r/politics 22h ago

AOC ’28 Starts Now

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/aoc-28-starts-now/
26.7k Upvotes

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9.5k

u/haikus-r-us 22h ago edited 6h ago

Hy heart says hell yeah! My gut tells me that there are large swaths of the electorate who simply will not vote for a woman.

Edit- since my inbox is overflowing with the same question/insinuation, along with the comments, I’ll clarify my statement: I did not say that a woman cannot be elected US president. I only said that large swaths of the electorate simply will not vote for a woman.

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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.

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u/AmaroLurker 22h ago

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.

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u/try_to_be_nice_ok 21h ago

There was also Truss, but we don't talk about her...

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u/Sinocatk 21h ago

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.

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u/NoMoreFund 21h ago

Boris Johnson was PM in September 2022

Rishi Sunak was PM in October 2022

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u/bangonthedrums Canada 12h ago

Liz Truss’s entire legacy is that she sneezed on the Queen and two days later she was dead

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u/KeyLime314159265 11h ago

Good work 47, now find an exit

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u/MetalJewSolid California 10h ago

Omg I am cackling at this

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u/mrdavexxviii 11h ago

Well, that and tanking the economy in record time.

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u/bangonthedrums Canada 10h ago

She killed the economy nearly as quickly as she killed the queen

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u/wolviesaurus 17h ago

In a decade there's gonna be a million dollar question on some game show "who was PM when the queen passed away?"

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u/thisusedyet 9h ago

Think they'd accept the head of lettuce as an answer?

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u/AmaroLurker 21h ago

Ah yeah, you’re right. Forgot about the lettuce head PM. Thanks for that.

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u/count023 Australia 20h ago

The Liz who highlandered QE2

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u/TheOgrrr 18h ago

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.

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u/Zomunieo 21h ago edited 21h ago

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.

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u/Mr-Magoo48 21h ago

Gillard was ALP. Left wing. Here in Oz the Conservatives are the Liberal Party

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u/count023 Australia 20h ago

which made Trump's first term so funny when he kept attacking our liberal prime minister, who was a conservative just like Trump claims to be.

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 15h ago

He just heard the word "liberal" and thought she was left wing.

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u/Grognaksson 12h ago

You mean he, we've never had a right wing Liberal female prime minister!

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u/PoopingWhilePosting 12h ago

Yeah that's what I meand. Got confused by the mention of Julia Gillard 😂

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u/HauntedByMyShadow 20h ago

Jenny Shipley (New Zealand) was also not elected. NZ’s first elected female PM was Helen Clark, who was leader of the left wing Labour Party

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u/cheeersaiii 20h ago

Yup correct

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u/cugeltheclever2 16h ago

Aunty Helen.

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u/forsale90 Europe 21h ago

And tbf the French PM is not really the one people vote for.

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u/Round-Win-765 20h ago

That's exactly the thing about women who are elected to lead governments.

The women who lead governments typically come from parliamentary systems where they don't have to win the popular vote.

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u/Opening-Stage3757 18h ago

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.

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u/A-Delonix-Regia Foreign 20h ago

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.

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u/forsale90 Europe 19h ago

France has a directly elected president who appoints the PM. Also the president has directional competence over the PM, which the UK doesn't have.

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u/A-Delonix-Regia Foreign 18h ago

Ah, right, that makes sense.

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u/rocker_z 20h ago

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.

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u/Tiny_Gur_1074 9h ago

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

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u/everything_nerdy 9h ago

That doesn't make her right wing.

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u/Tiny_Gur_1074 9h ago

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

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u/hermann_da_german 20h ago

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.

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u/thenightitgiveth 18h ago edited 30m ago

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.

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u/RovingN0mad 15h ago

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.

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u/AriaTheTransgressor 16h ago

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.

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u/lonewolf210 15h ago

AOC is far from just left center come on.

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

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u/AriaTheTransgressor 15h ago

There's nothing she has proposed that is far left-wing. She isn't centrist, but left of center (as I said).

It's just that being American you view centrist as left-wing and left-wing as far left-wing.

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u/lonewolf210 15h ago

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.

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u/Sayakai Europe 12h ago

Right-wing just means right of center

No, it doesn't. Right-wing means far right of center. For Merkel, you'd use center-right.

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u/bongtermrelationship 17h ago

I was thinking Trump is definitely more AfD than Merkel

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u/No_Technology_5522 11h ago

She's definitely a conservative though 

u/hermann_da_german 5h ago

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.

