Younger men threw their support behind Donald Trump in 2024 after favoring Biden in 2020
The United States is still not ready for a female president after more than a century of unsuccessful campaigns for the White House, according to former First Lady Michelle Obama.
“As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready,” Obama said earlier this month in a live conversation with actor Tracee Ellis Ross that was published Friday.
“That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying,” she said. “You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time.”
Hillary won the nationwide popular vote, though.
“Ready for” is a pretty ambiguous qualifier. Considering that 8 years of Obama drove the racists absolutely batshit insane for the foreseeable future makes me think we weren’t even ready for the first Black President, and we certainly aren’t ready for whatever the fuck Trump is. Personally I think things like that are what shes referring to and it’s not so much about just winning the election.
You don’t think it’s progressive that the USA has its first black president closely followed by it’s first orange president? I’d say that’s a society that is closer to saying it doesn’t see colour.
Seriously though, I think the fact America hasn’t had a female leader is strange for a country that used to claim to be the greatest nation on earth.
Fair point.
American here. I remember shortly after the election I was visiting Indian co-workers in Bangalore. Over dinner they were asking why it took so long for us to elect a Black President.
They were clearly expecting a nuanced and historical perspective about the South, colonialism, economy, yadda
But my only and honest one-word answer: “Racism”
I grew up in a city that had gangs and trailer parks. Racism as deep as (and virtually a part of) religion. Those undereducated fucks hated (n-word)
EDIT: ofc Obama being both educated and black … he was their perfect nemesis
We may not have been ready for Trump, but we sure deserved him. Turns out the majority of our government actually functioning depended on decorum and norms. And a lot of laws depend on the whims of those with power to actually enforce them…
Don’t you know the rule is that only geriatric white men can win?
Thanks, Obama.
I mean that both sarcastically and literally. He has been made into such a bogeyman to the right.
Neoliberals can fuck right off. I’ll vote for AOC.
The claim is against the nation, not any one individual voter. She’s right.
Sadly, I agree with her.
The way they treated her and spoke of her while she was First Lady, i don’t blame her for wanting nothing to do with politics. Plenty of low key racists on the left too, so she would get it from all sides
They said that about a black president. So. No. I don’t agree. AOC is very popular.
AOC is very popular.
Among liberals.
She won’t win a national election. Too many Americans don’t like her.
Liberals are the majority. .so.
They said that about a black president. So. No. I don’t agree.
WTF…US Right wing went insane over Obama, now we have SS squads patroling the streets for people of color.
So he didn’t get elected like they said he wouldn’t?
AOC is popular only in the northeast USA, like the others. She also politically untested. I agree with Michelle.
Popular in the SW too
And NW
And Midwest. She’s very popular here in Illinois.
…Politically untested? The fuck? Where have you been?
Besides, it’s not like the people are being elected are either tested or passed their tests by a reasonable amount anyway. It’s a weak excuse when it only seems to apply sometimes, just like everyone who said Bernie was too old a decade ago but who voted for Trump even though his mind was already fading then and was halfway gone this time around.
Politically untested?
I’m old enough to remember when MEN running for US president were always famous politicians on the national level before ascending to the presidency. They wrote books, had famous legislation presented and passed in their name, were nationally noisy and nationally well known. AOC is mostly a northeastern US political celebrity. She has not been tested under political pressure that would threaten her safe candidacy.
God, you’re such a little baby. In the 1980s the US let Ronald Raegan kick the entire country in the crotch and he was just a shit actor with shit for brains. Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected the governor of California over two decades ago and he’s not the worst but he was hardly a politician of any renown. You’re either doing this on purpose or are genuinely this stupid and both are a level of utterly pathetic that I’m surprised you can be remotely happy with yourself for even a single minute of the day.
Take your worthless, unfounded, hypocritical, and massively sexist opinion and shove it way the hell up your ass.
The fuck?
She is a representative from one of the NY district. That’s quite a unique situation, most of America isn’t like that. AOC is an amazing, smart, young woman politician, with great ideas. This combained with her nationality, means more than half of the country hates her with passion.
Bernie
Bernie situation is exactly like that. He is too old, and people who would be voting for him if he was younger, wouldn’t. However people who voted for trump would vote for a wet pile of rags if they affirmed their prejudices. That’s a fundamental struggle of the american broadly speaking “left”, you need to be a platonic ideal of a best person ever to even be eligible, and you will still lose to a platonic ideal of evil seven times out of ten.That’s seriously your response? That she’s from NY and that means she can’t possibly understand how anything else works? That dogshit country elected Donald Trump, a dude with the opposite of qualifications who also came from New York and who lives in a huge mansion/villa. AOC has actually had a real job. She’s had to work late shifts, she’s had unreliable income. The country might not look like New York City but it’s full of people who she understands and respects.
Take your goofy opinion and take a hike.
“Oh yeah? If you think America will not vote for a young smart left leaning woman with credentials, then why did America elected an old stupid right wing white criminal man twice?”.
