I’d love for AOC to prove het wrong
Disclaimer: My comment which follows does not apply to fans and supporters of a candidate. It applies to a difference in how male and female candidates are referred to in the media.
When our society reaches the stage where TV pundits, political blog writers, etc. stop referring to women candidates by just their first name (almost every time) in the same context that they continue referring to men candidates using their last name, or title + last name, then maybe I’ll believe the US is ready to elect a woman president.
(edit: I should add to that list, also when even the opposing side will use her last name same as they do with male candidates that they are against, meaning that they may hate her but still have at least that much respect for her as a candidate)
Anyone suggesting that the US is too sexist to elect a woman president has to explain the election of Claudia Sheinbaum.
By every metric I can find, Mexico is more misogynistic than the US. You can look at crime statistics on domestic violence, rape, murder; or opinion surveys showing men’s negative attitude toward women – all the stats coming out of Mexico are worse.
Yet somehow, Mexico overwhelmingly elected a woman (a Jewish woman in an 85% Christian population, too).
My hypothesis is that policy matters much more than the gender of a candidate. Kamala had absolutely pathetic policy proposals, supporting the status quo of corporate economic domination and a foreign policy soaked in innocent blood. but maybe I’m biased.
Mexico doesn’t have as bonehead of an election system that favors the more historically sexist party.
There was some expectations that she was just AMLO term 2 the way Bush Sr. was Reagan term 3.
Can you imagine a world where Democrats are going to go all in on competing on policy?
Their donors/handlers would be so angry!
I still can’t believe how republicans just flipped out with obama.
Republicans are racist pieces of shit. Obama is black. Doesn’t surprise me at all.
I think thats it. Its just like the majority of the country seemed to be moving forward but there was this minority which dug their heels in and don’t move on and it kinda feels like it kept growing to where its a pretty significant sized. Feels like some decided where they dug in was to progressive and are working to move backwards.
No it’s not America isn’t ready for a woman president. It’s not ready to have the DNC keep nominating candidates that lack any appeal or enthusiasm.
Let me preface this rant with I voted for both Hillary and Kamala.
Hillary was a terrible candidate because she is neither conservative or liberal/progressive. The DNC railroaded Bernie because it was Hillary’s “turn”.
And with Kamala instead of have an actual primary and getting the best candidate, they just shoe horned her in at the last possible minute and expected everyone to just be ok with it. Not to mention she falls into the same category as Hillary who is neither conservative or progressive so equally disliked on both sides.
I think the problem ultimately lies within the democrats themselves unwilling to listen to the younger voters who are in dire need of hope and change not the status quo that really isn’t working for them or anybody really. It also doesn’t help that neither party really gives two shits about pissing off the liberal base and it shows.
To be fair to Harris, it really wasn’t her fault. At the time Biden stepped down it was far too late to have a proper primary.
Probably by the design of the donor class.
I’m so fucking sick of this argument. It’s nothing more than centrist cope; a way of willfully misunderstanding the reason for Hillary Clinton’s and Kamala Harris’ campaign failures.
Perhaps it’s because the Democrat party keeps trying to force a woman candidate instead of letting it happen naturally. Voters wanted Bernie Sanders, instead the party made Hilary Clinton the nominee. Then they didn’t even have a proper primary in 2024. Biden won the primary because he was the incumbent and nobody really tried to run against him. Then he dropped out, it was too late for a primary, and Harris was just appointed as his replacement.
Doesn’t help that the “women candidate” the DNC spit out are neoliberal status quo protectors, their “female candidates” is at best performative from them.
Oh, like their men candidates.
She’s right.
I thought we were ready for a Black president, and maybe some of the country was. Where I was living at the time, a white man was okay working side by side with a Black man. He’d call him brother, they’d eat at each other’s places, their wives would hang out, their kids would play together… I thought racism was mostly a memory. People were even fine with a Black boss. But when it came to a Black president, they just couldn’t cope.
If these people can’t see past skin colour, they definitely won’t see past gender. For these people, the First Gentleman would be the “real” president. They would not respect her and, at most, would say she’s just the spokesman for the real president. A lot of people liked Michelle Obama, but not because she’s Michelle Obama, but because she’s Mrs Barack Obama. They don’t care what she thinks or knows, they just expect that she’s speaking for him. And, I think, in 8 years, we saw that she was her own person, but a lot of people couldn’t see it.
I wonder if she’s interested in running. I think Michelle Obama would poll better than Kamala Harris. I have a feeling she’s done with politics, though, if she were ever really interested.
When polled, 12% of men believed they could beat Serena Williams in tennis.
Because, you know. She’s a girl. Like, how good could she be?