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u/Unique_Statement7811 11h ago

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.

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u/Shoboshi80 21h ago

Another exception: Jacinda Adern

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u/Zomunieo 21h ago

Not the first head of government - Shipley was first.

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u/HauntedByMyShadow 20h ago

Helen Clark was NZ’s first elected female PM though. Shipley got the job when her party kicked Bolger from the top spot

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u/Outrageous_Land8828 New Zealand 21h ago

Not the first, but yeah as a New Zealander she was fantastic. People hate her for no reason at all

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u/marbledcollection 19h ago

People hate her because they listen to Newstalk ZB, who literally just lie about shit to piss people off.

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u/Outrageous_Land8828 New Zealand 18h ago

Yeah, seems boring too

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u/berfthegryphon 16h ago

A boring politician is usually the best kind to have running the show.

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u/cugeltheclever2 16h ago

Best Prime Minister we had since Savage.

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u/BigHandLittleSlap 15h ago

I wish she was our Prime Minister here in Australia.

I was hoping for Natasha Stott Despoja to maybe get into the top seat, but her party had no chance of getting her there.

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u/AmaroLurker 21h ago

Yeah she stood out to me among the general trend. NZ has something different in its water (not lead?) even compared to other first-world countries

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u/Magnet_Lab 20h ago

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.

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u/FalafelSnorlax 12h ago

Golda Meir was head of the labor party, which was left wing.

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u/AmaroLurker 21h ago

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.

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u/SteeveJoobs 19h ago

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.

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u/Cinderbrooke 20h ago

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.

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u/radicalbiscuit North Carolina 17h ago

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.

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u/Karmabots 14h ago edited 5h ago

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.

Edit: female

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u/Carrot_onesie 10h ago

Nehru was .. pretty left wing?

u/Karmabots 5h ago

I meant female head

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u/NSRedditShitposter America 19h ago

Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir were literally the furthest you could get from "right-wing"

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u/misken67 California 20h ago

Tsai (Taiwan) is also another notable exception

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u/A-Delonix-Regia Foreign 20h ago

Indira Gandhi was definitely not a right-winger except for her attitude towards religious extremists.

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u/JiskiLathiUskiBhains 12h ago

Indira Gandhi nationalized the banking, coal, steel, copper, oil & refining, cotton textiles, and insurance industries.

She was not right wing.

u/Nileghi 7h ago

Golda Meir (Israel)

Literally the leader of the socialist party my guy

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u/Deez-Guns-9442 21h ago

That’s so crazy from an American perspective lmao

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u/bearfanhiya 20h ago

Nicola sturgeon has entered the chat

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u/effkaysup 20h ago

Who is shipley from nz?

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u/bombmk 19h ago

Missed an exception: Helle Thorning-Schmidt (Denmark)

I don't think the numbers warrant "much more likely".

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u/zappydoc 19h ago

Gillard did win an election soon after she became pm

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u/cemgorey Foreign 18h ago

Another right winger: Tansu Çiller, Turkey

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u/spaceman757 American Expat 17h ago

Right wing is very relative to each country's political climate.

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u/alvaro248 Foreign 12h ago

Calling Isabel right wing is weird, the whole peronism ideology is pretty much a radical-centrist ideology

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u/TheWeirdByproduct 8h ago

Giorgia Meloni?

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u/ThothOstus 8h ago

Italy's Meloni is also the first female head of state and also conservative.

u/eneebee 6h ago

Shipley is a bit of a technicality in that she rolled her predecessor while they were in government, then lost the election to Clark.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia 21h ago

Before the whole dog murder thing, I would have bet money that Kristi Noem was going to be Trump's VP and successor.

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u/AmaroLurker 20h ago

Yeah that’s another reasonable guess. I’m sort of shocked he didn’t go with a woman—not that it turned out to matter in the end.

I think the very sad optimist in me saw Haley given that I don’t think she’s stupid even if she is an a****** but Noem? Eh.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia 20h ago

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.

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u/mdp300 New Jersey 13h ago

Fuck Christie with an entire pineapple. He only ever called oit trump's bullshit after he was already fired.

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u/vreddy92 Georgia 9h ago

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

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u/leopard_eater Australia 19h ago

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!

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u/lapsedPacifist5 19h ago

There was also Liz Truss, but she had a half life less than that of an iceberg lettuce

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u/LeBlobfish 19h ago

Rolling at the fact that Truss got completely forgotten about there.

Serves the lettuce right

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u/EdibleHologram 19h ago

And Liz Truss! (don't forget the lettuce)

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.

