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I want to believe we could have a woman president so long as she ran on something other than being a wet noodle that's trying to be #relatable more than just being a good candidate.
Or better yet, running on something more than
"Are you really gonna let Trump win?"
It's funny, in 2015, I thought that that platform would be the only way a woman would be able to win over such a hard hurdle of all the conservative states with the electoral college we have.
The amount of people that looked past Donald Trump's flaws or embraced his hateful rhetoric, and blamed their decision on their dislike for Hillary was huge.
I didn't like her either. She wasn't my favorite candidate by a long shot, but I still can't believe our country is in a better place now than it would have been if she had won.
Also, it's hard to believe that was ten years ago. Gross.
I do, because you have to remember: Trump wasn't a one-off anomaly; he was the manifestation of deep structural issues and multiple converging crises within American society. It was a balloon that was going to inflate and inflate until it eventually popped, and if it didn't pop in 2016 it would have even harder in 2020. Hell, I could think of an even worse scenario: Trump is sidelined in the American fascist movement and a fascist that actually knows what he's doing takes his place.
Phew. Glad it popped and everyone got it out of their system.
"This isn't the worst it could've been" and "this is good" are not the same thing. Had Hillary (or any other do-nothing Dem) won in 2016 things would've been marginally worse in the sense that MAGA would've been stronger, not weaker, but that doesn't change the fact that things are in fact terrible and about to get much more terrible. The assumption that Hillary in 2016 = no fascism in 2025, however, is plain fantasy.
I don't know about things being worse had Hillary won. I do know that was the worst election I've seen in my life in terms of candidate quality. Hillary was the ultimate insider running for self-aggrandizement and Trump was a political outsider running for his brand out of cynical greed and sheer ego. Hillary had already lost to an outsider when she lost the 2008 primary to Obama—that was a sign of things to come.
Hillary would've been a far better stateswoman, no doubt. And obviously Trump's policies were and are detestable. But I understand why Trump won. It shocked me at the time, but it makes sense seeing the past ten years.
Populist candidates are what everyone is looking for. Not the party elite. Look at the backlash against Schumer for treating politics as normal. And the backlash against Israel when we've traditionally been a staunch ally regardless of party. And against older politicians in general. We want the old guard out. Republicans listened to the people. Dems didn't. Still aren't, based on the reaction to Mamdani winning the primary.
Want to see a woman win the presidency? Run AOC. I don't know if this is the election for it. Are we "ready" for her? I don't know. But she's the kind of woman candidate who could win.
Not disagreeing with you, but the last few years in America and worldwide have convinced me that, at least in the West, backlash to women leaders is mostly a fantasy. I mean how many fascist leaders or prominent personalities are actually women? You can't convince me the American left and center-left are more sexist than the literal fascists who elected literal fascist Georgina Meloni, or the literal neo-Nazis supporting literal neo-Nazi Alice Wiedel. People will vote for an Apache helicopter if it promotes their (real or perceived) interests; shockingly little of modern Western elections boils down to gender.
In 2015, I saw Trump as the key to causing more chaos than the establishment can handle. If Hillary won (maybe in that timeline, Trump was sunk by the RNC coronating Jeb Bush as nominee, and then Bush lost the general), the rich would only get stronger, and their rise would be much more subtle than it is now. In our world, Trump doesn't hide the massive corruption he and his rich buddies are doing. In Hillary's world, the more under-the-hood corruption of the 2000s and early 2010s would have continued without anyone trying to stop them.
This may come off as a stretch, but I claim that Mamdani (nor anyone like him) wouldn't have been able to become NYC mayor in Hillary's world. He wouldn't have the support, since people in Hillary's world are even bigger sheep than the ones in ours.
On the other hand, certain policies pre-2015 might have survived. I think Roe v Wade would still be with us in Hillary's world.
Clinton stood no chance against Trump because of the large number of women voters that were never going to vote for her; not because of who she was in 2015 but because of her staying with Bill after he cheated on her.
Even the same ardent feminists that you would assume want to see a woman president more than anything still had little interest in her, in particular, being the first woman president. Too many women see her as a woman that stayed married to jackass just because of what it afforded her politically, financially, ect. Plus, they especially did not like the expectation placed on them to vote for her solely based on gender considering they viewed her as a traitor to women more broadly.
