Michelle Obama says US ‘not ready for a woman’ to be president: ‘Don’t even look at me about running’

What we also don’t need is yet another political dynasty.

And yet the same doesn't apply to men for some weird reason

Obama also hadn't been nationally mocked, caricaturized, and vilified from the beginning of his political career. I'm far from a political historian, but I can't think of any domestic political figure who has been so frequently and intensely criticized as AOC.

I could maybe see it with a decisive blue wave in 2026, but then only if it feels like another one in 2028. That said, a lot of things can happen between now and then, morning is impossible.

AOC is very popular.

Among liberals.

She won't win a national election. Too many Americans don't like her.

Or a progressive woman who wasn’t part of the Democratic Party at all.

Yep. We seemed to quickly forget that Harris did campaign in the 2020 primary. She was trounced. She was polling something like 16th and withdrew well before the actual California primary.

The only thing holding them back was their support of the status quo.

If either of them had run on a platform of holding billionaires accountable for stealing from the working class, they would've won in a landslide.

They'd rather have fascism though so that's what we get. Fascists aren't going to raise their taxes.

Voters have selected a neoliberal candidate every election for decades. Republicans are even more neoliberal than the mainstream Democratic party is. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is inherently a neoliberal tenet. “Free market” economics is a neoliberal tenet.

Neoliberal doesnt mean “new liberal” as in “new left wing politics”. It is a rehashing of the term liberal as in classical liberalism. Neoliberalism is a spectrum of political approaches that spans everything from virtually-no-government libertarianism all the way to ineffectual big government (IE mainstream leftwing politics). Its all various approaches to the question “how small can government be while still maintaining the status quo of the social contract, the market, and extractive economic policy?”.

Progressive politics, of most all forms, are closer to classical liberalism because classical liberalism also spawned socialism eventually, just as it spawned neoliberalism. It goes back to the idea that government should actually be something for people, not the bare minimum of whatever placates people while still being able to bleed them dry.

Quite honestly, given the American penchant for electing neoliberals, and the rich man’s affinity for funding them, a neoliberal woman is far more likely to get elected than a woman who isnt. Hence Kamala and Hillary both being nearly elected. The only reason they lost is because they were running against an even more neoliberal candidate whos party has the EC locked up. America elected its first black president because he was a neoliberal. If Obama had been a Mamdani style progressive candidate he would have gotten smacked down by John McCain. He probably wouldnt have gotten anywhere near the nomination

It's the same thing that happened with Biden.

The ruling class wants to make sure that a progressive never even gets the nomination.

That's a practically useless question though, and I'm shocked the numbers weren't higher. Of course a ton of people know someone who would never vote for a woman. Who doesn't have a shitbag uncle?

In this survey, a larger percentage of women under 50 said they (or someone they knew) wouldn’t vote for a woman as president, compared to men who responded.

Women tend to have larger active social circles than men. That alone explains this.

They simultaneously had a great effect- and had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.

Its undeniable that Harris lost on the margins in a number of critical swing Midwestern states. And that she dramatically underperformed among Muslim voters in these states. So you can point to - say - Rashida Tlaib's MI-12 district and notice how she ran far behind her outspokenly anti-genocide Congressional peer, while the Dem running for the Michigan Senate Seat won her race that same year. Meanwhile, you can look at her performance in Florida or Texas and notice how her tack to the right failed to pick up any conservative voters in Big Red States.

And you can conclude that Harris's decision to embrace Liz Cheney and Cindy McCain in the last weeks of the election didn't do her any favors. You might even conclude that it hurt her chances.

At the same time, you could notice that Trump managed to top his 2016 and 2020 turnout, conclude Harris simply didn't have what it took to win in the face of a MAGA wave year, and just scratch 2024 off as a bad year for Democrats that was beyond any campaign-level antics to fix.

Meanwhile, you can pop over to NYC in 2025 and note how Andrew Cuomo - running a very Biden-esque conservative democrat campaign for mayor in a city that has historically rewarded conservative candidates (Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Adams) - got utterly washed by an outspoken DSA State Senator. So, clearly something in the political landscape is changing.

Someone call science.

The problem with elections is that they aren't neatly reproducible. So you can observe and document the results. And you can speculate on cause and effect. But you're juggling a lot of variables that can shift within margin of error of one another in confusing ways.

How do you explain Hillary and Harris losing to Trump by inches while Biden won in a landslide? Two ladies and a dude. Must be gender that done it.

Alternatively, you can claim Hillary and Harris were too conservative and Biden was "The Most Leftist President since FDR".

Alternatively, you can just blame pendulum politics and note Hillary and Harris were following Dem Presidents while Biden got to run against an unpopular Republican.

Idfk. But its not something you can just throw the Periodic Table at to get an answer.

If you want votes. You appeal to voters.

Not people who only care about politics once every four years, to systematically go through everything you've done for 30 years, to see if your the right flavour of obscure political ideology.

You're absolutely right. Gotta play the game as presented.

Thanks, Obama.

I mean that both sarcastically and literally. He has been made into such a bogeyman to the right.

You should update your constitution to only allow women to run, then. It's good that you already know what a male candidate would be like so you don't have to bother.

Surely no man who could be elected German Chancellor could turn out to be evil! /s

But weed, man.

The leader of the KKK endorsed Obama over Hilary. Let that sink in.

Very few non-dictatorial countries have ever had the equivalent to a US President. Most other countries also have a Prime Minister (and many also have a Governor General). Germany adds in a chancellor. Some even have actual royalty or religious leaders whose only political job is supposed to be to disband parliament when things get out of hand.

Hilary won the popular vote.

Would be pretty fucking sweet if the first woman we elect was a trans woman.

They'd likely be more progressive than all the conserves clowns that have run for the Dems, so they'd probably have a better chance of winning, too