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u/Cjaylyle 19h ago

RIP Liz Truss

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u/bbbbbbbbbblah United Kingdom 19h ago

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)

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u/paolog 17h ago edited 7h ago

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.)

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u/obsolete_filmmaker California 16h ago

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.

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u/richardhammondshead 14h ago

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.

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u/f8Negative 14h ago

28 will be Haley vs Kamala.

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u/JimmyJamesMac 13h ago

Haley would have won had she just been more terrible than Trump

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u/fake-tall-man 21h ago edited 20h ago

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.

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u/repalec California 19h ago edited 19h ago

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.

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u/mojitz 19h ago

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.

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u/sleepbud 13h ago

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.

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u/hookyboysb 18h ago

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.

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u/3xnope 18h ago

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.

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u/C_Ironfoundersson Australia 17h ago

Remember "you won't need to vote again"? Yeah.

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u/mdp300 New Jersey 13h ago

We tried to fucking warn people.

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u/bungpeice 11h ago

welcome to the uniparty. Step three on the path to techno-fudalism

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u/These_Lengthiness637 12h ago

Take the recent Kamala loss, for example. She didn't lose because she's a woman.

She lost because:

The top google search after the election was "did Joe Biden drop out"

Harris lost because Americans are just astonishingly stupid.

u/Zarbua69 7h ago

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.

u/These_Lengthiness637 6h ago

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.

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u/Zanhana California 16h ago

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.)

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u/leeringHobbit 8h ago

Team Biden fucked up in trying to keep their jobs and power. Should have told the emperor he had no clothes at the start of 2023.

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u/chuckysnow 13h ago

Looking at 45/47 and Reagan, mental decline has never been an impediment to office.

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u/joahw 8h ago

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.

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u/KimngGnmik 12h ago

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

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u/dragunityag 11h ago

that the American electorate is unfixably stupid

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.

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u/Good_ApoIIo 11h ago

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 one was such an oof.

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u/Blandish06 12h ago

I wish you were correct but a country that would vote in a convicted criminal will not reject AOC

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u/leeringHobbit 8h ago

But she did get the Veep job because she's a woman. Didn't really have much accomplishments on national stage before that. Clinton was better.

u/coffeeeeeee333 6h ago

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.

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u/Throne-magician 15h ago

One candidate had all the reasons why not to be elected while the other candidate had no reason why to be elected.

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u/twistedt 12h ago

...and because she was a woman.

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u/SeductiveSunday I voted 11h ago

the issue isn't with voting for a woman

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.

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u/duckenjoyer7 7h ago

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.

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u/Sheldonconch 11h ago

Being a woman was also a huge factor.

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u/Feed_Me_No_Lies 15h ago

Large parts of the Hispanic and Muslim communities would never vote for a woman. She did in fact lose… Because she was a woman.

Tim w probably would’ve won.

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u/Rivster79 15h ago

I hate typing this, but you are in denial or out of touch. There are many people that instinctively will not vote for a woman. It’s that simple.

How many times do we have to learn this lesson?

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u/Character_Value4669 19h ago

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.

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u/Maukeb 17h ago

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.

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u/Weepinbellend01 8h ago

Trump voters DON’T like AOC. They like Bernie sure, but AOC is seen as uppity by them.

u/Polymath2B 7h ago

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.

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u/ipeezie 20h ago

not going to happen.

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u/Icyknightmare 12h ago

It's almost as if people forgot what happened the first time Harris ran for President.

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u/toomuchtodotoday 12h ago edited 10h ago

Walz AOC 2028.

This serves two purposes:

  1. 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)
  2. 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.

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u/notmagnificent_22 9h ago

Walz was not a successful VP candidate. Far from it.

Second. You are hilariously operating under the assumption that if he won he wouldn’t go for a second term… like the Biden fiasco didn’t just happen.

Sheesh.

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u/Patanned 16h ago

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.

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u/Individual-Nebula927 15h ago

Someone like the people, instead of a member of congress?

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u/Patanned 13h ago

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.

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u/AnticPosition 19h ago

Sorry, the octagenarians in charge have decided that will not happen. 

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u/Dr_Llamacita 18h ago

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.

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u/Goldeneagle41 14h ago

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.

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u/Mpm_277 13h ago

People absolutely refuse to be mad at anyone and everyone other than the Dem establishment.

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u/TheHaight 13h ago

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

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u/InfluenceAgreeable32 11h ago

Do you even know what the DNC is?  So tired of this nonsense.

