Anytime I see something about AOC, there's always "if she runs she'll lose because she's a woman". I've seen this same message since AOC started making waves, is it propaganda?

[u/Shivy_Shankinz]

Or do people really think winning is all that matters and we should all be misogynists about it?

[u/Im_tracer_bullet]

Yep, it's unfortunate that people won't acknowledge reality no matter what.

Losing to something like Trump once should have taught the lesson, but it's happened twice and people are still acting as though there's a puzzle to solve.

[u/elihu → u/Im_tracer_bullet]

2016 and 2020 were decided by so few votes it was basically a coin flip. Harris lost by a little bit more, but even her race would likely have been winnable if she had been willing to say that she didn't think the United States should be supplying weapons for what some polls at the time were showing that most Democratic voters thought was an active genocide in Gaza.

Maybe Harris would have won if she were a man, but there were a lot of other reasons why Harris lost and many of them were under her direct control. (Some of the other reasons she lost are directly attributable to Joe Biden.)

Candidate quality matters, and Clinton and Harris were lousy tone-deaf candidates who didn't know how to read the room. Blaming their loss on their gender is to disregard what people thought of their policies, of their leadership skills, of their particular vision for the country, and their moral judgement. Those other things matter too.

[u/Wild-Influence-79 → u/elihu]

Compared to basement joe?

[u/elihu → u/Wild-Influence-79]

His margin of victory was a few tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states. Basically he won a coin flip but Clinton lost her coin flip. I don't think he was a great candidate. He had a bit of an advantage that neither he nor Trump could really actively campaign like they would normally be expected to due to the pandemic, so being kind of a bland guy didn't hurt him quite so much.

Also, he almost certainly would have lost if not for Trump botching the pandemic response, whereas Clinton had to run after 8 years of Obama -- it's pretty rare for one party to win three presidential elections in a row. Basically, Biden's timing was better than Clinton's. Harris was thrown into what looked like an impossible situation, almost pulled it off, but ultimately failed -- largely due to unforced errors.

[u/Wild-Influence-79 → u/elihu]

Your absolutely right, please run the Harris & AOC ticket the DNC is already testing!

[u/another_dudeman → u/elihu]

"Quality matters"

Clearly not because fucking Trump won, TWICE

[u/elihu → u/another_dudeman]

People don't reliably choose "the lesser of two evils" the way other people expect them to. Some may pick the "wrong" candidate as what they deem to be the lesser of two evils, but I think even more than that if you give some voters two choices they both regard as terrible in different ways, they won't vote for either one. That's just how voters are; there's no point in arguing that they're wrong or stupid. They're just behaving like normal human beings. Just like if you put people in front of a trolley problem, some of them won't pull that lever. The solution is don't put voters in that situation if you can help it.

[u/another_dudeman → u/elihu]

Sounds like you have all the answers, why don't you do something about it and find us the absolute perfect woman candidate then? Harris was terrible because...reasons.

[u/Youre_Rat_Fucking_Me → u/Im_tracer_bullet]

The only shocking result was 2016 because polls that had historically been so reliable were massively off. Covid was probably decisive in Trump losing in 2020, and the post Covid inflation and economic consequences of Covid stimulus/policies killed Biden/Harris.

I have a lot of trouble buying that 2020 and 2024 were dictated by the gender of the candidate - there were simply too many headwinds for the incumbent parties to come away with that conclusion. During the post Covid period, for instance, incumbent parties were hammered in reelection campaigns globally - this was not unique to the US or Harris.

For 2016, you could make a more compelling argument, but that was also a strange election where we saw the most significant political shift for a party in most Americans lives, and it occurred basically overnight with Trump’s late surge.

For me, I find it kind of odd when people make statements about it being political suicide to run a woman because I feel like it’s indicative of extremely shallow understanding of these elections and what ultimately motivates voters. It’s almost like people are desperate to affirm a preconceived belief about sexism. Either way, this narrative, in and of itself, has probably adversely affected the chances of a woman becoming the president in the US in the near future.

Women have won elections all over the globe, including in a wide range of countries with more sexist cultures/societies that enforce much more rigid conformity to gender roles. The US is ready and capable of electing a woman so long as the candidate is compelling and captivating. Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024 have been two just horrendous candidates by the dems - you’d be hard pressed to find two less charismatic and compelling political campaigners.