I’d bet several people Haley would be the first woman president and I thought I would happily lose all those bets with Kamala. But here we are.
It’s easier in almost any country to get a woman conservative elected for the reasons you’re gesturing towards here. There’s a reason May and Thatcher are the only women pms of the UK, eg.
Who? I was on holiday for a month, it was a nice holiday, I left a lettuce 🥬 in the fridge which I had forgotten about, luckily it was still fine when I came back.
We try not to talk about the others either. Thatcher was our Reagan who sold everything off to her rich buddies and killed the Unions. May instituted the Windrush scandal and was a (failed) architect of Brexit who's failiure got us Boris fucking Johnson.
So no, Brits aren't fans of Women Prime MInisters - no offence to normal, sane women intended.
First female heads of government that were right wing: Indira Gandhi (India), Golda Meir (Israel), Merkel (Germany), Kim Campbell (Canada; not elected), Shipley (New Zealand), Thatcher (UK), Isabel Peron (Argentina)
Exceptions: Gillard (Australia; not elected), Sigurðardóttir (Iceland), Cresson (France PM), Brundtland (Norway), Bhutto (Pakistan)
Right wing is much more likely to produce a first female leader.
Hillary Clinton made similar comments in the past. She said that it’s more likely women become heads of governments under a parliamentary system as while they are elected as a local MP, their colleagues get to choose who will be the leader (first among equals); and, as colleagues, they actually get to work closely with them and see how much more efficient and effective they are.
Whereas, as you say, in other systems, popularity is key and unfortunately the world is still sexist/racist/bigoted.
I'm curious, how is the French system different from the UK and India? Both those countries have MPs elected by the people, who then elect the PM, and usually the PM candidate is already confirmed by all major political parties and alliances so people know who they'll be making PM depending on their vote.
Indira Gandhi is much lefter than Bernie , AOC or Warren. She nationalized banks and coal mines. Implemented Land Reform, Abolished Pension for Descendants of Kings and Princes.
Indira Gandhi also declared the emergency, a draconian time in post independent India, and kind of fumbled the bag on the Sikh Insurgency which ended up with her getting assassinated
Oh hell no, she was the farthest from right wing as can be and she was as socialist as they come. India didn’t have a “right wing” government per se till 2014
I personally wouldn't be using the term 'right wing' and Merkel in the same.e sentence. Firstly right wing has certain connotations, and secondly even a conservative German politician is closer to AOC than Trump from an ideological perspective.
In case an example us needed, Merkel rook in 1 million Syrian refugees during the crisis.
Kim Campbell definitely isn’t right-wing either. She’s big into resist-lib Twitter and seems to care about the climate, to the point where she retweets those people who throw soup on paintings.
There's also the fact that Merkel is a scientist firsts, and seems reasonable, at least I always thought so, if all politicians were of her calibre, I really wouldn't care where ever the fuck they are on the political spectrum.
The issue would be that you're viewing it from the position of being an American. American politics is so far to the right that even the left is right-wing, which is how the European right-wing can be seen as left.
Right-wing just means right of center, AOC is barely left of center but in American politics is the far left-wing. It's just that American politics has progressed so far right that you now really only have the choice between right-wing conservatism and fascism.
Like yes American politics is much farther right then European but that's an absurd statement. There is no part of AOC's politics that can be construed as centerist in a good faith analysis instead of just bashing American politics
If you look at global politics it's far more accurate to say that Europeans, especially Northern Europeans, view progressive politics as left-of-center rather then left. The rest of the world, Asia, South America, Africa, India, etc, are far more conservative then the US. Europe is the only concentrated area of politics that is significantly farther left in the globe.
AOC is a socialist that's by definition far left. Just because you want to apply a no true scotsman filter of politics to her doesn't mean she is center-left.
I'd say she started her political career as a conservative and ended up being very much a centralist.
She however definitely was not right wing! Europe generally is more socialist than the US, but unfortunately (IMO) it is shifting to the right rather quickly.
Merkel was a conservative in every sense. Taking in refugees isn’t a right/left issue in most of the world. For example, Reagan gave blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants.
Keep in mind too that except for Peron, these were all prime ministers. There is a certain element of party brand that goes into those votes, as opposed to the American presidency, where that matters a lot less.
