Why are you so desperate to find an excuse for Clinton’s loss? May fought a general election here and no one blames her performance on her sex. May was arrogant, stupid, and a coward.
You don’t recall very well then: ABC: Marco Rubio Mocks Donald Trump’s Spray Tan, Small Hands
What is it, exactly, you want cites for? That “people / media / fellow candidates [took] her run seriously?”
You certainly are not. But neither are you required to assume they are of poor quality. It was a gratuitous swipe, and you should own that.
I’m not saying it was the only reason for her loss. I acknowledged she is a poor campaigner and I didn’t agree with all her positions. I don’t think that makes me “desparate” to find an excuse.
What seems “desperate” to me is the number of people who, when confronted with the reality of the enormously unqualified person serving in the White House, are not willing to examine even the possibility that misogyny played a role.
Heck, we already know one party was willing to nominate a woman; and we already knew the other party was willing to nominate one for VP. So as soon as both parties nominate a female candidate in the same election…
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And in all this time, it’s never been a woman who was “the right candidate” to be in either of the top two positions in our country. I do think you need to consider the role that misogyny has played in that. Your own example about Donald Trump winning, despite being the most unqualified, provable liar in the history of American politics, demonstrates that better than anything else.
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Exactly…in the few times that a woman has run for president in the US she was never the right candidate. Wasn’t because she was a woman, it was because she wasn’t the right candidate. Clinton SHOULD have won. It had nothing to do with the fact she was a woman or with American voters not wanting to vote for a woman…it had to do with a combination of Trump’s populist horseshit and lefties and minorities staying home and just not voting. You are, IMHO, taking the wrong lessons from Trump’s win and trying to conflate them into proving your worldview that the US wouldn’t tolerate or doesn’t want a woman president.
I’m not doing that, and while many would agree my posts aren’t very thoughtful I’m trying to use logic and have a rational debate here.
Sadly, I think there is a lot of truth to this, although I also believe that it’s possible for a female candidate to win – she would just have to be the female equivalent of Barack Obama, completely scandal-free and with rockstar levels of charisma, in order to be evenly matched against an average male nominee. (Similarly, Hillary Clinton, an average nominee, was more-or-less evenly matched against an exceptionally poor one.)
Yet, the reality of why Clinton lost seems to have more to do with who didn’t vote than who did. Trump got less votes than Romney did. Think about that for a second. That means that fewer people voted for him than voted for Romney…a guy who lost pretty handily to Obama. What that means is that a LOT fewer people voted for Clinton than voted for either Obama OR Romney in the previous election. Unless you think that a lot of your fellow lefties and minorities didn’t vote because Clinton was a woman your position here doesn’t seem to be backed up by the numbers. I mean, to me and in general, those who would be most opposed to a woman in office would be on the Republican and right wing side, not on the Democrat and left…and, basically, those votes aren’t going to go Democrat no matter what.
Again, as I said to Quartz, I am not saying misogyny was the only reason Clinton lost the election. I happen to think Russian interference and stigmatizing Clinton’s worst qualities also played a role, as did Comey’s late-breaking announcement regarding her emails… and about a hundred other things. But as my first post pointed out, Clinton is not the only woman who endures it. Men in general are simply not subjected to the same kinds of criticisms to be the “right” candidate as women are. That’s important to examine, and that’s all I ask.
No, you’re not. I appreciate that, and I’m sorry if you felt the comment was directed at you. It wasn’t. I’ve enjoyed our discussion.
I think the right female candidate could certainly be elected President, but Hillary’s decades worth of political baggage, accumulated bile against her among the vast majority of Republicans, poor campaigning skills, and self-inflicted wounds such as her private email server while SecState (why anyone who made it through the Ken Starr investigation thought that was a good idea is beyond me) put the White House out of reach for her.
I do remember a report on Gallup’s polling as to a female President, though, a decade or so ago. No matter how encouragingly the question was phrased (“Would you support a qualified woman of your own party, with whose views you largely agreed, for President?”), there was, I think, a 10-15% chunk of the electorate who would not support a female candidate, no way, no how. Some people still have a Daddy-knows-best view of the Presidency, and that’s quite an obstacle before any woman even begins to run.
I agree, leftist apathy played a big role in the outcome of the 2016 election. It will be very interesting to see what role it plays in the 2018 mid-terms. Maybe a wave?
It’s possible, though hard to prove, that HRC lost the election because of misogyny. But even if she did, that is not proof that “The USA is not ready for a woman president”. And considering that the election was so freakin’ close pretty much proves that we are ready.
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Again, as I said to Quartz, I am not saying misogyny was the only reason Clinton lost the election. I happen to think Russian interference and stigmatizing Clinton’s worst qualities also played a role, as did Comey’s late-breaking announcement regarding her emails… and about a hundred other things. But as my first post pointed out, Clinton is not the only woman who endures it. Men in general are simply not subjected to the same kinds of criticisms to be the “right” candidate as women are. That’s important to examine, and that’s all I ask.