Buddy, do you, like, have problems with all this “if a then b” stuff? Logic and all?You’re trying to say that the reason she won’t be elected is [reason X] and I’m saying that despite [reason X] the US still elected Trump. Your argument is bad because you’ve already been proven wrong, and given the history of US politics you’ve been proven wrong hundreds of times.
Your low level of literacy is not a problem with me.
AOC is an amazing, smart, young woman politician, with great ideas
So let her run for Prime Minister of Canada. USA loves them pale, male and stale.
Obama also hadn’t been nationally mocked, caricaturized, and vilified from the beginning of his political career. I’m far from a political historian, but I can’t think of any domestic political figure who has been so frequently and intensely criticized as AOC.
I could maybe see it with a decisive blue wave in 2026, but then only if it fuels like another one in 2028. That said, a lot of things can happen between now and then, morning is impossible.
Who criticizing AOC? What’s to criticize?
Uh, basically the entire right and a good chunk of the center
I’m not saying their criticisms are justified, it’s all a bunch of vapid shit and straight up lies. She’s too young, she’s too sassy, she was a bartender, she’s a communist, whatever. None of it matters, even when what they’re saying isn’t just made up. But it’s out there, a lot. I’m actually kind of jealous of you for not being exposed to enough right wing sentiment to have experienced it.
Look, I love the theory kiddies for the scholarship and devotion. But you have to spend at least a little time considering sociology and rhetoric, learning how the average person actually responds to stimuli.
The bourgeoisie owns the media. The majority of the proletariat mostly consume corporate media. If I could make a genie wish that everyone woke up tomorrow with perfect rational faculties, to educate themselves and act in their own best interests, we could have a bloodless revolution by next week.
But I don’t have a magic lamp, and the average voter is going to wake up tomorrow the way they woke up today: highly susceptible to propaganda.
So as baseless as the criticisms are, they are ubiquitous. Search any right wing, or “centrist”, media source for “AOC” and you’ll find hundreds of insults and mischaracterizations. I really would not be surprised at all if she is the most criticized political figure (excepting presidents) of this generation.
That’s why I think a VP position for a relatively bland, but roughly progressive, old white candidate would be a great opportunity to offset all that vitriol.
Mamdani won despite all that. The people are ready for an unbought president.
Mamdani won in quite possibly the most left wing office in the nation. Good for him, good for them, and I hope it spreads.
Maybe it does by 2027ish, that would be really cool. That would be a radically different political landscape and my strategic opinion would change.
But in general I find that it’s usually most accurate to assume things will roughly remain the same. So while I’m optimistic that the landscape might change, I would still prefer to focus my strategy on assuming that it doesn’t.
If the tides start turning with some volume, it’s easy to pivot. But I’d rather be overprepared than naïve.
Well I can mostly agree with the idea that things kind of stay the same regardless.
But I think that is over now. Because of the extreme situation that trump has caused, people will not be content just to go back to how it was a year ago.
A breaking point has occurred.
The kidnappings. The genocide. Healthcare. Food stamps. The economy. Tariffs. Cost of everything. Rent and housing costs being so high. Union busting.
The big corps got too greedy.
They could have kept us mostly happy and we wouldn’t have made much of a fuss.
They could have drained us slow. Like they have been. AnD we wouldn’t have made much fuss.
But now they have taken everything left. In one fell swoop. And people are pissed.
Maybe. Maybe not. You’d be surprised how much inertia the general population has.
Like I don’t deny that there is some shifting of sentiment, but we’ve had sentiment shifts before. I think you may be overestimating the extent of that shift. People are mostly oblivious.
A lot of conservatives need to die off I guess
Hogwash. Women have come within spitting distance of winning the presidency. Twice. Kamala and Hillary were both very unlikable candidates running no the same neoliberal platform that voters have rejected in the last three elections.
spitting distance? That is one Magic lougie, Jerry.
Yes. Spitting distance. They were both close elections. What rock have you been living under?
Yeah, they would have won if they had progressive policies.
What gave you this indication?
Needing a “change” candidate, which is why Obama Trump and Biden won
a “change” candidate
BidenAh, you’re just saying words then
It was a change from Trump, not so much wide scale change itself, obviously he ran on return to business as usual
By this logic, every candidate ever is a candidate of change, even incumbent runs on changing something he didn’t change first time around. In fact, Biden was widely criticized for literally saying “nothing will fundamentally change”, so calling him a change candidate is wrong even by the metrics you’re trying to introduce.
K
The only thing holding them back was their support of the status quo.
If either of them had run on a platform of holding billionaires accountable for stealing from the working class, they would’ve won in a landslide.
They’d rather have fascism though so that’s what we get. Fascists aren’t going to raise their taxes.
They lost against the most unlikeable candidate ever. So no, Obama is right. If there is even going to be another presendential election (highly doubt there is) it would be fatal if dems send another woman. America is way too sexist for that.
Unlikable to you. Not to his voters. And Trump also beat ten times as many men as he did women. So logically we can’t ever run a male candidate ever again. The voters clearly don’t like male Democratic candidates. Biden only won due to covid.
Voters have selected a neoliberal candidate every election for decades. Republicans are even more neoliberal than the mainstream Democratic party is. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is inherently a neoliberal tenet. “Free market” economics is a neoliberal tenet.
