Garbage time yards. She ran up the popular vote in a number of states where the additional count had no effect on the outcome.
Sexism is pretty obvious, I’d think, just by the fact that Trump beat two very qualified women in presidential races, but could not beat a man.
Albeit, who knows what the outcome would have been if Harris had been the Democratic candidate from the very beginning.
All else being equal, sure. But there was a massive “get out the vote” initiative due to the pandemic and other factors. Voting numbers overall were higher, which is why Biden won despite Trump getting more votes than in 2016.
Trump also had had four more years to radicalize his base. He’d successfully fearmongered them more about what a Democrat in office would do to them. He’d given those sexists a feel of what it was like to be able to let loose all their bigotry. The default is that you vote for the same guy you voted for last time, and he didn’t give a lot of them a reason to switch away (from their perspective).
I don’t think it’s remotely the whole story. There was a definite “antiestablishment” theme (which carried into the next two elections). And Trump’s campaign itself capitalized on the overarching white cishet male resentment. Clinton herself just never had a sort of enthusiastic support that has been necessary to win elections for a while. Qualifications alone don’t win elections for anyone.
But I think it’s undeniable that Clinton was held back by sexism, and that Trump, with his “it’s okay to be deplorable” message was well-positioned to capitalize on that. Even the “her emails” thing doesn’t hit as hard without it, as the people upset about that never really cared much about the security issues (as shown by what happened when Trump did far more egregious things).
There was an undercurrent of “See, this shows how a woman can’t handle things.” Well, that and just the bias towards caring about the flaws of people you hate while ignoring the ones in people you like. And much of the Clinton hatred was sexist in nature.
I’ve seen people who were outraged that she used a government email system, when she could so clearly have afforded one of her own, and why was she mooching like that!?.
The issue was never the issue. The issue was just that Trump and his media pounded so hard on it that low information voters assumed that there must have been something there.
Just remember that the right wing had spent 23 years blasting Hillary. And then along came Comey, damn him.
I am not sure if this would be considered threadshitting or not but…
I don’t see how ranking which of these is worse helps us understand anything; it feels like it just divides us into opposing groups instead of encouraging us to work together against discrimination.
I’m not trying to minimize either sexism or racism. It just feels like that is where these conversations always end up.
In the past I would have said racism was more pervasive, for some of the same reasons that @F.U.Shakespeare alluded (and then got flamed for): once there’s nominally equal rights, there are very quickly millions of wealthy, educated women, by virtue of the family they were born into. Whereas the same doesn’t happen for minorities. This helps to break down barriers more quickly.
(Before the flames turn on me: I’m not suggesting women only, or mainly, get ahead from inherited wealth. Obviously, now, it’s about hard work and talent. I’m just saying it’s a useful driver early on)
However, the critical issue right now – way beyond it’s actual effect on the vast majority of people – is the trans thing. And transphobia has sexism buried in it; of there being a necessary demarcation of what men and women should be and that you need to stay in your lane. So I think sexism has probably surged ahead again.
Inherited wealth is the main driver of success for everyone, not just women. Hard work and talent typically get you nowhere. Hard working, talented people work for those who already have money, and their efforts benefit their employer; not themselves.
So I think the sudden emergence of large numbers of women who could actually use their money as they saw fit mattered even more than you say.
It has often been observed that Blacks got the vote (at least theoretically) 50 years before women did.
and Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton made the argument that white women deserved the vote before Black men, even working with former Confederates to do so
Those words are doing a lot of heavy lifting…