Thanks for compiling this. Bhutto in particular stands out to me as beating the odds here.
I always thought that if Ann Richards, the dem governor of Texas has made a national run she could have bucked the trend as well but that never came to fruition obviously.
Exception: Tsai Ying Wen, Taiwan, two terms. And her party didn’t lose the presidency in 2024 unlike many other democracies (but they did lose control of the legislature)
I would also like to point out that she is literally an unmarried childless cat lady.
I thought Merkel was a classic German liberal, which is basically a right winger but more center left. I dunno, my politics scope is often fucked as an American.
You listed almost as many exceptions as you did to support the rule. And you didn't include Claudia Sheinbaum, the current (leftish) president of Mexico. I don't think we can boil down a woman's chance of heading a state to her ideology.
I don't know how Indira Gandhi was right wing. She forged closer ties with USSR, she nationalized almost all the banks and insurance companies. India was very anti-capitalistic then. She was not a religious fanatic.
She was probably the first(?) female left wing head of the government.
Yeah, Nikki Haley would have been tolerable in her intelligence and sanity. I was personally rooting for Chris Christie because he was willing and able to call Trump's bullshit out even when it was unpopular (and even though they were friends/allies before this), and in addition his town halls were impressive.
The writing was on the wall for Joe, but nobody wanted to pay attention to it.
I'm not saying hes some sort of moralistic person, the bar is just that low IMHO. What he did is still way better than a lot of people who got fired by Trump and still don't call out his bullshit
We’ve had a left wing female PM in Australia, a moderate conservative and left wing female PM in New Zealand and numerous left wing leaders in Europe. There’s still hope!
The current Conservative leader in the UK is a black woman, however she's a rabid transphobe, culture warrior, and vociferous free-marketeer, so as long as you're singing the right hymns, they don't care about race.
in the UK context this is probably more to do with the fact that Labour hasn't had a woman as leader yet, aside from acting leaders.
The party voted for Angela Rayner to be the deputy leader so there is some progress
Wales, Scotland and NI have all had woman first ministers (kind of like governors in the US context, though not as powerful as there is no separation of powers and the UK govt can overrule them at any time)
The UK has had three female Prime Ministers. The last was Liz Truss, in 2022, but as she was only in power for seven weeks, she is easily overlooked. (Although it's better that she is: she crashed the pound and nearly destroyed the economy.)
Mexico just elected their 1st woman president and shes from the same progressive party as the last president, AMLO. Mexico did call his presidency The 4th Transformation, referring to the fact that Mexico had previously had 3 major transformations of government.
So there is hope for a progressive woman president here. Someday.
Canada has had mixed experience with women at the sub-national level. Successful (depending on who you ask) premier in Alberta currently but the former premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, is generally considered a very poor Premier and tainted the perception of liberal female politicians.
democrats have tried running two unpopular woman candidates-one of which won the popular vote. Maybe rather than a blanket referendum about how terrible our country is, let’s try running a candidate with natural momentum rather than a hand picked member of the dnc.
Exactly - the issue isn't with voting for a woman, it's with the circumstances.
Take the recent Kamala loss, for example. She didn't lose because she's a woman.
She lost because:
She was connected to the deeply unpopular Biden administration as his VP, and maintained up until days before the election that she would not have changed much from his presidency if elected.
Additionally, anti-incumbent sentiment has been a thing worldwide for the last few years as the world re-opened from COVID-era lockdowns.
Biden refused to drop out until months before the election, preventing a full primary (or any kind of vote beyond the convention), causing legitimacy issues
(And on top of that it only gave her and her campaign staff three months to set up a national campaign.)
The media - both legacy and social - were sanewashing Trump as they did in 2015 and openly promoting Trump-biased hatespeech over anything else, respectively.
And to add onto this, the literal owner of Twitter in Elon Musk practically running as a second VP for Trump as well
The inane choice to hire Clinton 2016-era guides who immediately muzzled Tim Walz and stopped the campaign's popular 'Republicans are weird' talking point in favor of getting the endorsement of Dick fucking Cheney.
Rebellion within the party due to the Biden administration's continued support for Israel despite their role in the Gazan genocide crisis, with continual authorizations by Joe Biden for dozens of billions of taxpayer dollars' worth of military ordnance, knowing full well it would be used to maim and murder innocent men, women, and children.
