The current situation with Kamala Harris as the potential adversary to Trump made me think of ThelmaLou’s thread after Trump’s election.
Though I really, really hope that Harris wins this, I honestly don’t know how ready the US is for a woman president eight years later.
@ThelmaLou, and others, have your opinions changed? Do you think that the US, despite all the crap we’ve seen over the last eight years (and notwithstanding Biden’s very good work), has advanced in this regard?
I think we’re ready for a woman President, but I also think that woman would need to be a better campaigner than their male equivalent.
I know nothing.
The US elected Barrack Hussein Obama.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.
Trump was renominated after attempting a coup.
The first two items offer hope, and I’m taking it.
The third item makes that hope hard to hang on to.
Since Trump’s squeaker win in 2016 women have continued to make gains in leadership roles. People are becoming accustomed to seeing women in professional positions and we don’t even blink an eye when a female candidate for political office appears.
Since '16, almost 30 million mostly older, more “traditional” voters have passed permanently from the voter rolls, replaced by over 30 million new voters who have been raised in this new environment. The country is ready.
We have a woman neighbor friend (Wisconsin) who agreed with Hillary on everything, but couldn’t articulate why she was hesitant to vote for her. It was clear to us that it was partly due to underlying misogyny - to this vague distaste among many people (mostly older than 50, but not all) for a female president.
Mexico beat us to the punch, as did Canada (briefly). According to this NY Times article today, things may have changed, but enough?
I think we’re ready. We see female leaders all around the world on social media. They’re young and smart and doing good work.
I truly believe we outnumber the republicans and we can win if we can just motivate people to actually vote.
@ThelmaLou’s opinions reflected what many considered the political reality at that time. It turned out that Trump was defeated by a ‘white man’, but also with a woman not considered ‘white’ as his running mate. Despite some of the political situation remaining unchanged, a lot has happened since then centered on Trump, COVID mismanagement, election denial, insurrection, multiple crimes, a thoroughly corrupted SCOTUS, chaotic GOP held House, and the list goes on. The Democratic side has changed also. So looking back at that time with 20/20 hindsight anybody who hasn’t changed their opinion concerning the current political reality is hopelessly lost in the pass, and I doubt ThelmaLou is in that category.
This may be a weird take, but look at what’s going on with the WNBA. They’ve already broken the season’s attendance record and they’re only at the halfway point. People (not just women) are waking up to the idea that the women’s game can be every bit as entertaining as the men’s – not just a weaker “girl’s version.”
I see this popularity surge as evidence that Americans are ready to accept women doing just about anything. Even being president.
I mean the obvious counter to this is the results of the 2016 election. 65 million Americans voted for a woman, 62 million votes for a man. Vagaries of the electoral college don’t change the fact that America showed its ready for a woman president by a majority of 3 million.
I really appreciate you resurrecting my question of a few years ago. It certainly is relevant now. I think things have changed. The last few years have turned everything upside down. I never understood the bitter, rabid hatred for Hillary Clinton. But with Trump in the intervening years parading his stupidity, racism, criminal behavior, and general Insanity across the national stage, everything is different now.
I didn’t want Biden to resign. I’m 75 years old and I live around plenty of people in their 80s who are quite sharp. But I also feel relieved that that issue is now off the table. I think Biden will go down in history revered for his enormous courage and especially humility in taking this step. It is the antithesis of trump, namely, to put your country ahead of your own pride. I am dazzled by the level of character that Biden has shown, but not surprised.
I’m glad there is a lot of enthusiasm for Harris. I only hope the Democrats will get behind her and not fragment into a bunch of petty squabblers. What everybody has to remember is that the most important thing is to make sure that Trump does not get elected again! We cannot lose sight of that as the primary goal.
It was certainly an important and salient topic at the time and even moreso now.
And similarly with the PWHL, which I believe has generated fantastic sales.
I think we may be approaching a tipping point in which various domains, throughout their development periods, are reaching useful critical masses of women in positions of power.
There are still scads of the “white male misogynist” working in DC.
Burchett has called 2 women DEI hires in a days time.
The whole thing with Roe-v-Wade and reproductive rights being pushed back about 50 years.
They won’t go down so easy, yet.
But, yeah we can get there.
I tell my young adult girls there’s work still to be done.
I’m not sure that this reflects misogyny in the public at large. It really reflects the misogyny within the Republican Party which turned their smear machine on Hillary starting in 1992 and never let up. Gore and Kerry, who both had been on the political scene longer, were not smeared non-stop for decades. Obama blew onto the scene and into the White House fast enough that the best they could do was birther shit.
The United States was totally capable of electing a woman president for a very long time now. Hillary only lost in a shock upset. I expect Kamala to easily cruise to the White House in November.
At no point in the past sixteen years was the United States not capable of electing a woman. Had Hillary beat Obama in the 2008 primaries, she’d have easily beaten McCain.
I was one of the people who believed that sexism played a large part in Clinton’s loss, even beyond the unique hatred she engendered. And I believed that bigotry against PoC continues to be endemic in many parts of the country and the electorate.
The right-wing machine is cranking out memes and tweets and truths and everything else that will slam hate into their followers. Biden, the pale white grandpa they all wish they had, got ridicule but not visceral hatred.
The question will be how much the hate spreads beyond the core recipients. Will people in the middle, the undecided, the disaffected, the barely interested, be swayed by the hate-filled ads that are being written as I type? Can the Democratic ads put Harris forward, especially to women since abortion, birth control, and IVF will be a major issue in a way that’s without precedent?
I’m cautiously optimistic that Harris’ advantages will outweigh the bigots’ disapproval. I couldn’t have said that eight years ago.
Good news: this same neighbor told us she likes Harris (and will presumably vote for her). This anecdote supports the gist of that Times article — that some voters are more ready for a Kamala presidency now than they were for a Hillary one in 2016 — and some of that difference might be about an overall improvement in the culture toward women in power (though we still have a ways to go).