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I'm not sure that's a reasonable takeaway from the last two times a woman was a major party nominee.
Hillary Clinton was not especially charismatic, which is arguably what wins general elections in most cases. She was also unpopular with progressive Democrats, and widely seen as having secured the nomination unfairly when Sanders might have been both more popular with the party and a stronger general election candidate.
Kamala Harris was severely handicapped by the combination of being nominated without a primary process, starting her campaign very late, and positioning herself as a continuation of Biden at a time when Biden's popularity was very low.
If AOC were to win the nomination, she would be in a much stronger position for the general election than either Clinton or Harris.
Yeah, thank you. The problem with Hillary and Kamala is nobody liked them. Now sure you can argue " maybe people didn't like them because they're women and they have a bias against women". I never heard anybody online saying " wow! I would sure love to have Kamala as president but I just don't think other people will vote for her". I see lots of people saying that about AOC. At some point you have to look around and be like oh wait...lots of people are saying they'd vote for her.
AOC has a message that people want is a key thing. Harris kept it too safe to really sway anyone that wasn’t already sold, unfortunately. That’s not to say Harris didn’t have a published policy list, but it wasn’t what people were seeing or hearing. If Harris came out as a progressive, which I believe she was, then I think she would have swayed middle America.
The problem I think is that harris said she was going to continue Bidens economic policy when a lot of people really are feeling like the economic policy from both sides is benefiting only the wealthy. If any policy helps the little guy then it is such a minor help that it goes unrecognized.
Inequality skyrocketing, wages stagnating, and then you say you want to continue the policy? Not great campaign. Trump lost in 2020 and won in 2016 and 2024 because he was anti status quo. Most people don't really care about "all the other" stuff and are too stupid to realize anything outside of "do I want change RIGHT NOW?" and then vote yes or no based on that
It was very poor messaging for sure. That’s not to say Biden didn’t have a decent economic policy plan, in theory, but it never got off the ground due to the grid-lock in the Senate.
I mean it would be better than now but I really don't think the plan was good enough to change the outcome. He would have had to be far more radical than he is
Oh for sure on all counts; Biden really should not have been the front runner in 2020. Hell, just planning on running for one term would have made a world of difference. Still I’m hopeful for AOC 2028, I think it could be in the cards if the DNC doesn’t pull a Bernie on her.
They def will tho. The corpo overlords will demand it
We also have to ask ourselves why no one liked them. Some of it can be attributed to sexism and or racism, yes. But I think we can attribute a lot of the unpopularity of those candidates to their lack of charisma, weak seeming positions and advocacy on progressive points of interest (such as Gaza, the Palestinians, border climate change, etc), and what seemed like stupid meddling and sabotage by the consultant class.
Biden himself ran for president and won on the third shot. But, since two woman ran for president and lost, thats a sign that no woman can get elected.
Its not that women can't win. Its that centrist dems than run on the status quo when the Democratic party is polling abysmally can't win.
Agreed. When people say they lost cuz America is too racist or sexist I think they miss out what bad candidates we had each time. Either bad in who they are, how they ran the campaign, or factors outside them that killed the campaign, or all 3
Honestly, I think unfortunately gender/sex does play a factor, in addition to race. If this administration has taught us anything, is that there is that much hate within our country.
Also think of cultures where historically their culture doesnt value women. Even if there are people who immigrated here, some still may never vote for a woman. Some will decline because they are racist. While we are all Americans, we are deeply deeply divided ATM :(
This is without even factoring the candidates political platform in yet.
I like when people claim racism was a major factor in Harris's loss, given that Obama was elected in 2008 with a larger piece of the popular vote than any President since.
It was one of many factors. Obama winning didn't prove that racism didn't exist. He won despite the racism. Harris had racism, sexism, a lack of a primary process, the lack of experience as an executive, and so on against her.
In a lot of ways, Obama winning kind of broke the country.
He was a Democrat that people genuinely loved because of how charismatic he was (which was REAL nice after Dubyah...). Or, as a certain Former President put it, he was a Clean And Articulate Gentleman.
The problem being, his very existence set off all the chuds. It completely destroyed their minds that a black man could possibly be President. And it is a big chunk of what set for the "never again" mindset we are seeing.
But it did prove that racism does not have enough of an impact to move the needle in any substantial way—it failed so hard to move the needle that, again, literally no candidate since has even matched, let alone topped, his popular vote %.
Are you sure? Maybe Obama would have swept all 50 states if it hadn't been for the racism. Maybe the only reason it was at all close was the racism.
Given the close margins I would say it surely played at least a part for Harris losing. Obama won by large enough margins that even if all the racists stayed home that he still won in a landslide.
If even 2% of the population would never vote for a women or a person of color then it was enough to have mattered when others are sitting home for other reasons. It’s certainly not the main cause of Harris losing as you pointed out, but when the margins were that close every vote did matter.
Given that, while Trump got ~3 million more votes in 2024 vs. 2020, and Harris got nearly 7 million fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020, and that the US's population increased about 8 million in that span of time, are you suggesting that there's that much misogyny and racism among the Democrats?
The total population is not the total voting population. There was also a pandemic between 2020 and 2024 so I would expect the total amount of eligible voters would be different as a result of the pandemic.
I think that’s an uncharitable takeaway from what I’m talking about to say that the misogyny and racism were the core reasons that Harris got less votes. There were notable other factors that made it a close election, which I mentioned was the case. My point was more that because the margins were that close that those smaller details did matter more.
I suspect the majority of that 2% would also never vote for a Democrat.
I believe that you are mostly correct, although the actual motivations for these folks are complicated. Some may value a few extra bucks in government support, having social security, and having Medicare programs. So there are some economic reasons they may vote for Democrats on occasion, but their bigotry could get in the way of their best interest.
So, some of those people probably just stay home for election night. While a good chunk may be getting convinced to vote for Republicans if they feel their bigotry is being rewarded.
Still a big risk to take. We need progressives to win at least the next two elections to have any shot at winding back the damage from two Trump administrations and a largely impotent Biden administration.
But I agree that if she wins the primary, that's the part that really matters and what Harris was missing.
Yeah, I think there is a substantial portion of Americans who won't ever vote for a woman, but I think it was still just a small part of the larger issues in both their campaigns
Both Hillary and Kamala were unenthusiastic campaigners, depending on democrats to anoint to victory. AOC isn't very popular outside of the northeast, and she doesn't appear fiery enough to excite those who don't know her.