Neoliberal doesnt mean “new liberal” as in “new left wing politics”. It is a rehashing of the term liberal as in classical liberalism. Neoliberalism is a spectrum of political approaches that spans everything from virtually-no-government libertarianism all the way to ineffectual big government (IE mainstream leftwing politics). Its all various approaches to the question “how small can government be while still maintaining the status quo of the social contract, the market, and extractive economic policy?”.
Progressive politics, of most all forms, are closer to classical liberalism because classical liberalism also spawned socialism eventually, just as it spawned neoliberalism. It goes back to the idea that government should actually be something for people, not the bare minimum of whatever placates people while still being able to bleed them dry.
Quite honestly, given the American penchant for electing neoliberals, and the rich man’s affinity for funding them, a neoliberal woman is far more likely to get elected than a woman who isnt. Hence Kamala and Hillary both being nearly elected. The only reason they lost is because they were running against an even more neoliberal candidate whos party has the EC locked up. America elected its first black president because he was a neoliberal. If Obama had been a Mamdani style progressive candidate he would have gotten smacked down by John McCain. He probably wouldnt have gotten anywhere near the nomination
Well, I’m ready, but it is fair to say we as a whole are not. Sexism is deep here - even with people who don’t meant or want to be sexist.
The leader of the KKK endorsed Obama over Hilary. Let that sink in.
Yikes!
Oh don’t worry, I wasn’t considering you in the first place, Michelle.
It’s wild how plenty of more conservative countries have had female presidents in the past.
Very few non-dictatorial countries have ever had the equivalent to a US President. Most other countries also have a Prime Minister (and many also have a Governor General). Germany adds in a chancellor. Some even have actual royalty or religious leaders whose only political job is supposed to be to disband parliament when things get out of hand.
Having a pick me conservative female candidate reinforces all their values while co-opting more women through representation. In this respect having a female President could be way worse, think Erica Kirk.
I agree with your point and I think the reason it hasn’t happen has a lot to do with the extreme sexism the US has.
Having a pick me conservative female candidate reinforces all their values while co-opting more women through representation. In this respect having a female President could be way worse, think Erica Trump.
Yes, that is the fundamental flaw of identity politics.
I agree with your point and I think the reason it hasn’t happen has a lot to do with the extreme sexism the US has.
Yes, but in other countries they still get elected despite the sexism. I find it hard to believe that Americans hate women more than the people in struggling third world democracies do.
You make some really good points. I had to look it up and apparently it is not uncommon to have a country that has never had a woman as its top leader.
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-countries-never-had-female-leader-1906993
Also, if you add up all the years women have actually been a leader it is just a token amount.
So clearly this is not just a US thing. Why women are so grossly underrepresented in politics appears to be pretty universal.
Why is anyone asking Michelle Obama to run for president? I mean, I know the bar for presidential prerequisites is buried 6 feet down after Trump, but why do the democrats keep propping up women candidates based solely on the basis of “she is a woman that you know”?
Because the neoliberals are tied to identity politics over substance out of necessity.
This gets really ugly when Democrats start rejecting candidates for their minority status. Kamala explicitly rejected Pete Buttigieg as a running mate because he was gay. Kamala rejected him using the logic of a thousand other bigots, “I have no problem with it, but others won’t understand and will judge me for it.” This is the exact same logic that employers across the country use to deny hiring queer people, trans people, etc. Employers will claim to not be bigoted themselves, but that their customers wouldn’t get it, so they simply can’t hire the queer candidate.
It’s the same thing that happened with Biden.
The ruling class wants to make sure that a progressive never even gets the nomination.
IIRC she polled better than Harris before the election, despite not even seeking the office.
I mean, who didn’t?
Maybe the US will be mature enough to join the civilized world in a century or two.
Is there a civilized world left anywhere? Ireland maybe?
New Zealand, Mexico
Mexico? You mean the country where the police are somehow even more corrupt than they are in the US (which is a high fucking bar) and politicians are executed by the cartel for not falling in line?
That Mexico?
Every country has their own unique set of problems. Mexico is not some utopia.
New Zealand copies a lot from USA, we are slowly becoming less civilized
It’s more about the electoral college and who is the elector for the state unfortunately. Which is why a trump is trying to make sure his people are in those positions.
Honestly, the US entire election system needs to be ripped out, getting rid of first past the post should be seen as a national emergency.
That would in an instant get rid of Gerrymandering, and open the way for new parties that actually has a chance to get a say.
Now, obviously neither the Dems nor the GOP is in any way interested in that, so it might take a full collapse of the current system for this to happen.
Sadly both current parties in the US are way to the right of a proper political compass, so both will fight proportional representation and getting rid of the EC…
I think you mean “Gerrymandering”
“Jerry Mandering” just sounds like a gay porn actors stage name.
Jeri Mandering is Greg Abbott’s drag persona.
Thanks, fixed!
Besides the entire “eeeeekkk a woman in the white house!!” Thing, can we please not have Michelle Obama there? I don’t want families who time after time contro the government, fuck that.
If someone omin a family becomes president it should automatically rule out any other family member from even running
