I say this as a woman who is pretty bummed to say this.
I don’t think women candidates can win over enough men to get votes on a national level. Radicalized men aren’t ever going to empathize with women and sure as hell aren’t going to vote for one anytime soon.
Obviously there is a lot more than that, but it’s a big part of it.
Harris was dead last on my preferred candidate list in 2020, and it had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with how little I trusted her due to her background as a cop. And she got hammered in the primaries that year, so I’m certainly not alone. I didn’t like her performance as VP (she had a pretty poor public opinion score up until she became the candidate for Pres), and she certainly didn’t convince me that she had any interesting policies this time around.
Likewise for Hillary Clinton. She was dead last on my preferred candidate list long before she won the nomination, and she didn’t get any better after winning.
In both 2016 and 2024, I voted for a third party because neither major candidate interested me (and it didn’t matter because Trump won my state by ~20% in each election anyway). I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people who would have voted Democrat didn’t bother voting or voted for a third party because they found her uninteresting. Her policies suck, her campaign sucked, and she has pretty much no charisma. It has nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being a crappy candidate.
So my vote is on a mixture of:
no real primary, just a candidate switch (feels very undemocratic)
poor, vague policies, especially on the issues people seem to care about most (inflation)
very little charisma
weird obsession with getting celeb endorsements instead of appealing to the average person
The other side being worse doesn’t necessarily motivate your base to support you, you need to actually motivate them to get out and vote. It also doesn’t necessarily motivate people on the fence either. If you aren’t an attractive candidate, you can’t rely on the unattractiveness of your competitor to win you the election.
It seemed the DNC banked on the public caring that Harris is a woman of color and popular among celebrities, and I doubt the public particularly cares about any of that. Her policies were weak and she came off as not really having a plan, or in other words, riding on Biden’s coattails. That’s not a compelling argument…
Plus Biden had many of the same issues as Harris when he ran… he didn’t even want to run. The DNC dragged him out of retirement. I think after the Hillary and Harris data it’s become pretty clear a woman is not becoming president any time soon… not even sure if one could win the primary in the next 8 years after the trauma of this election.
Apparently the gop doesn’t need a policy to win. Harris lost to someone who just promised vague amounts of success without literally a single concrete plan in place. Maybe the dems just need to treat the voters like they’re the dumbest fucking people on the planet and promise everything will turn to rainbows and unicorn shit with nothing to back it up.
Legalize weed, provide universal health care, give a job with a million dollar salary to every single citizen, create high speed rail across the entire country, fix the ecosystem, stop every war on earth, approve an annual day where you can legally slap your boss, etc etc. Then if asked for specifics just say they have concepts of a plan.
Why should dems bother doing anything concrete? Seems like the country is dumb enough to vote for anyone who tells people what they want to hear.
Americans choosing Trump twice instead of a moderate woman candidate is all the proof I need that the country won’t have a woman become president in my lifetime.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton was rejected primarily because she was a woman but primarily because she was about as establishment as it gets in an election that was shaping up early on as an anti-establishment election.
Omar would have done better than Harris. And she’s the ‘scary communist’. And Muslim. But she has actual policy and very clearly communicates it. That’s literally the baseline for any candidate for any race, and somehow Harris fucked it up. Stop running candidates who only see regular people on TV and maybe you’ll get a win.
On the contrary. He told voters that ‘those people’ are they reason they’re hurting and he would fix it. That’s a very clear message, and one a lot of people responded to.
Harris didn’t even seem to realize there was a problem.
Well yeah. Trump was campaigning on discrimination. I don’t know how you can measure what percent of it was racism and what percent of it was sexism plus a little bit of xenophobia and various other such b*******.
I do think there is hope for women candidates because there’s a lot of women in the country and you don’t need to get the majority of men to vote for you. If Harris or Hillary had a platform as good as Bernie Sanders, I think either of them could have won, easily. Of course that’s just my opinion, and the only way to actually find out would be to give that a go next time around.
Women don’t empathize with men, women treat men as disposable, men are blamed for everything wrong in the country. The Ds didn’t even think to try to appeal to men until the end when they realized “oh shit, we actually need to make an effort to get male votes”
It’s not a surprise that Trump appealed to men, he was the candidate talking to them.
Honestly, I’m about to get downvoted and I don’t mean to be offensive but I’m going to say how I feel.
I’m sorry men are having a hard time, but I don’t care. Men have been on top of the world for all of history and now they are upset because they have to share.
Everyone else has been having a hard time for much longer and if men are having a bad time right now, I guarantee everyone else is suffering a lot more.
And factually, they don’t need male voters to win. Female voters have outnumbered men since 1964 which should tell you something. Women are willing to vote for men, but men can’t be fucking bothered to support women. I’m done walking on eggshells around male egos because men can’t handle their emotions.
Note: I’m aware not every man or woman is like this. I’m generalizing to make a point. There are a lot of great men in my life who don’t feel emasculated when women ask to be respected. And, there are plenty of women that are hurtful to each other.
I say this as a woman who is pretty bummed to say this.
I don’t think women candidates can win over enough men to get votes on a national level. Radicalized men aren’t ever going to empathize with women and sure as hell aren’t going to vote for one anytime soon.
Obviously there is a lot more than that, but it’s a big part of it.
I still think it was policy and not gender :/
But I understand that the evidence isn’t exactly clear on this.
