Don’t Psych Yourself Out: A Woman Can be President

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but a woman can be President. More specifically, Elizabeth Warren can be President, although that’s not the point of this post — it’s to challenge the idea that electing a female president in 2020 is impossible.

I know that, even three years on from the 2016 campaign, many people are still reeling from Hillary Clinton’s loss. Many people are still coping with the daily trauma of a Trump Presidency and its endless transgressions. That’s understandable. At the same time, I think people are drawing some of the wrong conclusions from Clinton’s upset loss or, at least over-extrapolating its significance for women in general.

Sexist double standards and outright misogyny are absolutely the biggest reasons Clinton lost the election. But they weren’t the only reasons and many of the other reasons are specific to Clinton’s personal history and the specific dynamics of the 2016 presidential race — they don’t automatically cross-apply to every female candidate. Every female candidate will have a taller mountain to climb, because of the pervasive misogyny in our society, but it’s not an insurmountable one.

Hillary herself almost made it to the summit and with a break or two, would have planted her flag there. I mean, the election was decided by fewer than 80,000 votes spread across three states! That’s essentially nothing. A coin flip. In a country with 325 million people, the number of voters who decided the election would fit in a good-sized college football stadium. It was 0.06 percent of total voters cast. The lesson people take from this is that a woman can’t win?!

Here’s another way to look at it: In that crazy election (Comey, Russians, nearly collapsing at the 9/11 ceremony, the “basket of deplorables” gaffe, not visiting Wisconsin even once during the general election — no visits from April through November!), change any one variable and you might very well get a different outcome. If Hillary Clinton came that close, in those circumstances, a woman who is more favorably positioned for her time and place has an excellent shot at victory.

It’s true that Hillary was one of the more qualified Presidential candidates in recent memory — and lost. It’s also true that she had the misfortune of running at a time when trust in the establishment and respect for elite credentials was at an all-time low. What could have been as asset — Clinton’s vast experience in federal government — was, if anything, a liability. And that’s before you consider all the baggage (much of it not her own doing) that Hillary acquired over long career.

With the sting of the defeat still subsiding, it’s easy to forget that Hillary is a singular creation. It’s possible she will be remembered as the most significant American socio-political figure of her time. There has never been anyone like Hillary Clinton in American history. Eleanor Roosevelt was probably the closest and she didn’t live in the age of cable TV, the internet, memes, and social media. Hillary, on the other hand, has been at the center of controversy since she and Bill Clinton appeared on the scene as “Co-Presidents” and promised America “Two for the price of one.” I doubt that there’s been a day since 1992 when someone, somewhere wasn’t getting paid to bash Hillary Clinton in a news outlet.

Sexism is driving that to a great extent, but your average female candidate isn’t married to the walking scandal that is Bill Clinton and your average female candidate hasn’t been on the front pages of every paper (often in unflattering light) in America for three decades.

One of the biggest advantages that Barack Obama had when running for President was a fairly thin record and no major scandals to deflect (Even then, his candidacy was almost torpedoed by coverage of Jeremiah Wright. It took a nationally televised speech on race to plug the leak). Being a fresh face (even if a black one) helped Obama credibly pose a new direction for a nation that was desperate for one. (The fact that Obama largely failed to deliver on that promise would in typically unlucky fashion come back to haunt Hillary eight years later.) But unlike Obama, Hillary didn’t have the good fortune of a clean slate, the sheen of a newcomer, or the assumption of good faith to help mitigate gender bias. She didn’t have the electorate that this year’s candidates will have — younger and with more people of color. She didn’t have the righteous anger of people radicalized by her devastating defeat to a man who represents the worst of America.

This year, a female candidate can have all that if we don’t let our fears and defense mechanisms — Won’t be fooled again / Once bitten twice shy — control our decisions. Why would we give someone that power? Why channel energy into making the idea that a woman can’t win a self-fulfilling prophecy? That’s a defeat in itself. 2016 really did a number on some of you. Most Americans have never even spent significant time in the states that will be decisive in the 2020 election and even those who have (like me) are often wrong!

I mean, people think a pint-sized, reedy voiced NYC mayor who rammed through a soda ban is a default better candidate in the so-called Rust Belt than a woman from Oklahoma who worked her up from nothing and put Wall St. on roller skates? It’s fun to play game theory but no one really knows what’s going to happen and there’s a very good chance that “strategic voting” at this early stage is really just people playing themselves. There’s every reason to vote for the future you want to create instead of falling prisoner to — and perpetuating — the ills of the present. #DreamBigFightHard