The Woman Factor in the Clinton Loss, and Possible Harris Win

Politics & Elections
1

I have always thought that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because she was a woman. There were too many people unwilling to vote for a woman then, pretty much no matter who it was. Many more unable to overcome their personal resistance to voting for a woman when the woman was Hillary Clinton.

There were lots of women who REALLY liked her-- I loved her, and my mother took it personally when she lost; my mother, however, is no longer here to vote for Kamala Harris, but I can tell you she would if she were.

Which brings me to my next point.

8 years is really a long time.

There are people ready to cast a vote for Harris in November who were 10 years old in 2016. And a lot of people who voted for Trump in 2016 are dead.

But I think what is more important, is that Harris isn’t carrying a banner of feminism. Clinton made being the first woman president part of her campaign, while Harris isn’t talking about it-- we all know it, of course, and lots of us think it’s huge, and are excited to see this happen, but Harris doesn’t appear to be planning to shatter any literal glass ceilings when she makes her victory speech.

Being the first woman president is just incidental to her win, it’s not her goal.

I think Clinton lost because she was a woman, and I think win or lose, for Harris, being a woman won’t have that much to do with it this time around.

What do other people think?

2
  • I think Clinton lost as she wasn’t particularly good on the campaign trail.
  • She was fairly well and successfully trashed over the prior decades.
  • She was perceived as a Nepo-Candidate.

Harris is a far better campaigner and has not been trashed over the prior decades. She will hopefully win and it will be despite being Black and a Woman. She is not a Nepo-Candidate.

Harris has generated more positives in a few weeks than Hillary did in two long campaign seasons. She picked a far better VP also.

Being a woman didn’t help Hillary much, but it is not the only or major reason she lost.

3

In 2016, electing a billionaire Reality-TV star was unfortunately as novel as electing a woman. Harris herself has sort of dulled the first woman excitement by already being the first female VP. But the billionaire Reality-TV star thing has already thoroughly been done.

4

I agree, and also, reading between the lines, there’s the simple fact that Hillary really wasn’t very likable. Harris absolutely is. She smiles a lot and has a genuine and joyful laugh; Hillary’s laugh was more like a witch’s cackle and reinforced the notion held by many that she was, above all else, a scheming politician.

5

I was worried about similarities between Clinton and Harris and I almost started a thread about it myself a few weeks ago but I think Kamala has proven to be a much more interesting and exciting candidate than Hillary. She’s also campaigning like the underdog and taking the Trump threat seriously, which I don’t think Clinton did.

6

I think an awful lot of us didn’t consider Trump a serious threat until we watched the returns on election night.

7

I didn’t consider him a serious threat until near the end of the primary. But once he was campaigning against Clinton, he was a very serious threat. That shouldn’t have been missed. Especially against a weak campaigner like HRC.

8

It’s a factor. As is race. But not as big as it would have been in the past. Misogynist bigots aren’t going to vote for her anyway of course, but I think a lot of people have shifted to more acceptance, since the last cycle. Clinton, while I think she would have made a fine president, had many exploitable weaknesses as a candidate, which Harris doesn’t have. I am quite sure Harris has taken the lessons of Clinton’s failed run to heart, as she doesn’t seem to be making the same mistakes. Clinton, even by people who were happy to vote for her, was perceived as an entitled policy wonk who lacked charisma.

9

It’s worth remembering that Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million. Which is to say more people who voted in 2016 voted for a woman to be President than did not (ignoring the effect of third parties).

Being a woman probably cost her some votes, and probably gained her some also. Totally spitballing I’d say it probably was a net loss. Part of that loss was undoubtedly due to the negative propaganda that Republicans had been spewing about her for decades, and much of that was laced with misogyny.

So, overall I’d say, yeah, being a woman - both a “generic” woman and the particular woman targeted by the GOP - probably cost her the election.

But, I agree, that’s not such a factor now, both in the generic and particular sense, notwithstanding the GOP are attempting and will continue to attempt to ramp up it up.

10

I don’t think that, on net, the woman effect helped or harmed Hillary on balance. People came out to vote specifically for a woman, and people came out to vote specifically against a woman. Personally I found her neither likeable nor dislikeable, but many disliked her. That was a big factor, driven by the >20 years of opposition material built up by Republicans (some of it misogynist attacks, yes).

Harris simply isn’t hated like Clinton was, and there’s a lot more to like about her. I feel that people will turn out again specifically because she’s a woman (and a non-trivial fraction of Indian people).
Some racists and misogynists will turn out and vote against her of course, but generally I don’t think she’s as burdened as Hillary by the likeability issue.