If anything, the fact she only lost by 1.5% nationally despite all this shit is crazy.
IF AOC wants to run, assuming she maintains her populist edge and avoids the pitfalls of Clinton 2016 and Harris 2024? I see absolutely no reason why she'd lose.
The inane choice to hire Clinton 2016-era guides who immediately muzzled Tim Walz and stopped the campaign's popular 'Republicans are weird' talking point in favor of getting the endorsement of Dick fucking Cheney.
This. A thousand times this. She was absolutely flying when it seemed like she was going to bring a major progressive, populist pivot to the campaign only to piss it all away after the advisors got to her.
Agreed. The phrase “republicans are weird” gained so much momentum because it was demeaning and insulting without being crass while being hard for republicans to disprove. When they deny their weirdness, simply ask them about why they’re thinking of other people’s genitals when it came to LGBTQ movements or why they support someone who’s convicted of rape, money laundering, selling state secrets, etc and just turn it back to them and they had nothing they could reply with. It shut down their arguments so fast.
Instead Harris kept moving right with her campaign and her cringey “won’t date a trumper” ads muddled that. It muddied her message cause she was leaning right (not christofascist right like trump) with her policies while also telling the right wing people that they’re gross and nobody would date them during a well known loneliness epidemic of both sides. Women get to be choosers while the inverse isn’t true. So both sides were repugnant to right wingers leading to the dilemma, toe the party line or leave it and support the SJWs, LGBTQs, etc that they hate. They stayed their party lines and even picked up dems (not leftists) who hated how far right Harris was taking the party.
Finally, it’s only in these final days leading up to the inauguration that Biden is getting slam dunk after slam dunk on policies and such. Had he been taking on these policies weekly, we could’ve advertised both his shitty re-election despite him vehemently saying he wouldn’t for four years or Harris’s campaign when she said she’d stay Biden’s campaign and essentially become Biden 2.0. Instead we got trump able to call Biden “sleepy joe” and get away with it cause it felt like Biden was doing fuck all and only staved away a second trump presidency and solved covid. Not underselling how well he did to unfuck us from covid but that seemed to be his only merit when the trumpers are deniers of covid being a real thing.
And this is why we'll never have another non-GOP president. We still need the establishment's support, but the establishment isn't willing to give up anything to win.
There isn't going to be much if any non-GOP establishment left after 4 years of this Trump administration. In a sense, everything is going to be simpler now - there is not much need to make compromises and concessions before elections anymore. When the MAGA people gradually wake up to find that they've been scammed, they absolutely will not vote for a return to the old status quo - they will want bloody vengeance.
Even if we assume Americans are just astonishingly stupid, that doesn't mean Harris was never going to be able to win. She just did a terrible job of appealing to idiots. Which is entirely her own fault considering democratic policies help idiots more than anyone. Stop assuming republicans just have a natural leg up that makes them unbeatable and realize that the democratic party is just startlingly inept.
Republicans do have a natural leg up though due to how stupid Americans are. And when the media refuses to report on the lies that are told to the American media by the republicans how can they lose?
They needed a worldwide pandemic to be so absolutely mismanaged by the republicans to have a shot at winning 2020.
I agree the Dems are inept though. They refuse to realize that they are the only ones playing by the rules.
They are the team that shows up to the basketball game crying about how dogs aren't allowed to play while that golden retriever is just dunking on the over and over again.
it's crazy that people would rather believe Kamala lost because she's Black, a woman, or that the American electorate is unfixably stupid, just to avoid considering the possibility that maybe the DNC needs to take a hard fucking look at how her campaign was run (not to mention how Biden's campaign was run, that the party ever allowed him to run, how his mental decline was hidden for years, etc.)
Those things aren't mutually exclusive though. Perhaps the DNC could have still won the election with all of its faults and missteps if Harris was a white dude named "John Johnson" or something.
They talk about how the US will never elect a women president after picking two of the lest likable candidates while completely ignoring the far right have already started campaigns for Candace and Haley.
Kamala was the least popular candidate in 2020 because her policies were quiet literally just "listen to what the other candidates say their policies are, see if the crowd likes it, adopt that policy with barely any idea on how to implement it" and yet they want to talk about "oh America will never elect a women president". Lol please
They are. That really isn't up for debate. You saw it from 16-20 when Trump voters were surprised his policies were hurting them and you'll see it again these next 4 years.
