5 reasons why doubts about the electability of the Women Candidates are misguided

[crazytown]

Vox, August 15, 2019
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/15/18525308/electability-women-candidates-2020-elizabeth-warren-kamala-harris-amy-klobuchar-kirsten-gillibrand

Women candidates are constantly asked about their electability. Here are 5 reasons that’s misguided.

Summary-

1) Women candidates have a proven track record of winning, flipping the lion’s share of districts Democrats retook in 2018

2) The top 2020 women Democrats have never lost an election

3) There is no data to suggest a woman can’t win the Midwest — or other critical states

4) Voters are more excited about electing a woman

5) Electability is a misleading construct

Detailed argument in the OP.

[Hortensis]

1. One example of why all those may not be enough:

Brian Kemp and the Republican Party of GA targeted millions of black citizens in various ways for disenfranchisement. Whites also, but this picture is for black men.

In spite of that, a minority but real number of black male voters who had voted for Obama did NOT vote for Stacey Abrams for governor.

I use this example because I live in GA and my election was blatantly stolen, because what the Republicans are doing in GA and US to overset democracy is the same, and because the danger to all of us is the same - but to no one more than POC. And yet, despite the threat to them directly, (I think approximately 10% of black male Obama voters), that apparently didn't matter fuck-all compared to the facts that Stacey was a female and a Democrat. (Over half of all AA men are conservative, but probably more in GA, and conservatives really don't like having Democrats as their choice. That matters. More men of all races are more conservative.)

While we're at it, please note that two of our Democratic candidates for president are #FiveWhiteMen who ignored 5 male leaders and fought to displace the one female. They were willing to turn the house speakership over to anyone but her. They were trying to harness misogyny, and it backfired only somewhat. But as one of them in backtracking sort of when they were under attack, if people want a woman we have plenty of women who'd be just as good. They settled for having the only woman among 12 top leaders in congress agree to self term-limit. Some on this forum, and a number of new female congressmen were all in with all of it.

Misogyny is real, and it's far more prevalent among women than most people realize, as are lack of integrity and corruptibility. I wouldn't have voted for anyone who promised Seth Moulton she'd oppose Nancy in return for his funding to her campaign, but those who did and claimed they did it for principle were all noisily feted here as heroines by both men and women.

That's not changed, and that's not even talking about non-Democratic voters. Or the massively misogynistic self-immolation of too many Democrats who preferred literally anyone for president to the bitch. Studies demonstrate beyond question that misogyny was a huge reason behind Hillary's "unlikability." If anything, the presidential glass ceiling has probably thickened with the poisoning and hardened divisions of our electorate.

[Thekaspervote]

4. I would dearly love to see a Fe prez. Sadly I think you are right

Hillary herself said, (not recently) that the country isn’t ready. And, says in her book “women were under extreme pressure by husbands employers and fathers not to vote for the girl.”

IMHO there hasn’t been enough of a shift... yet. Yes, women were elected in big numbers- in 2918 to congress, senate, mayors, counsel persons, that’s great progress. But it wasn’t the presidency either. It will happen, but not this time.

[Hortensis]

5. Yes. Hillary knows. The presidency has become a remote citadel.

Just as electing Obama by wide margins twice, though, has been followed by a spike in racist passions and increased racist alignment in one party, I suspect the problem isn't that a majority of us wouldn't be able to elect a woman if these were normal times (heck, we'd have President Hillary for sure), but that in these crazy ones Democrats running a woman would cause the roiling pot of pathological cultural divisions, very much including anxiety over changing roles of men and women, to boil right over. Especially with Russia's help.

I think we badly need a calming-down period, a bit of that "return to normalcy" most voters want. I'd hoped a period of increased security and prosperity achieved by 8 years of a competent progressive Hillary admin + Democratic senate, building on the 8 of Obama, would bring us safely through this.

[Thekaspervote]

6. Hear ya!!

[loyalsister]

2. A woman was clearly electABLE in 2016

She had the more than enough votes to be electEd. The distribution and lack of turnout were the barriers.
When we know what the barriers were there is no good reason to assume we can't address them this time.

[crazytown]

3. As long as she's not eLeCtAbLe

[dlk]

7. The Electability Issue is Grounded in Sexism

Given men’s track record in running things, what are people so afraid of if a woman is in charge?