😐
Then again, IIRC, when polled, a sizable percent of men though they could beat up a gorilla, so…
Other parts of the world already had women as presidents and prime ministers for decades. Some countries have had queens as the primary ruler for centuries.
Then there is America.
Sad indeed. The rest of the world does mostly okay by their elected woman leaders. So…no metric system and no women leaders. Got it. I just hope to all that is holy that the country is not ready for a pedophiliac leader.
I don’t think that’s true. The only two examples of a woman trying to run for President have been against the same cult leader. He didn’t even get the popular vote the first time (which a lot of people seem to conveniently forget), and he barely won it in the second example.
The vast majority of America would be generically fine with a woman as President, even if they don’t vote for her. The only thing lacking is a cult-like draw, and that’s not something you should aspire to.
Trying to tell me America is less racist than it is sexist? I don’t recall them going to war to mistreat women, so I call bullshit tbh.
I think America is sick of political systems and will vote for change time after time. And never actually get any.
Black men got the vote (1870)** long before women did (1920). The civil rights movement also preceded the women’s rights movement.
** Of course it wasn’t so easy for them to exercise that right.
I don’t recall them going to war to mistreat women
We just called it “life” and got super upset in the 60’s and 70’s.
I mean, there weren’t flags but make no mistake.
I want to believe we could have a woman president so long as she ran on something other than being a wet noodle that’s trying to be #relatable more than just being a good candidate.
Or better yet, running on something more than
“Are you really gonna let Trump win?”
Or if you guys had an actual popular election instead of the whole Electoral College shit. A woman won the popular vote in 2016.
Just barely, though, and against what was at the time the worst qualified opponent in history (beat only by Trump himself in 2020 and 2024). Hillary was an awful candidate in her own right and the fact that she barely eeked out a popular vote win against Trump shows that.
I genuinely don’t believe that a good, likeable, popular woman candidate who was free to campaign without the interference of the (mostly men) party’s Old Guard would have no problem winning. We’ve got women in high offices in pretty much every other level of government. Just stop pushing out the worst, rich, pro-establishment candidates to the “progressive party” and demand a vote just because of their sex.
/rant
Hillary won by 3 million votes, but that’s not enough for a Democrat to be appointed the presidency by the EC. A Republican can win by 3 million (Trump 47) or lose by 3 million (Trump 45) and be appointed, but a Democrat has to win by 8 million to be appointed (Biden). Maybe not that much, but +3M apparently isn’t enough.
It’s an absurd system that favours the right and that’s why it exists. See also gerrymandering. They cannot win openly and they know it, and they aren’t even hiding it.
It’s funny, in 2015, I thought that that platform would be the only way a woman would be able to win over such a hard hurdle of all the conservative states with the electoral college we have.
The amount of people that looked past Donald Trump’s flaws or embraced his hateful rhetoric, and blamed their decision on their dislike for Hillary was huge.
I didn’t like her either. She wasn’t my favorite candidate by a long shot, but I still can’t believe our country is in a better place now than it would have been if she had won.
Also, it’s hard to believe that was ten years ago. Gross.
She wasn’t my favorite candidate by a long shot, but I still can’t believe our country is in a better place now than it would have been if she had won.
I do, because you have to remember: Trump wasn’t a one-off anomaly; he was the manifestation of deep structural issues and multiple converging crises within American society. It was a balloon that was going to inflate and inflate until it eventually popped, and if it didn’t pop in 2016 it would have even harder in 2020. Hell, I could think of an even worse scenario: Trump is sidelined in the American fascist movement and a fascist that actually knows what he’s doing takes his place.
Phew. Glad it popped and everyone got it out of their system.
“This isn’t the worst it could’ve been” and “this is good” are not the same thing. Had Hillary (or any other do-nothing Dem) won in 2016 things would’ve been marginally worse in the sense that MAGA would’ve been stronger, not weaker, but that doesn’t change the fact that things are in fact terrible and about to get much more terrible. The assumption that Hillary in 2016 = no fascism in 2025, however, is plain fantasy.
I don’t know about things being worse had Hillary won. I do know that was the worst election I’ve seen in my life in terms of candidate quality. Hillary was the ultimate insider running for self-aggrandizement and Trump was a political outsider running for his brand out of cynical greed and sheer ego. Hillary had already lost to an outsider when she lost the 2008 primary to Obama—that was a sign of things to come.
Hillary would’ve been a far better stateswoman, no doubt. And obviously Trump’s policies were and are detestable. But I understand why Trump won. It shocked me at the time, but it makes sense seeing the past ten years.
Populist candidates are what everyone is looking for. Not the party elite. Look at the backlash against Schumer for treating politics as normal. And the backlash against Israel when we’ve traditionally been a staunch ally regardless of party. And against older politicians in general. We want the old guard out. Republicans listened to the people. Dems didn’t. Still aren’t, based on the reaction to Mamdani winning the primary.