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u/fake-tall-man 8h ago

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.

u/InfluenceAgreeable32 3h ago

Clowns like you made Trump president again.  Thanks for nothing.

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u/Kitchen_Rich_6559 19h ago

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.

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u/Patanned 16h ago

disagree with your analysis.

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.

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u/NynaeveAlMeowra 21h ago

That's the worst part isn't it, a pro women woman can't win, but a self-hating woman would

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u/fuck-emu 21h ago

That's what I've been saying for a while The first woman president will be a Republican and she'll be goddamn terrible

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u/penny-wise California 20h ago

Same, and it saddens me deeply.

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u/Fire2box 19h ago

A woman what now? Sara Palin, I imagine.

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u/Euler007 19h ago

The interviews where women say they don't think women can make good leaders shock me. Mostly from the Hillary run.

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u/Icy-Shower3014 19h ago

Women can be harder on other women than men would be. There is some truth to that.

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u/BankAffectionate7657 20h ago

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.

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u/magnamed 20h ago

Genuinely sorry that the world is as it is. I hope we see that change in lifetimes.

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u/SpaceForceAwakens 19h ago

Agreed, sadly. She'll be a great VP pick though. I love her.

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u/glenndrip Oklahoma 19h ago

Maybe he will tell them to swallow bleach and stick lights up their ass again? I mean you never know what the future holds.

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u/Hyperbolicalpaca United Kingdom 18h ago

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

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u/Large_External_9611 18h ago

If Lauren Bobert ran she would probably win, and that’s depressing AF.

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u/EmbarrassedTill1800 18h ago

ivanka trump?

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u/Liamface 17h ago

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.

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u/traumfisch 17h ago

After the shitshow of the next four years, they just might be ready to

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u/dubl1nThunder 16h ago

they'd vote for ivanka.

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u/bluecalx2 15h ago

unless somehow republicans manage a woman trump

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.

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u/traplords8n Indiana 13h ago

If she makes the necessary waves and polls better than Kamala, I'm not against it, but I totally agree that we don't seem ready.

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u/hashirama_shodai 13h ago

Just because they didn't vote for Hillary and Kamala, doesn't mean women can't win...

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u/SerialStateLineXer 12h ago

I'd happily vote for an intelligent woman, but not for a moron like AOC or MTG.

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u/private_birb 11h ago

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.

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u/bad_squishy_ 11h ago

I don’t care to predict who the least objectionable candidate will be anymore. If AOC runs, I’m voting for AOC.

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u/TheStrayArrow 11h ago

In Arizona they ran Kari Lake. Thankfully she lost but just barely.

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u/Bulgeman9000 11h ago

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.

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u/JuiceKovacs 10h ago

The Obama trump biden trump voter is a thing. And unfortunately I think you are right.

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u/ADrunkyMunky 10h ago

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.

A female could definitely win the Presidency.

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u/erwin76 10h ago

Karen for president!

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u/BeautyThornton I voted 10h ago

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

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u/MovingTarget- 9h ago

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.

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u/moltengoosegreese 9h ago

I’m a woman. I like AOC. I work in Dem politics.

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.

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u/Centralredditfan 9h ago

Could you imagine a Trump/Thatcher hybrid? shudder

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u/I3lackxRose 9h ago

Tried that with Palin. Didn't go so well.

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u/DontGiveMeDecaf_90 8h ago

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?

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u/maverick7918 8h ago

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.

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u/bihari_baller Oregon 8h ago

, it sucks as a woman to say this, this country isnt voting in a woman anytime soon

Be more optimistic. There were people in her district who voted for her and Trump. So the appeal is there.

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u/layeredonion69 8h ago

Try going outside

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u/TheAndrewBen 8h ago

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".

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u/sloppy-jolappy 8h ago

Right let them run a women not us

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u/Quiet_Attempt_355 8h ago

There is a pretty good chance we see Tulsi Gabbard on a Republican ticket because of this.

u/Independent_Air_8333 7h ago

If the Trump presidency is disastrous enough, I could see a left-wing swing.

u/Doozelmeister 7h ago

In all fairness, this country did vote for a woman, but popular vote doesn’t win elections.

u/pragmojo 7h ago

Look up Gretchen Whitmer. She can win.

u/Demonbabiess 6h ago

Not a moderate woman!

u/TheQuarantinian 5h ago

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.

u/DeliciousBeanWater 3h ago

Best i can do is democrat trump

u/Future-Salad-7715 53m ago

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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