I said 2040 or later. I figured that it was 30+years from the first Catholic nominee (Smith) to the first Catholic President (Kennedy). Obama must be taken as a confluence of unique circumstances; Obama himself, the state of the economy, etc.
Barack Obama wasn’t “in the pipeline” until 2004. 4 years later he was president.
It could be any time.
Maybe its Oprah, maybe its Warren.
Maybe is Condoleeza Rice, maybe if Nicki Haley.
But its probably someone we haven’t even heard of yet like Emma Aniston Jones or Arya Stark Smith.
I bet you the first female president will be a Republican. As soon as a strong right wing female candidate runs all the misogynism will quickly evaporate as the GOP lines up behind her. In fact you could envision that a female Republican candidate might be just the tonic for an unpopular party bruised and on the canvas following a Trump presidency.
Watch fiction–novels, screenplays, teleplays–as an indicator of this.
Works in which a female President is presented sympathetically, virtually all have her becoming President NOT via running for the Presidency, but after becoming Vice President. Then the President resigns or dies, or in some cases finishes his term and gives his blessing to the female VP to run.
It’s more acceptable to many audiences when a woman does not ASK to be President. It’s seen as womanly, feminine behavior to have the Presidency arrive as a duty-to-be-undertaken, rather than as a prize to be won. These women are self-sacrificing–and in our culture, that’s the only way for a woman to be sympathetic and likeable.
You can see the phenomenon in television fare such as the Geena Davis vehicle Commander-in-Chief and the female presidents on The Last Ship, Quantico, and two female Presidents in Veep, to movie Presidents as in Air Force One (where VP Glenn Close was properly deferential) and Independence Day: Resurgence, where Sela Ward femininely succeeded the President she’d served as VP.
If our popular culture starts serving up female Presidents who actually ask for the job of President, instead of meekly succeeding men for whom they’d been assistants—then we’ll know that a female candidate has a solid chance.
For what it’s worth, the President on Supergirl is of course played by Lynda Carter, and AFAICT she didn’t inherit the big job but Margaret-Thatcher-ed her way into it.
My choice wasn’t there (“the 12th of Never”) so I chose after 2040. Yes, we are THAT backward.
Only after being a Senator and SecState. Then she’d be shoe-in!
I think we’re more likely to see a female VICE president before president…and that our first female president might come into office that way (with something happening to the president).
I agree.
I would have selected 3016, had it been an option.
Considering that Hillary got 2% more of the popular vote than Trump, and was only a couple hundred thousand votes in MI-WI-PA away from victory, and that most of the polls had her beating Trump, and that her likelihood of victory was 70-90% in most pre-election-day estimates, and that she was leading in the polls for most of the general election, what makes you think that a female candidate has not, technically, “had a solid chance” to win the presidency, by the definition of the term?
She’s also got it against her that she’s a first term senator from Illinois, isn’t white, and has kind of a funny name. She’s Barack Obama with combat military experience.
Veep’s a really strange example here. While Selina Meyer did serve as VP she ran her own campaign for President, accepted the VP slot as a consolation prize, and has spend the entire series either gunning to be President, desperately trying to state in office once she got the job, and whatever the hell she’s going in season 6. She’s anything but a self-sacrificing women who sees the Presidency as a duty to be undertaken.
I didn’t vote, becaue I have no idea.
It WILL happen. There’s no particularly good reason it hasn’t happened yet. But I’m not sure who the right candidate will be or when she’ll come along.
Possibilities:
(A) As with Obama, she will seem to come out of nowhere, in some way not meet the “expected” First _______ President background narrative, and seem to be gifted with campaign magic. In which case it may be as soon as 2024. Or:
(B) Else it will be a “Hillary but rated positive” scenario, someone who will become an everyday household word, while she systematically climbs every step, pays all the dues, assembles a resumé longer than you are tall, and does so while wearing an impregnable teflon coating on her reputation and being as personally likeable as a $100 note. In which case I’d agree with earlier posters that as of now I’m not yet seeing someone who has ***all ***that put together so that would not be before 2028. And even if so, it can wind up happening past 2040 for no other reason than simple luck of the draw in the next seven primary seasons.
Either way, it is already removed from the realm of the implausible but that alone does NOT guarantee that it must happen sooner than later. Now it’s a question of finding the right candidate in the right election year who will click with the swing voters.
She only won the popular vote by a few points against Trump. That having been said, her problem wasn’t her gender; it was being an uncharismatic and unappealing politician who ran a lackluster campaign. A competent female politician could certainly get elected president, but there aren’t many of them on the benches of either party. Obama’s coming out of nowhere is unusual historically, and it was only successful because of his substantial charisma. I don’t say anyone like that on either side at the moment.
If anything, it’s probably easier for a woman to take the White House via the GOP route than going through the Dems.
Jews don’t make up fully one half of the citizens of the country. Ditto Italians, Latinos, and Asians.
A Republican woman is probably an easier sell and, usually, Presidents are former governors.
Former female Republican governors who are still alive and seem to have been popular in their home state (e.g., they were re-elected):
Christine Todd Whitman
Jane Dee Hull
Linda Lingle
Jodi Rell
Jan Brewer
Susana Martinez
Mary Fallin
Nikki Haley
Jodi Rell looks the most promising. Pity that McCain chose Palin over her. Now, she’s probably too far out of the limelight and not good looking enough without that sort of support.
Nikki Haley seems like she’s in a good place to make a move in 2024, if not 2020.
Despite the New York breathing issue, Christine Todd Whitman also looks pretty decent. Moderate. Good looking, not too old.
Remember back when everyone said that it’d be a long time before we’d have a black president, because Jesse Jackson didn’t have a chance of winning? And it turns out that Jackson wasn’t the first black president, after all. Likewise, even if you can point to a particular individual as a likely candidate, doesn’t mean it’ll be her, and even if you can’t, it doesn’t mean there won’t be.
Exactly.
There’s really no one obvious in the warm-up circle (those female GOP governors being the best bets) but then there are not too many males who are obvious great candidates either and dang, four years ago what odds would someone have placed on a President Trump?