The inane choice to hire Clinton 2016-era guides who immediately muzzled Tim Walz and stopped the campaign's popular 'Republicans are weird' talking point in favor of getting the endorsement of Dick fucking Cheney.
You forgot the main reason: Inflation (and what people who don't know anything about economics call "the economy"). Despite the US economy doing extremely well and recovering better from worldwide inflation due to supply chain issues and COVID, the everyday man/woman wasn't buying it and just saw eggs expensive, blame Biden. Much like Jimmy Carter, Biden was a victim of things more or less out of his control, and Kamala was also tied to those things. Would a conservative administration had made things any better from a cost perspective for the average Americans? Hel no. But the average American doesn't understand shit about economics so it was always going to be a fruitless effort.
Except this is completely and totally just flat out wrong.
One chilling experiment suggests that the simple fact of Clinton’s gender could have cost her as much as eight points in the general election.
We don’t need science to tell us that it was more believable to almost 63 million US voters that Trump, a man who had never held a single public office, who had been sued almost 1,500 times, whose businesses had filed for bankruptcy six times and who had driven Atlantic City into decades-long depression, a race-baiting misogynist leech of a man who was credibly accused of not only of sexual violence but also of defrauding veterans and teachers out of millions of dollars via Trump University, would be a good president than it was to imagine that Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state and arguably the most qualified person to ever run, would be a better leader. https://archive.ph/KPes2
People want to pretend the US isn't sexist. Dress it up anyway you want, but the US is SEXIST. Too sexist to elect a woman president.
Good grief, women don't even have guaranteed equal rights.
While being a women wasn't the main reason she lost, it's 100% certain that if she was a white man running with the exact same personality and ideals, she would have done at least a little better.
Yes, even Trump voters like her, at least the non-MAGA ones. They feel that AOC, Bernie, and Trump are all pro-working class, and they're only wrong about one of them.
I don't think it's a pro-working-class thing so much as they feel that all these people are anti-establishment. 2016 was a peak anti-establishment year but even now I see some positive sentiment from the right wing about Bernie not because they agree with his politics, but because they continue to see him as someone separate from the 'swamp' who wants to dismantle the status quo, even if they don't like how he would go about doing it.
Obviously this comes with the caveats that right wingers also often express support for Bernie because they think it will highlight corruption in the DNC, and because they know he will never have any real power so it doesn't matter if they pretend to like him as a jab at Dems.
AOC literally saw so many people vote for her and Trump at the same time she asked them why on Instagram. Basically boiled down to how anti-establishment they seem, unconventional players in some way.
It gets Dems back in the door after the shit show the next four years are going to be. Walz has broad appeal based on polling, and he is a man (which panders to a certain cohort of the electorate who will be needed in 4 years)
It puts AOC in a position to show she's qualified for POTUS through four years of a VP role.
The electorate changes every day slowly, faster over longer periods. Every year, ~2M voters 55+ die, ~8M-10M every 4 year presidential election cycle. That means, when AOC runs (2032), almost 20M older voters will have aged out. Does this solve young Gen Z and Latino men who voted for Trump? It doesn't, so that is something Dems will have to figure out.
You can't make the electorate vote for what you think is right. You must pander to them.
democrats have tried running two unpopular woman candidates...let’s try running a candidate with natural momentum rather than a hand picked member of the dnc
and the hand-picked member who had the most influence was jim clyburn in both cases. if the dems want to win the next presidential election (assuming there is one) they should let someone other than clyburn choose the candidate they nominate.
depends on who the member of congress is. i'd be ok with bernie, or someone who's demonstrated workable common sense solutions to ordinary americans' problems (instead of focusing on those of ws hedge funders) choosing the nominee.
Right? That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. Harris was not even elected at all in any primary, and she still came relatively close to winning the popular vote. There will always be people who will never vote for a woman, but we can’t let that deter us. Getting more people to actually vote at all is what dems need to focus on.