Want to see a woman win the presidency? Run AOC. I don’t know if this is the election for it. Are we “ready” for her? I don’t know. But she’s the kind of woman candidate who could win.
Are we “ready” for her? I don’t know. But she’s the kind of woman candidate who could win.
Not disagreeing with you, but the last few years in America and worldwide have convinced me that, at least in the West, backlash to women leaders is mostly a fantasy. I mean how many fascist leaders or prominent personalities are actually women? You can’t convince me the American left and center-left are more sexist than the literal fascists who elected literal fascist Georgina Meloni, or the literal neo-Nazis supporting literal neo-Nazi Alice Wiedel. People will vote for an Apache helicopter if it promotes their (real or perceived) interests; shockingly little of modern Western elections boils down to gender.
In 2015, I saw Trump as the key to causing more chaos than the establishment can handle. If Hillary won (maybe in that timeline, Trump was sunk by the RNC coronating Jeb Bush as nominee, and then Bush lost the general), the rich would only get stronger, and their rise would be much more subtle than it is now. In our world, Trump doesn’t hide the massive corruption he and his rich buddies are doing. In Hillary’s world, the more under-the-hood corruption of the 2000s and early 2010s would have continued without anyone trying to stop them.
This may come off as a stretch, but I claim that Mamdani (nor anyone like him) wouldn’t have been able to become NYC mayor in Hillary’s world. He wouldn’t have the support, since people in Hillary’s world are even bigger sheep than the ones in ours.
On the other hand, certain policies pre-2015 might have survived. I think Roe v Wade would still be with us in Hillary’s world.
Clinton stood no chance against Trump because of the large number of women voters that were never going to vote for her; not because of who she was in 2015 but because of her staying with Bill after he cheated on her.
Even the same ardent feminists that you would assume want to see a woman president more than anything still had little interest in her, in particular, being the first woman president. Too many women see her as a woman that stayed married to jackass just because of what it afforded her politically, financially, ect. Plus, they especially did not like the expectation placed on them to vote for her solely based on gender considering they viewed her as a traitor to women more broadly.
It says a lot about how hated she is by other women that a huge contingent of them voted for a serial sexual assailant rather than her
stood no chance
She literally got more votes than him
She stood no chance of winning over enough women in red states to win the election, even though that was obviously part of the political calculus (or lack thereof) in pushing her as the candidate
I swear, liberals will latch on to anything to avoid admitting their candidates’ actual faults and recognizing reality.
I do think there’s a debate to be had as to if were in a “better place” then if Clinton had won
If she had won, we wouldn’t be better off relative to 2015. We would have been in the same shit we were in 10 years ago with a housing crisis on the rise and COVID would have still happened and probably wouldn’t have gone too radically differently.
Wed still have increased income inequality and we saw under Biden that the main Liberal answer to climate change is Electric Cars which net doesn’t help and in fact worsens our e-waste issue.
Obviously, I don’t know this is how it would have gone for sure, but the democrats really haven’t given me much to believe in.
So would we have been “better off” with a dem successor compared to the 2015 status quo? No I don’t think so and I think we all knew that and it doesn’t inspire people to vote or participate in elections.
Would we have been better off to what we got? Yeah probably. But that’s stuff we didn’t completely know until hindsight kicked in. I think we all assumed he’d be a lame president and not a modern Commodus or Nero.
Now, I don’t subscribe to acceleration ist views, but there is that view point as well.
Under that ideology, we are better off compared to a Clinton or Harris win because they would have subdued the flakier radical elements in society longer.
Trump being president and his flagrant disregard for our status quo system is a massive stepping stone towards a revolution of some sort to hopefully fix the problems of our 2015 society plus the additional inflated issues by Trump.
Trump is directly responsible for Kavanaugh, Barret, and Gorsuch. That alone has been destructive already and will reap us tragic consequences for decades to come. Would Hillary have signed the ERA and gotten the right to bodily autonomy written into the law so it couldn’t be “reinterpreted” away? Maybe. But she wouldn’t have set attack dogs after it, and after trans people and immigrants.
I don’t agree with a lot of this, but I can’t reply a point by point here. The main thing I’ll say is that Clinton wouldn’t have defunded the pandemic response team before a pandemic and certainly would have set a better example wearing masks than Trump did.
The country would always have been divided about the COVID response, but Trump followed his base and furthered the divisions.
we saw under Biden that the main Liberal answer to climate change is Electric Cars which net doesn’t help and in fact worsens our e-waste issue.
This is a petroleum industry talking point and it is false.
I think we all added he’d be a lame president and not a modern Commodus or Nero.