It says a lot about how hated she is by other women that a huge contingent of them voted for a serial sexual assailant rather than her
She literally got more votes than him
She stood no chance of winning over enough women in red states to win the election, even though that was obviously part of the political calculus (or lack thereof) in pushing her as the candidate
I do think there's a debate to be had as to if were in a "better place" then if Clinton had won
If she had won, we wouldn't be better off relative to 2015. We would have been in the same shit we were in 10 years ago with a housing crisis on the rise and COVID would have still happened and probably wouldn't have gone too radically differently.
Wed still have increased income inequality and we saw under Biden that the main Liberal answer to climate change is Electric Cars which net doesn't help and in fact worsens our e-waste issue.
Obviously, I don't know this is how it would have gone for sure, but the democrats really haven't given me much to believe in.
So would we have been "better off" with a dem successor compared to the 2015 status quo? No I don't think so and I think we all knew that and it doesn't inspire people to vote or participate in elections.
Would we have been better off to what we got? Yeah probably. But that's stuff we didn't completely know until hindsight kicked in. I think we all assumed he'd be a lame president and not a modern Commodus or Nero.
Now, I don't subscribe to acceleration ist views, but there is that view point as well.
Under that ideology, we are better off compared to a Clinton or Harris win because they would have subdued the flakier radical elements in society longer.
Trump being president and his flagrant disregard for our status quo system is a massive stepping stone towards a revolution of some sort to hopefully fix the problems of our 2015 society plus the additional inflated issues by Trump.
Trump is directly responsible for Kavanaugh, Barret, and Gorsuch. That alone has been destructive already and will reap us tragic consequences for decades to come. Would Hillary have signed the ERA and gotten the right to bodily autonomy written into the law so it couldn't be "reinterpreted" away? Maybe. But she wouldn't have set attack dogs after it, and after trans people and immigrants.
I don't agree with a lot of this, but I can't reply a point by point here. The main thing I'll say is that Clinton wouldn't have defunded the pandemic response team before a pandemic and certainly would have set a better example wearing masks than Trump did.
The country would always have been divided about the COVID response, but Trump followed his base and furthered the divisions.
This is a petroleum industry talking point and it is false.
He was clearly a narcissist and a fascist, and many of us could see where this was going quite clearly. I was in a room full of hundreds of people on the night he was declared the winner, and many of those people openly wept in fear of the future.
What, that focusing solely on electric cars are not the solution to climate change and is only a band-aid? No, it's the truth.
It's better than ice cars in the short run, but you guys really need to focus on other, more practical solutions like better public transports and less car-centric infrastructure and laws.
You're changing the goalposts. I was clearly referring to the quoted portion of your assertion that electric cars are a net negative for climate change.
This is false:
Thank you for the advice on how the US should operate. Good points that no one has ever considered.
Cities, states, and regions have been and are continuing to improve the public transit infrastructure. The problem exists primarily at the federal level, as well as cost, local zoning, eminent domain and the lawsuits that follow, and certain state and federal environmental laws that result in lengthy studies and more lawsuits.
These are all factors that have slowed down the California High-Speed Rail Project, for example. The goal is for it is to eventually connect every major city in California to high-speed rail (and Las Vegas via another high-speed rail line, Brightline West). Excluding Las Vegas, the total length of track is roughly the length of Belgium to Poland. And that's half of one state.
The Northeast is already covered in rail. Going from city to city is easier that way, even though it's not high speed. NYC to DC is 3.5 hours and requires no cars, door to door. This works because of density, the same reason it works in Europe and Asia. The US is very large and doesn't have density everywhere. Building and maintaining the 4,500 km of high-speed rail track necessary to connect Los Angeles to NYC is expensive and difficult. That's Lisbon to Moscow.
I actually said they're a net negative and I stand by that.
Lithium mining, their fixed short life spans, and the problems of car focused cities as a whole are not addressed by going all EV. Marginally better than combustion? Sure. I'll give you that.
But ultimately its manufacturing and the lack of repair ability make it bad over all.
Well, first of all, you could read usernames. That would be helpful to determine what points you're going to argue against and what the appropriate response would be.
Second, nobody is asserting that the US never considered public transport, we were only addressing the actual decision of the US in general, which IS very much focused on electric cars to the detriment of progress on much saner public transport projects. The Vegas Loop and similar projects immediately come to mind.
The laws that gets in the way of public transport projects are a result of the US's obsession with car-centrism and capitalism. Instead of thinking of long term solutions, they'd rather clutch to a band aid solution to keep their status quo.
And discussions about public transport is not focussed solely on trains. On the contrary, the most depressing thing about the us car-centrism is the inability to do short trips without needing a car. Pedestrian and cycling infrastructure are pretty cheap relative to building high speed train networks or even inner city metros, yet the US even struggle with that.