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There are, simply put, far fewer woman (or black, or hispanic, or asian) candidates. THAT is certainly something that is a factor. However, my own state has a female governor and she is pretty well liked and won pretty easily…and this is in a mainly hispanic state where things like this still matter to at least some of the population. While I agree that you can say Clinton’s loss had a non-zero part of it being because she was a woman, it simply wasn’t, to me, enough to make any real difference. Since there have been very few female presidential candidates it’s hard to say that they weren’t elected because they were women, IMHO. The females you listed earlier, IMHO, would mainly not be electable at the Presidential level not because they are women but because they have other issues, mainly due to their politics. I mean, Bernie, loved by the left didn’t get the nomination…was it because he is jewish? I don’t think so, though it probably was a factor in the same way that Clinton’s being a woman was a non-zero negative effect. But it wasn’t the main reason, IMHO.
I have never said misogyny is the only reason Clinton lost. I answered ThelmaLou’s question, that the USA is not now ready for a woman President. I don’t think we are.
Were the 2016 election as close as it was with a normal, qualified male candidate, then yours would be a powerful argument that we are ready with a better female candidate. But the very fact that so many Americans actually thought this was a contest is exactly what demonstrates how far we still are from that ideal.
Donald Trump is a dumpster fire. And she, as a highly qualified candidate, did not win.
You can ascribe that loss to a lot of things. And misogyny is one of them.
But, I think this isn’t the lesson or take away some are, um, well taking away. What I think a lot of Dems are thinking/seeing is that because they think The Donald is so obviously a boob and a horrible candidate, they should have won in a landslide, yet Clinton lost. Q.E.D. that means she lost because America doesn’t want a female president. Plus, bonus…it means that, if a radical boob like Trump could win, then the progressive agenda is poised to finally get the break it needs at the national level! Now…let’s get out there and attack the establishment and the moderates, we have a revolution to winz!!
:smack:
No no no, that could work 
I think this glass ceiling will be broken by way of the vice presidency. Once we have a woman as vice president, scandal-free, popular, it would be easier for (some) people to elect her to the presidency. Or she could get there via the death-of-the-CiC.
I think the Dems should definitely nominate a woman for veep in 2020, and I’m quite the cheerleader these days for Tammy Duckworth filling that spot. The top of the ticket could be any (charismatic, smart, experienced) guy-- so, yeah, I guess I sorta agree with the OP here. I think we need a guy in 2020; black, white, Jew, gentile, doesn’t matter. But we need a dude.
Could a woman win? Sure. Do we want to take that chance against Trump in 2020? This is a guy who pulls no punches in 1) sexist behavior and 2) making his opponent look weak. We don’t need Trump’s female opponent being made to look weak because of her gender. There are too many people out there who would still have a hard enough time pulling the lever for a woman; that number goes up considerably when the POTUS makes her look weak because of her gender, and he is a despicable dishonorable man who would have no qualms about making any woman look weak, emotional and victimized. These vile behaviors didn’t hurt him in 2016.
2020 isn’t the year for a bold, landmark step for our nation. It’s an election that we just need to send in someone who can go toe-to-toe with a rabid dirt monkey, fight like hell in a mud pile full of rusty nails, and win.
Although if Pence is somehow the incumbent in 2020, let me just say now to all of what I just wrote: Never mind.
There was ample evidence around the time of the Democratic primaries that Bernie didn’t expect to win the nomination; that he was basically running to provide Hillary political cover to move further to the left. I don’t think he expected to be as successful as he was. Bernie chose to press his advantage while he had it, but he did ultimately move behind Hillary and strongly urged his supporters to get behind her, too.
I love Bernie, but I didn’t support him in the primary. It had nothing to do with his religion. It had to do with that he is too progressive to ever be elected. You doubt this, I suspect, but understand he was not the one tested in the general election.
Had Bernie won the primary, the Republican playbook had lots of nasty goodies in store for him: His “honeymoon” in Russia (ironic, no?), that he thinks “rape is fine,” that Sanders thought Sandinistas in Nicaragua were “patriotic.” Think I’m kidding? Republican Playbook In Store for Sanders
Remember too, that more Democrats crossed over to vote for Trump than for Hillary.
It’s easy to think Bernie could have won – until you realize he was never tested in the general and didn’t face down his own 30 years’ worth of “baggage.” Republicans are never shy to use it.
Also consider this: In 2015, 50% of people polled by Gallup said they would not vote for a socialist. Do you think Republicans would have been shy to paint Bernie as a socialist? Given that he describes himself that way, I think it’s a safe assumption they’d have been all over that like a dog on a pork chop.
Interestingly, in that same poll, 8% said they would never vote for a woman. Period.
Least Appealing Candidates According to Gallup in 2015
So to be clear, Bernie was loved by the most progressive faction of the left, and pretty much not acceptable to anyone else. He would have gotten crushed in 2016.
But LOL, at least misogyny wouldn’t have been one of his obstacles!
Agree in all aspects of what you wrote. And yes, Tammy Duckworth would be a great Veep.
Trump beat all the men in the GOP primary, all of whom were better qualified than he was. So the fact that he beat a horrible woman candidate in the general election does not mean that misogyny was a factor in his victory. In 2007 ABC did a poll and they found that 10% of people were less likely to vote for Hillary because she is a woman and 15% were more likely. In 2016 10% said it made them less likely and 20% said more likely. Given those numbers it is likely that her gender was a net positive.