{"id":15898,"date":"2024-12-26T04:57:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T12:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15898"},"modified":"2024-12-26T04:57:54","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T12:57:54","slug":"will-the-u-s-ever-be-ready-for-a-female-president-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=15898","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Will the U.S. Ever Be Ready for a Female President?&#8221;, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/lisa-lerer\">Lisa Lerer<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jess-bidgood\">Jess Bidgood<\/a>, Dec. 26, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Lisa Lerer and Jess Bidgood have covered the campaigns of all 10 Democratic and Republican women who have run for president since 2008<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"article-summary\">Democrats wanted to end the electability debate. After Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s defeat, a conversation that has frustrated and foiled two generations of female candidates rages on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listen to this article\u00a0\u00b7 9:30 min\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/help.nytimes.com\/hc\/en-us\/articles\/24318293692180\">Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/12\/21\/multimedia\/21pol-woman-president-topart-sub-wfjk\/21pol-woman-president-topart-sub-wfjk-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Harris-Walz campaign signs, as well as painting of Kamala Harris, line the windows of an office.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A Harris campaign office in Philadelphia in November. That Vice President Kamala Harris lost to the same man who defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 has only deepened anxieties over gender bias in the United States.Credit&#8230;Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, don\u2019t agree on much. Yet, recently the ideological adversaries found some common ground on a political question that has quietly endured over nearly two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, a woman can win the White House, they agree. But she\u2019s probably going to be conservative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAre there women out there, governors, Republican, Democrat, that can be the next president of the United States? Absolutely,\u201d Mr. Graham said in an interview on Capitol Hill this month. \u201cIf you have a Republican female nominee, they would have a good shot of being the first woman president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A few days earlier and several hundred miles north, Mr. Clinton \u2014 whose wife tried and failed twice to win the White House \u2014 made a similar argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIdeologically, the people who are most likely to be against women are most likely to be conservative, so when people agree with you, it\u2019s easier to be for them,\u201d he said\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HZtuF_etO4o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">in an appearance at the DealBook Summit<\/a>\u00a0hosted by The New York Times. \u201cBut I think a woman can be elected president. I do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Their similar predictions are the latest in a conversation that has frustrated and foiled two generations of female candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Democrats still scarred by Hillary Clinton\u2019s loss to Donald J. Trump in 2016, Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s defeat at the hands of the same man in November has only deepened anxieties over gender bias and prompted a fresh round of debate over the electability of women to the nation\u2019s highest office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While few will say so aloud, some Democrats are already quietly hoping their party doesn\u2019t nominate a woman in 2028, fearing she could not overcome an enduring hold of sexism on the American electorate. Many others anticipate another \u2014 perhaps even more aggressive \u2014&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/07\/03\/us\/politics\/women-presidential-candidates-2020.html\">round of questions<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/05\/us\/politics\/women-candidates-president-2020.html\">doubts<\/a>&nbsp;about female presidential candidates that have plagued the party for the better part of two decades..<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPeople feel pretty stung by what happened,\u201d said Liz Shuler, the first woman elected to lead the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the largest federation of unions in the country, who supported Ms. Harris and believes she made no significant missteps in the race. \u201cShe totally over-performed and yet fell short. So it does feel like that sucker punch of, like, \u2018Wow, even when you do everything right, that glass ceiling is still elusive.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/12\/21\/multimedia\/21pol-woman-president-javits-bpjf\/21pol-woman-president-javits-bpjf-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"The concourse of a large arena. Trash is scattered across the floor, and several people sit on the floor looking dejected.