The source of the problem are the people themselves who have been deluded into thinking they need to force everyone to use a car simply because they don't want to use public transportation, which is an absurd thought process. The focus on electric cars will only continue this brainwashing, not fix it, so it is a net negative in the long run.
Your solution is on the scale of decades — almost certainly over 100 years. None of our infrastructure is set up for this outside of cities that most of us have no interest in living in.
We certainly need more interim projects like electric cars and green energy.
The problem is I haven't seen much news of projects other than those types of interim projects that focus on electric cars. I mean, they spent millions of dollars on the Vegas Loop instead of on more sane public transport projects. America has a very unhealthy focus on electric cars because of their car-centric mindset and I don't see it changing any time soon unless people start pushing back on it.
Most of us don't want to live in cities or put our mobility in the hands of others. People who want it for everyone are primarily city folks who are used to that lifestyle. Those ideas are less popular with the people who would be most affected.
I know eventually the world will go that way and it'll be a good thing, but I'm also glad I won't live to see it because I have no desire whatsoever to live that way. The change will be generational. If folks try to impose it, there is going to be a lot of resistance and pushback. You have to get folks to want it.
More public transports benefits not only people who use public transports, but also people who use cars. You have the typical car-centric mindset that makes it harder for your country to progress in that area.
I know I'm certainly part of the problem. But it's a chicken and egg problem. You have to make people want to change while the change will be inconvenient short term. I don't know how that happens, other than very slowly over time.
Well, you could try and stop thinking that people are trying to make you use public transport and more along the line of not forcing you or anyone to use their car to go anywhere in a practical way. And imagine the improvement to traffic and safety once people who hates driving or not good at it are no longer forced to drive on the same road as you.
Gods, this is how I sell public transit to pro car people.
I am traffic. I want to be off the road and in a bus.
I just don't want my bus ride to be over an hour and a half long when the car ride is 10 minutes.
I'll settle for a bike commute because that's 30 minutes but it would require riding down a major road where the only thing protecting me from a car going 60 MPH is a painted white line and trust.
Yep, all we want are more options other than driving. A good cycling and pedestrian infrastructure even helps in making sure they're out of the road and not in the way of cars, something I'm sure a lot of car-centric people would actually be happy about. It's a net positive for everyone.
Most Americans live in dense cities.
Not true. Over 50% of our population lives in suburbs and small cities.
You're correct. I was thinking "not rural."
Tearing up all our cities and rebuilding them is way more wasteful that battery powered cars. This is not a switch you can just flip overnight. It is not something that can be done in the timeframe it would be needed.
Should we strive for those ideals with future development? Yes. And we're seeing some of that already.
I just want busses. That tears up nothing.
I just want bollards protecting pedestrian and bike traffic. That tears up nothing.
I want passenger trains between cities where there's already railing. That tears up nothing.
Is this honestly a bigger ask than a decade long rebuild of an interstate that will need another widening in 5 years after?
Or if you guys had an actual popular election instead of the whole Electoral College shit. A woman won the popular vote in 2016.
Just barely, though, and against what was at the time the worst qualified opponent in history (beat only by Trump himself in 2020 and 2024). Hillary was an awful candidate in her own right and the fact that she barely eeked out a popular vote win against Trump shows that.
I genuinely don't believe that a good, likeable, popular woman candidate who was free to campaign without the interference of the (mostly men) party's Old Guard would have no problem winning. We've got women in high offices in pretty much every other level of government. Just stop pushing out the worst, rich, pro-establishment candidates to the "progressive party" and demand a vote just because of their sex.
/rant
Hillary won by 3 million votes, but that's not enough for a Democrat to be appointed the presidency by the EC. A Republican can win by 3 million (Trump 47) or lose by 3 million (Trump 45) and be appointed, but a Democrat has to win by 8 million to be appointed (Biden). Maybe not that much, but +3M apparently isn't enough.
It's an absurd system that favours the right and that's why it exists. See also gerrymandering. They cannot win openly and they know it, and they aren't even hiding it.
If a woman performs a progressive Tea Party style takeover of the DNC, I can see her having a good shot at winning the general election.
I think something like that is bound to happen, just far too late.
Elizabeth Warren's "I think I'll have a beer" will live rent free in my head forever as the prime example of clumsy pandering.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/01/why-elizabeth-warrens-beer-moment-fell-flat/579544/
Damn. All this talk of conservatives being throat goats and we completely forgot how much Warren likes head.