hard it is to watch her on screen and not become enraged. She manipulates everyone around her, abets racists, and champions a revolution that embraces the homophobic notion of "family values" (despite having a gay son).

The mere portrayal of Schlafly isn't the same as an endorsement of her: "The person that everybody's paying attention to always wins," she says in the second episode. This line is one of many sobering references in "Mrs. America" to Trump, whose destructive impulses mirror Schlafly's.

(That there are striking similarities between Schlafly and contemporary conservatism isn't coincidental. Neither is it manufactured. As the political scientist Alan Wolfe wrote in 2005, "The ugliness of American politics today can be directly traced back to Schlafly's vituperative, apocalyptic, character-assassinating campaign against the ERA.")

"When you break things, you get hurt, you bleed, you get cut," California Sen. Kamala Harris, only the second black woman ever elected to the US Senate, told The Associated Press last year of her 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination. "When I made the decision to run, I fully appreciated that it will not be easy. But I know if I'm not on the stage, there's a certain voice that will not be present on that stage."

Harris' remark is a perfect distillation of "Mrs. America." The show's honest depiction of second wavers as complicated, at times frustrating humans who fiercely disagree with one another isn't a rebuke of them or their work; after all, unlike their conservative counterparts, they're motivated by an underlying hunger for equality, though they want to achieve it in different ways. Rather, it's a means of nurturing empathy for a variety of experiences.

In allowing various perspectives to shine through, "Mrs. America" takes a piece of the past that, through the work of time, has been smoothed of its rough edges and grants it complexity, while reminding viewers that this part of history isn't history at all. It's alive here and now.