Nobody should get complacent, we have to work for this, but I do think Harris is the right candidate at the right time regardless of being a woman, but I do think being a woman will help her in ways it didn’t really help Hillary.

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In my opinion, there are several factors that favor Harris over Clinton.

  • Clinton is very intelligent and competent, but sadly she just doesn’t come across as relatable which sadly does matter in politics. Harris comes across as more relatable.

  • Clinton had 20+ years of right wing attacks on her by the time she ran. Harris kept a low profile under Biden, as a result she is mostly a clean slate. There hasn’t been 20+ years of brainwashing and attacks on her before she ran for president like there was with Hillary Clinton.

  • Now that Roe is overturned, having a woman president is much more meaningful as a way to tell the patriarchy to go fuck itself.

  • As you said, voters have died and been replaced. From 2016 to 2024, about 32 million people turned 18, while about 28 million people died of old age. This is going to affect the electorate.

  • Obama winning was a big deal because he was our first black president. Then Trump came along as a way to say ‘fuck you’ to multiculturalism and multiracialism. A Harris win is a victory for multiculturalism because she is a woman, asian, black, and a second generation immigrant. Her winning is a nice way to say fuck you to Trumpism and MAGA which is based on the idea that whites and men are superior.

12

This.
My anecdotal data point is my next-door neighbor, who hesitated to vote for Clinton, and couldn’t exactly articulate why, but I could tell she wasn’t ready for a woman president. I’m pretty sure she’ll vote for Harris, and three factors for my neighbor, surely, are:

1 A bit of evolution in her imagining a woman can be president

2 How Harris in particular is perceived as more likeable than Clinton

3 Having a better sense of the stakes, post-Trump-presidency (and post-Jan-6-2021).

13

Its not a straight forward question. For starters she didn’t lose the popular vote. More Americans voted for Hilary Clinton, a woman, than Donald Trump, a man. So it’s hard to argue woman are inherently unelectable in America.

The primary reason she list the electoral college is she was an uninspiring candidate who ran a mediocre campaign IMO.

That said once the election ended up close enough to be settled by a few thousand swing state voters her gender may have played a role. But then lots of other things did at that point.

I think Harris is an inspiring candidate who is running a very good campaign. There is I’m sure a section of the electorate that will never vote for her because of her gender and race, but screw those guys. I am confident they will not matter come election day.

14

I don’t think that many people wouldn’t vote for any woman in 2016, and far more didn’t have to overcome any resistance to not vote for Hillary. A very large percentage of the people who had an unwillingness to vote for a woman would have voted for a Republican woman in 2016. Now 8 years later the number of people hesitant to vote for a woman for president is much smaller and barely a factor since they are unlikely to cross party lines anyway. It is again the woman herself that matters in Harris’s campaign, and her political orientation that matters far more this time her personal history, which was laden with baggage in Hillary’s case.

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This seems high. This is an annual death rate of 3.5M people/year which is slightly higher than the peak in 2021 and those rates include all ages and causes.

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I think this is the biggest factor.

Trump’s campaign is struggling to even start trashing Kamala. It’s at the point where they’ve switched to trying to attack her VP instead, hoping something there sticks.

17

Yeah you might be right.

According to that, annual death rate was closer to 2.9 million a year from 2016-2019.

In 2022 about 3.2 million americans died.

According to this, I assume these numbers are up to date, about 2.4 million Americans who died in a year were age 65+. So that would mean about 70-80% of deaths are age 65+.

So realistically, the number of people who died from old age is probably closer to 16-20 million over the last 8 years, not 28 million.

My mistake

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A side question that I hope still falls under the OP: assume that Harris makes a great showing, but Trump just manages to squeak out a win. Does that inspire or depress the next female candidate? What if Trump just crushes her?

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nm wrong thread

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I agree overall with your post but this point is extra significant. And is not just limited to Roe v. Wade.

A lot of non-cishetwhitemale people have noticed in the last few years that social justice / acceptance gains they may have believed are permanent are a lot less permanent than they thought. At the same time one of the key messages trump has successfully (or at least effectively) pushed for the last 4 years amounts to “If you thought my last term was regressive, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Anyone who has any desire not to be shoved bodily to the back of the 1950s metaphorical bus has probably figured out that any vote other than Harris greatly increases their odds of being shoved back.

That ought to move the needle … a lot.