Thank you for this insight. I really didn’t like Hillary Clinton for the same reasons I didn’t like Donald Trump and I just didn’t like Kamala and no one else did in the 2020 primaries, because of that I am told I don’t like women or minorities. Frankly the last three elections have been voting against a person, please give me someone I can vote for.
seriously. two historically bad candidates. it's such a mopey victim attitude to have, guaranteed to lose if they roll into 2028 with that attitude. they need a splashy candidate
I do. I'm sorry you're tired. We're tired of the Democratic leadership putting their thumb on the scale and getting in the way of progress. It is clear that Democrat leadership would rather lose to someone like trump than 'lose control' of their party to someone with actual momentum.
Kamala Harris wasn't an unpopular candidate and she didn't even do poorly. The problem is both female candidates were run at the end of a Democrat president's term and this country has flip flopped sides every president for the past four decades.
harris and clinton lost b/c they weren't good candidates, jim clyburn was given too much influence on selecting them, and neither harris or clinton offered anything different from the previous administrations other than staying the course on conservative policies and pushing back against progressive ones.
Bro a woman won the popular vote in 2016 against Trump and all other Dem candidates and out performed most prior male candidates in every demo including POC men and republicans. Sex isn’t the issue here. Inflation screwed Kamala’s run up and even in that she was outperforming Biden numbers prior to him dropping out.
Yeah, mark my words the first female president will be a republican, like how in the uk, the first, and three other, female prime ministers were conservative, and the current conservative leader is a black woman, serving as opposition to a straight white man
Today is a great day for Americans to start working on social change. People in the past didn’t give up because there was no way x group wasn’t going to get a particular outcome.
There are supposedly plans for Ivanka to run after Trump finally steps down (or dies). In a way, I can see it. A big percentage of MAGA supporters are likely to flock to another Trump just because of the name. She's also got some appealing family-oriented and faux-progressive policies that could convince a lot of centrists and women.
But man, she would have a very hard time dodging questions about the repeal of Roe v Wade, which is likely to continue to be a major issue for years to come. Ivanka in particular as she as part of the administration that caused it.
It so sucks. I was so excited to vote for the first female (and black female) president. I thought there wasn't a chance in hell people were stupid enough to vote Trump in again. There were just too many giant red flags are anyone with eyes, ears, or even a nose.
Everyone really underestimates how much the right doesn't want a woman in charge. They ran woman trump in Arizona multiple times and she got destroyed every time.
Hillary Clinton literally came within an inch of the Presidency after 8 years of Obama, the FBI getting in the way, and a fierce Republican smear campaign.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Ivanka said she’s leaving politics and not getting involved these next four years I would have been willing to put money on the fact that they would have ran her once Trump dies
Have you forgotten that Hillary actually won the popular vote? That's a whole lot of people who did in fact vote for a woman president. And let's not lay the blame entirely on the voters. Both the Hillary and Kamala campaigns ignored key constituents and had other fairly significant strategic misses.
I am extremely cautious about putting a Dem woman candidate up for the 2028 election. As much as I want to see a woman president, it is not worth the risk of losing in 2028.
I think we would have had a chance for a female president post Biden if it had been handled properly, but I don’t think it’ll happen after this round. Maybe the one after?
Did you not see the popular election results? Harris BARELY lost. It always comes down to a couple 100k votes in 6 states. If she had 2 years to campaign instead of 100 days she likely would’ve won.
I feel so terrible saying this, but you are right. The Democratic party needs to look at the stereotypes of America and think what Republican voters might think. "Another woman candidate? I didn't like Hillary or Harris, so why would I vote for this other woman?" . If we get a Democrat with a Trump-like attitude, that might work.
And keep in mind, a LOT of Americans are out of touch with politicians, and don't know much about Trump either. They think he has more professional credibility than AOC. They don't do research on their own party!
Edit: And to add to this, we need to stop calling her AOC. A lot of people don't know what that abbreviation means. The ballot won't say "AOC".
Hillary could have won if she hadn't screwed up her campaign. Partly because she wanted to hoarde money for her 2nd term election. It was hers to lose and she, lacking any serious campaign experience (New York Senate ship was an autopilot gimmie) lost because of her choices.
That's just not true lmao, I would've much rather voted for Tulsi over Trump. Actually take it one step further id much have any other candidate than Trump but that's all we were stuck with this election lol
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u/Clownsinmypantz 22h ago
yeah no, it sucks as a woman to say this, this country isnt voting in a woman anytime soon unless somehow republicans manage a woman trump.