Women and the presidency
By 
I think it’s fair to say that a year ago at this time a substantial percentage of Democrats, or at least Democratic activists, would have subscribed to something like this axiom: “All other things being anywhere close to equal, the party should nominate a woman in 2020 (perhaps with the addition, “or, if not, a non-white man.”).
The reasons for holding this position should be too obvious to belabor. The Republican party is the party of hierarchy and reaction, which is to say it’s the default party of white men. The Democratic party is the party, at least in aspirational terms, of egalitarianism and demographic diversity. Its last two presidential candidates reflected that.
Yet the harsh truth is that, going into the 2024 presidential election, the list of women in American political history who will have drawn any kind of substantial support in a major party presidential primary campaign will still consist of one name: Hillary Clinton. And Clinton, while a very accomplished candidate in her own right, does fit the extremely narrow model of a woman political leader who can sometimes be acceptable in a traditionally patriarchal culture, which is to say the heir, by blood or marriage, to a political dynasty of some sort.
In my view, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand were all in their own ways vastly superior Democratic presidential candidates to either Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or Pete Buttigieg, let alone Mike Bloomberg. I was no fan at all of Amy Klobuchar, but even she would have been preferable to yet another ancient white guy.
That none of these candidates ended up getting any serious traction in the race, when the men who did were so obviously flawed in different but profound ways, is in very large part attributable to bad old fashioned misogyny, full stop.
Obviously none of the women candidates were perfect either, because such a candidate doesn’t exist. I realize I’m not an unbiased observer — another thing that doesn’t exist — but for the life of me I can’t understand how a progressive voter could prefer Sanders to Warren, or a more moderate voter could prefer Biden or Buttigieg, let alone Bloomberg, to Harris.
In my view, the women candidates in all these comparisons were clearly superior to the men, without even taking into account that they were women — which, again, should be taken into account!
That their campaigns all went nowhere, so that we are left with a choice between two deeply flawed candidates, who also happen to be nearly 80 years old,* is a profoundly depressing comment on how Hillary Clinton’s nomination may have been an aberrational product of her own autobiography.
We still have, as a country and a party, an enormous way to go on this issue.
*Can any knowledgable commenter remark on the following matter: I’ve been told that there’s a particularly significant health marker for someone who has recently had a heart attack — the left ventricle ejection fraction? — that would be extremely valuable to know in regard to Sanders’s current health, with the point being that Sanders has not released this data point, and it would be good to have it. (ETA: This covers it. Thanks to a couple of commenters for flagging it).