Opinion | The United States isn’t ready for a female president
In the Democratic primary, “electability” is a hot-button word. For many left-leaning voters, the previous large pool of Democratic candidates mixed with their deep fear of Donald Trump winning a second term has birthed the argument that the only way to put a Democrat in office is to select the “perfect candidate.” Unfortunately, the concept of a perfect candidate was a pipe dream. Is the perfect candidate tough and tells it like it is, or are they kind and diplomatic? Are they a down-home American or a part of the corporate circuit? Any of these things could’ve been true, but one thing I knew from the start is this: the final candidates would be old, white men. I was correct.
The faces of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are ones our country has always seen, whether or not you agree with their platforms. They’re what is comfortable for the masses – they are the standard. Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar were tackled by way of their policy being too similar to that of Sanders and Biden respectively, and the fact that they were be defeated by a man of similar ideology stings.
The New Yorker said it perfectly in their satirical piece outlining “The Electable Female Candidate.” There is no way our country, though we have gotten close, could accept a woman with open arms without a large shift in culture and rhetoric. There is no woman that can fit these extreme expectations because the standards are ridiculous, and men are not held to these impossible standards. This is more than “electability,” it’s a matter of internalized misogyny and it’s important to look that prejudice dead in its eyes.
Simply put, a woman will not be president in 2020. This is not surprising. Perhaps we wait another four years, another 24, or perhaps I will not see a female president in my lifetime. Regardless, it’s time we understand why our list of presidents – with the exception of Obama being a person of color – has looked the same since our country’s genesis, despite the great changes we’ve made.