He was clearly a narcissist and a fascist, and many of us could see where this was going quite clearly. I was in a room full of hundreds of people on the night he was declared the winner, and many of those people openly wept in fear of the future.
This is a petroleum industry talking point and it is false.
What, that focusing solely on electric cars are not the solution to climate change and is only a band-aid? No, it’s the truth.
It’s better than ice cars in the short run, but you guys really need to focus on other, more practical solutions like better public transports and less car-centric infrastructure and laws.
What, that focusing solely on electric cars are not the solution to climate change and is only a band-aid? No, it’s the truth.
You’re changing the goalposts. I was clearly referring to the quoted portion of your assertion that electric cars are a net negative for climate change.
This is false:
Electric Cars which net doesn’t help and in fact worsens our e-waste issue.
It’s better than ice cars in the short run, but you guys really need to focus on other, more practical solutions like better public transports and less car-centric infrastructure and laws.
Thank you for the advice on how the US should operate. Good points that no one has ever considered.
Cities, states, and regions have been and are continuing to improve the public transit infrastructure. The problem exists primarily at the federal level, as well as cost, local zoning, eminent domain and the lawsuits that follow, and certain state and federal environmental laws that result in lengthy studies and more lawsuits.
These are all factors that have slowed down the California High-Speed Rail Project, for example. The goal is for it is to eventually connect every major city in California to high-speed rail (and Las Vegas via another high-speed rail line, Brightline West). Excluding Las Vegas, the total length of track is roughly the length of Belgium to Poland. And that’s half of one state.
The Northeast is already covered in rail. Going from city to city is easier that way, even though it’s not high speed. NYC to DC is 3.5 hours and requires no cars, door to door. This works because of density, the same reason it works in Europe and Asia. The US is very large and doesn’t have density everywhere. Building and maintaining the 4,500 km of high-speed rail track necessary to connect Los Angeles to NYC is expensive and difficult. That’s Lisbon to Moscow.
Well, first of all, you could read usernames. That would be helpful to determine what points you’re going to argue against and what the appropriate response would be.
Second, nobody is asserting that the US never considered public transport, we were only addressing the actual decision of the US in general, which IS very much focused on electric cars to the detriment of progress on much saner public transport projects. The Vegas Loop and similar projects immediately come to mind.
The laws that gets in the way of public transport projects are a result of the US’s obsession with car-centrism and capitalism. Instead of thinking of long term solutions, they’d rather clutch to a band aid solution to keep their status quo.
And discussions about public transport is not focussed solely on trains. On the contrary, the most depressing thing about the us car-centrism is the inability to do short trips without needing a car. Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure are pretty cheap relative to building high speed train networks or even inner city metros, yet the US even struggle with that.
The source of the problem are the people themselves who have been deluded into thinking they need to force everyone to use a car simply because they don’t want to use public transportation, which is an absurd thought process. The focus on electric cars will only continue this brainwashing, not fix it, so it is a net negative in the long run.
Tearing up all our cities and rebuilding them is way more wasteful that battery powered cars. This is not a switch you can just flip overnight. It is not something that can be done in the timeframe it would be needed.
Should we strive for those ideals with future development? Yes. And we’re seeing some of that already.
you guys really need to focus on other, more practical solutions like better public transports and less car-centric infrastructure and laws.
Your solution is on the scale of decades — almost certainly over 100 years. None of our infrastructure is set up for this outside of cities that most of us have no interest in living in.
We certainly need more interim projects like electric cars and green energy.
The problem is I haven’t seen much news of projects other than those types of interim projects that focus on electric cars. I mean, they spent millions of dollars on the Vegas Loop instead of on more sane public transport projects. America has a very unhealthy focus on electric cars because of their car-centric mindset and I don’t see it changing any time soon unless people start pushing back on it.
Most of us don’t want to live in cities or put our mobility in the hands of others. People who want it for everyone are primarily city folks who are used to that lifestyle. Those ideas are less popular with the people who would be most affected.
I know eventually the world will go that way and it’ll be a good thing, but I’m also glad I won’t live to see it because I have no desire whatsoever to live that way. The change will be generational. If folks try to impose it, there is going to be a lot of resistance and pushback. You have to get folks to want it.
If a woman performs a progressive Tea Party style takeover of the DNC, I can see her having a good shot at winning the general election.
I think something like that is bound to happen, just far too late.
This is exactly it
#relatable
Elizabeth Warren’s “I think I’ll have a beer” will live rent free in my head forever as the prime example of clumsy pandering.
Damn. All this talk of conservatives being throat goats and we completely forgot how much Warren likes head.
Regression.
I feel like 10+ years ago the USA would have been more ready (maybe still not fully, idk).
