Is A Woman President Impossible? What I’ve Learned From The 2020 Race

What was a probable undercurrent became an almost definitive reality on Thursday (March 5) any time former front-runner Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) suspended her campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination: Our next president will be a male. It wasn’t a surprising revelation soon after Warren’s disappointing efficiency in the primary elections. Nevertheless it still stung for several people, especially women, several of whom are usually tired of being told that we can do anything we set our minds to, yet are shown, time and time again, that “anything” still doesn’t mean “everything.”


It’s a bittersweet pill to swallow, even for a generation of ladies and girls who went to college at higher rates than their mothers and, eventually, even their male counterparts, and who visualize both culturally and politically that their wins are still valued far less than those of their male counterparts. I didn’t know what the future would hold Whenever I was little, or that in 2020, we would still be racking up firsts in ways that are as galling as they are inspiring. Although I do remember precociously telling my parents once or twice not that I wanted to be president one day, although that I would be.


I abandoned those plans sometime between my fifth and 10th birthdays, nevertheless not because I thought it wasn’t possible that a woman could do it. And all these years later, I know more than ever that females definitely are capable of it. In the bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, we saw six females make the case they could be the best-case scenario. Five of these had even won past elections on the road toward their candidacies, often more consistently than their male counterparts. Their policies were similar to their male colleagues, however their success was not. None of their appeals resonated with voters enough to hold the line.


Of any candidate, Elizabeth “I Have A Plan” Warren was possibly the ideal example of what it means to do the work — though even she, with all her plans and policies, was not a brilliant candidate. No one is. Although she was one of the few who seemed most prepared to admit once her ideas fell short and seemed interested in fighting to create things right. Is that due in part to the fact that men apologize far less often than ladies do? Perhaps.


It is partially reductive to blame sexism because the sole demise of her, or any other woman candidate’s campaign. Nevertheless it's also not entirely off the mark: In Super Tuesday exit polls conducted by the Washington Post, although, most Democratic voters indicated they wanted to support a candidate who could beat Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton won 3 million more votes than Trump in 2016, only to lose him because of the electoral college, and report right after report quoted voters who weren’t willing to take that risk with another woman candidate again.


Warren herself pointed to the divide in a press conference she gave soon after suspending her campaign. “If you mention, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,' each person says, ‘Whiner!’,” she mentioned to reporters. “And in the event you mention, ‘No, there was no sexism,’ about a bajillion girls think, ‘What planet do you live on?’”


It would not only be impossible, yet willfully obscures the facts to judge the female candidates as if they were not who they are, which is to mention, ladies. As Samhita Mukhopadhyay wrote for Teen Vogue, identity informs every element of our lives, also it affects how other people visualize us, also. Even people who are fighting to dismantle sexism can be influenced, and maybe even a little bit spooked, by the sexist and racist standards in the world around us. A new report by the United Nations, published the same week that Warren dropped out, found that 90 percent of respondents globally contained some categorize kind of bias against females — that includes the 39 percent of respondents from the U.S. Who mentioned that males make better leaders.


However it is also simplistic, and patronizing, to recommend that people of any one identity order will inherently support someone who “looks like them.” Because we cannot forget: A plurality of white females voters sided with then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. And not every woman has other women’s best interests at heart — and if your feminism is exclusionary to some people, does it actually serve anyone at all?


And this wasn’t the only hurdle that the 2020 election has laid bare, given that what began out because the most diverse Democratic primary pool we’ve ever seen became whiter, straighter, and more male because the months dragged on. That isn’t to mention that white, straight, male candidates can’t vouch for the constituents whom they don't mirror; both Biden and Bernie Sanders have their own track records on those points. However frequently, topics like reproductive rights and revenue inequality seemed like afterthoughts while in the debates, rather than the critical issues they are.  Warren had plans for them. So did Harris.


All of this serves as a reminder that so several things factor into the easily-debunked strawman called “electability.” Because make no mistake: if they run, ladies win elections at the same rate that males do. If anything is standing in the way about whether females are electable, it’s the fight to get them to run at all. And it’s also essential to hold good candidates accountable, and to prepare clear that they should not rely on representation alone to earn support: Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is still in the race, nevertheless females voters are not coalescing around her.


My lived experience was never going to be totally reflected on the 2020 debate stage, and I made peace with that a while ago. (If you are also a queer Latina who was raised in Los Angeles by divorced parents and you also wish to run for president in 2024 or in back of, please, step up to the plate.) Nevertheless for the most part, the optics of all however literally seeing myself in that spotlight miss a larger point about what a president can and should do. What I have learned to look for, as a substitute opposed to a reflect, is someone who will center the needs of people like me, and the people even more marginalized than I am. It’s a rubric that I think holds every candidate accountable similarly, and I’m also stubborn to give it up now — the straight, white men shouldn't get a pass simply because they’re the only options we’ve got.


That doesn’t mean that I’ve given up hope that we’ll one day visualize a woman in the White Residence. I’d be lying if I mentioned I didn’t think it was disappointing to have to wait at least four more years to try and make it happen (and even that isn’t a guarantee). And while we are going to will probably visualize a woman vice presidential candidate in the ensuing months, I hope that she is chosen not as condolences for the option. I want her chosen outright.


I want a woman president because not wanting one is antithetical to the opportunities I know girls are capable of. I want her to be elected fairly — and not assume the role in the way Hollywood first back-doored its way to President Selina Meyer, because her predecessor resigned in Veep, or in the hazy ambiguity of whether Ben or Leslie was actually president in the Parks and Rec flash-forward. I want her elected not solely because she's a woman, or as the nation finally felt perfectly shamed for the sexism it has exhibited from the jump. I want her elected because she is the correct person for the job.


And I cannot shake how bittersweet it is know that we are going to have to wait that much longer to find out who she plans to be.