Exactly.
Harris was dead last on my preferred candidate list in 2020, and it had nothing to do with her gender and everything to do with how little I trusted her due to her background as a cop. And she got hammered in the primaries that year, so I’m certainly not alone. I didn’t like her performance as VP (she had a pretty poor public opinion score up until she became the candidate for Pres), and she certainly didn’t convince me that she had any interesting policies this time around.
Likewise for Hillary Clinton. She was dead last on my preferred candidate list long before she won the nomination, and she didn’t get any better after winning.
In both 2016 and 2024, I voted for a third party because neither major candidate interested me (and it didn’t matter because Trump won my state by ~20% in each election anyway). I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people who would have voted Democrat didn’t bother voting or voted for a third party because they found her uninteresting. Her policies suck, her campaign sucked, and she has pretty much no charisma. It has nothing to do with her being a woman and everything to do with her being a crappy candidate.
So my vote is on a mixture of:
Being female doesn’t register at all.
On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the other choice is orders of magnitudes worse in every category.
Both can be true.
The other side being worse doesn’t necessarily motivate your base to support you, you need to actually motivate them to get out and vote. It also doesn’t necessarily motivate people on the fence either. If you aren’t an attractive candidate, you can’t rely on the unattractiveness of your competitor to win you the election.
It seemed the DNC banked on the public caring that Harris is a woman of color and popular among celebrities, and I doubt the public particularly cares about any of that. Her policies were weak and she came off as not really having a plan, or in other words, riding on Biden’s coattails. That’s not a compelling argument…
Plus Biden had many of the same issues as Harris when he ran… he didn’t even want to run. The DNC dragged him out of retirement. I think after the Hillary and Harris data it’s become pretty clear a woman is not becoming president any time soon… not even sure if one could win the primary in the next 8 years after the trauma of this election.
It would be foolish to say that gender wasn’t a factor, but I don’t think it was the deciding factor.
It’s definitely both but it’s starting to look clearer that a man can potentially overcome the potential policy issue and a woman just can’t.
Apparently the gop doesn’t need a policy to win. Harris lost to someone who just promised vague amounts of success without literally a single concrete plan in place. Maybe the dems just need to treat the voters like they’re the dumbest fucking people on the planet and promise everything will turn to rainbows and unicorn shit with nothing to back it up.
Legalize weed, provide universal health care, give a job with a million dollar salary to every single citizen, create high speed rail across the entire country, fix the ecosystem, stop every war on earth, approve an annual day where you can legally slap your boss, etc etc. Then if asked for specifics just say they have concepts of a plan.
Why should dems bother doing anything concrete? Seems like the country is dumb enough to vote for anyone who tells people what they want to hear.
Because dems are smart, and care about things, so their party has to give qt least half a chance actual policy.
And this time around, Harris ran on republican lite. Courting Liz Cheny, anti-immigration, those that cared about those things were demotivated.
Americans choosing Trump twice instead of a moderate woman candidate is all the proof I need that the country won’t have a woman become president in my lifetime.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton was rejected primarily because she was a woman but primarily because she was about as establishment as it gets in an election that was shaping up early on as an anti-establishment election.
Omar would have done better than Harris. And she’s the ‘scary communist’. And Muslim. But she has actual policy and very clearly communicates it. That’s literally the baseline for any candidate for any race, and somehow Harris fucked it up. Stop running candidates who only see regular people on TV and maybe you’ll get a win.
This election was not decided on clearly communicated policy because Trump has not clearly communicated anything in his life.
On the contrary. He told voters that ‘those people’ are they reason they’re hurting and he would fix it. That’s a very clear message, and one a lot of people responded to.
Harris didn’t even seem to realize there was a problem.
I think a lot of people just realized that. I would be surprised to see one even do well in a primary in the next decade.
Well yeah. Trump was campaigning on discrimination. I don’t know how you can measure what percent of it was racism and what percent of it was sexism plus a little bit of xenophobia and various other such b*******.
I do think there is hope for women candidates because there’s a lot of women in the country and you don’t need to get the majority of men to vote for you. If Harris or Hillary had a platform as good as Bernie Sanders, I think either of them could have won, easily. Of course that’s just my opinion, and the only way to actually find out would be to give that a go next time around.
Radicals by definition aren’t the majority.
Women don’t empathize with men, women treat men as disposable, men are blamed for everything wrong in the country. The Ds didn’t even think to try to appeal to men until the end when they realized “oh shit, we actually need to make an effort to get male votes” It’s not a surprise that Trump appealed to men, he was the candidate talking to them.
Honestly, I’m about to get downvoted and I don’t mean to be offensive but I’m going to say how I feel.
I’m sorry men are having a hard time, but I don’t care. Men have been on top of the world for all of history and now they are upset because they have to share.
Everyone else has been having a hard time for much longer and if men are having a bad time right now, I guarantee everyone else is suffering a lot more.
And factually, they don’t need male voters to win. Female voters have outnumbered men since 1964 which should tell you something. Women are willing to vote for men, but men can’t be fucking bothered to support women. I’m done walking on eggshells around male egos because men can’t handle their emotions.
Note: I’m aware not every man or woman is like this. I’m generalizing to make a point. There are a lot of great men in my life who don’t feel emasculated when women ask to be respected. And, there are plenty of women that are hurtful to each other.