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In Manhattan the night Mrs. Clinton lost to Donald J. Trump in 2016. Nine other Democratic and Republican women have run for the White House since Mrs. Clinton first ran for president in 2008, but only Ms. Harris has won her party\u2019s nomination.Credit&#8230;Todd Heisler\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For decades, advocates for female political leaders argued that if more women ran for president, their presence in American politics would become normalized and one would eventually win the White House. Since Mrs. Clinton\u2019s first attempt to break what she called \u201cthat highest, hardest glass ceiling\u201d in 2008, nine other women have vied for a major party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those candidates have been conservative and liberal, racially diverse, and from big cities, small towns and across the country. Some campaigned on an economic message, others focused on social issues. Only two \u2014 Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Harris, both Democrats \u2014 captured their party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As they process the second defeat of a female nominee, Democrats are divided over the question of how much Ms. Harris\u2019s gender actually contributed to her loss, making it hard to divine what exactly that could mean for their party in 2028. Two weeks before Election Day, Ms. Harris openly dismissed concerns that sexism could hurt her chances, saying in an interview with NBC News that the country was \u201cabsolutely\u201d ready to elect a female president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She rarely mentioned her gender or her race during her brief campaign, a choice that reflected both her personal approach to barrier-breaking opportunities and the long-running Democratic anxieties about female nominees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, after her defeat, few Democrats dispute that sexism was a factor in a race against a man who had been\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/live\/2023\/05\/09\/nyregion\/trump-carroll-rape-trial-verdict\">found liable for sexual abuse<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a verdict Mr. Trump called a \u201cdisgrace\u201d \u2014 and has long made hyper-masculinity part of his political brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI do not think that this race swung solely on her being a woman or a woman of color. But I think that you cannot look at a woman and a woman of color and not think that didn\u2019t have an impact on this race,\u201d Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon, Ms. Harris\u2019s campaign chair, told a group of strategists, journalists and academics gathered for a campaign post-mortem at Harvard this month. \u201cWe are fooling ourselves if we don\u2019t think that there is an element of her being a woman or a woman of color that was harder for people to see as comfortably, perhaps.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/12\/21\/multimedia\/21pol-woman-president-harris-qbkt\/21pol-woman-president-harris-qbkt-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Kamala Harris stands onstage clapping, as a large crowd watches insides an arena. A large banner hanging to her side reads, \u201cMadam Vice President\u201d with a red line striking through \u201cVice.\u201d\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Ms. Harris rarely mentioned her gender during her campaign, a choice that partly reflected long-running Democratic anxieties about female nominees.Credit&#8230;Erin Schaff\/The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet to chalk Ms. Harris\u2019s loss up to sexism alone \u2014 and to the idea that women are held to a higher standard when seeking the White House \u2014 could also be a way of minimizing campaign missteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cKamala Harris made a very bad decision in her choice of vice president. So that was her first big decision to make, and in my judgment, she did not choose well,\u201d Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said of the selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a relatively untested national figure, as her running mate. Behind Ms. Harris and Mrs. Clinton\u2019s losses, she added, \u201cthere were circumstances in the campaign that were unrelated to gender.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, who won a tough re-election race against a male candidate in November, said she saw more traditional political factors playing a larger role in Ms. Harris\u2019s defeat, noting that she heard \u201cvery little focus\u201d on her gender or the barrier-breaking potential of her candidacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis was a change election. People \u2014 if people are expressing that they\u2019re concerned about the direction of the country, they\u2019re not going to vote for the incumbent party,\u201d she said. \u201cIt has much more to do with that than I think the fact that Kamala Harris is a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results indicate that, yet again, voters were not particularly motivated by a desire for greater female representation. Despite the liberal hope that women&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/10\/23\/us\/politics\/harris-trump-election-gender.html\">would flock to her candidacy over issues like abortion rights,<\/a>&nbsp;Ms. Harris won the lowest level of support from female voters of any Democratic nominee since 2004, according&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/cawp.rutgers.edu\/blog\/gender-differences-2024-presidential-vote\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to an analysis<\/a>&nbsp;by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A majority of white women continued to support Mr. Trump, a result that is consistent with their support for the Republican nominee in every race since 2004. Yet, Ms. Harris also made few, if any, inroads among key blocs of female voters: A smaller percentage of Latino and young women backed Ms. Harris than backed any other Democratic nominee since Barack Obama first ran in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cVoters were more worried about issues like the economy or immigration and less concerned with the vice president\u2019s gender and race,\u201d said Amanda Hunter, the executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which promotes women in politics. She added, \u201cThis was not the same glass-ceiling candidacy that we saw in 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/12\/21\/multimedia\/21pol-woman-president-women-lbmc\/21pol-woman-president-women-lbmc-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A woman holds a smartphone up in front of her as she stands in the bed of a white pickup truck.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A Trump supporter in Morristown, Ariz., in November. Mr. Trump won white female voters this year, as Ms. Harris notched the lowest level of support from female voters of any Democratic nominee since 2004.Credit&#8230;Jon Cherry for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, other members of the Senate, where women make up a quarter of the body, said they believed Ms. Harris\u2019s gender more significantly affected her support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSome people think that a woman can\u2019t run a country, and so there are those kinds of views that we need to address among them,\u201d said Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii and a close ally of Ms. Harris. \u201cThere are a lot of cultural issues involved in electing a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some elected officials say they believe that only a female candidate with a strong and uncompromising political brand will be able to overcome such gender bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Graham cited what the South Carolina senator called the \u201cMargaret Thatcher mold,\u201d evoking the famously tough conservative leader who became Britain\u2019s first female prime minister in 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cFair or not, I think that Republican women are seen as stronger on national defense,\u201d Ms. Collins said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far, at least, such conservative bona fides haven\u2019t been enough: No woman has won the Republican nomination. And Nikki Haley\u2019s victories in the 2024 District of Columbia and Vermont primaries were the first presidential primary wins by a Republican woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some of those who have been at the center of such debates seem visibly exhausted by the subject of female electability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In January 2019, just days after she began her presidential bid, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, steadfastly refused to engage with questions of sexism. \u201cI\u2019m going to keep fighting on the issues because I think that\u2019s what matters most,\u201d&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/01\/03\/us\/politics\/on-politics-likable-elizabeth-warren.html\">she said in an interview on Capitol Hill<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2024\/12\/21\/multimedia\/21pol-woman-president-warren-zkjg\/21pol-woman-president-warren-zkjg-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Elizabeth Warren stands outside a blue house and speaks to a large group of reporters gathered around her. Several television cameras and microphones are pointed at her.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, announcing she would drop out of the 2020 presidential race. She later wrote that she was taken aback by how many potential donors had cited Mrs. Clinton\u2019s loss as a reason for their trepidation about her bid.Credit&#8230;David Degner for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Two years later, after&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/2020\/03\/08\/nation\/prayers-vegas-slumped-shoulders-nh-inside-final-days-warrens-campaign\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">her primary bid had ended in defeat<\/a>, Ms. Warren detailed&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/05\/01\/us\/politics\/elizabeth-warren-book-perist.html\">in a memoir<\/a>&nbsp;how her focus on ideas in the race had collided with concerns about her gender. She was taken aback, she recounted, by how many times potential donors and supporters had raised Mrs. Clinton\u2019s loss as a reason for their trepidation about Ms. Warren\u2019s bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI wondered whether anyone said to Bernie Sanders when he asked for their support, \u2018Gore lost, so how can you win?\u2019 I wondered whether anyone said to Joe Biden, \u2018Kerry lost, so clearly America just isn\u2019t ready for a man to be president,\u2019\u201d she recalled thinking as she lay in bed after her first day raising money for her presidential bid. \u201cI tried to laugh, but the joke didn\u2019t seem very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This month, when asked in an interview if a woman could be elected president, Ms. Warren, who won a third Senate term in November, just sighed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSomeday,\u201d she said. She declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/lisa-lerer\">Lisa Lerer<\/a>\u00a0is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/lisa-lerer\">More about Lisa Lerer<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jess-bidgood\">Jess Bidgood<\/a>\u00a0is a managing correspondent for The Times and writes the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/spotlight\/on-politics\">On Politics<\/a>newsletter, a guide to the 2024 election and beyond.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/jess-bidgood\">More about Jess Bidgood<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By\u00a0Lisa Lerer\u00a0and\u00a0Jess Bidgood, Dec. 26, 2024 Lisa Lerer and Jess Bidgood have covered the campaigns of all 10 Democratic and Republican women who have run for president since 2008. Democrats wanted to end the electability debate. After Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s defeat, a conversation that has frustrated and foiled two generations of female candidates rages [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15899,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15898\/revisions\/15899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}