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.”
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 for a presidency
Neoliberals can fuck right off. I’ll vote for AOC.
The claim is against the nation, not any one individual voter. She’s right.
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
It’s funny how depending on the topic, third party votes and stay-home whiners either mattered or didn’t matter. Anyone else notice this?
We’ve got people here saying that KH lost because of her centrist take- meaning, she would have won had she had more leftist appeal-
And then when you bring up the idea that KH wouldn’t have brought American democracy to its knees, and we wouldn’t be here had the protest votes and stay-home-complainers voted, they immediately pivot and spam articles that say otherwise.
They simultaneously had a great effect- and had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election. It’s mind-numbing and fascinating at the same time.
Someone call science. We have another uncertainty principle! A far-leftist both matters, and doesn’t matter to an election based wholly on the perceived results!
I get flamed around here so often cause I will call out protest non voters at every given opportunity. I really hope it is worth the literal cost of human lives they sacrificed to enjoy the smell of their own farts.
Edit: I love that I pissed off at least two of you lazy fucks.
Edit 2: holy shit, I’m surprised I got back to positive numbers.
bootlickers when their fellow bootlickers realize there’s very little difference between the polished boot and the boot covered in mud because you’re still licking a boot.
Single issue Gaza voters are braindead and/or or just hate the USA. They dont actually care about peoples’ lives, especially not americans.
:)
They simultaneously had a great effect- and had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election.
Its undeniable that Harris lost on the margins in a number of critical swing Midwestern states. And that she dramatically underperformed among Muslim voters in these states. So you can point to - say - Rashida Tlaib’s MI-12 district and notice how she ran far behind her outspokenly anti-genocide Congressional peer, while the Dem running for the Michigan Senate Seat won her race that same year. Meanwhile, you can look at her performance in Florida or Texas and notice how her tack to the right failed to pick up any conservative voters in Big Red States.
And you can conclude that Harris’s decision to embrace Liz Cheney and Cindy McCain in the last weeks of the election didn’t do her any favors. You might even conclude that it hurt her chances.
At the same time, you could notice that Trump managed to top his 2016 and 2020 turnout, conclude Harris simply didn’t have what it took to win in the face of a MAGA wave year, and just scratch 2024 off as a bad year for Democrats that was beyond any campaign-level antics to fix.
Meanwhile, you can pop over to NYC in 2025 and note how Andrew Cuomo - running a very Biden-esque conservative democrat campaign for mayor in a city that has historically rewarded conservative candidates (Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Adams) - got utterly washed by an outspoken DSA State Senator. So, clearly something in the political landscape is changing.
Someone call science.
The problem with elections is that they aren’t neatly reproducible. So you can observe and document the results. And you can speculate on cause and effect. But you’re juggling a lot of variables that can shift within margin of error of one another in confusing ways.
How do you explain Hillary and Harris losing to Trump by inches while Biden won in a landslide? Two ladies and a dude. Must be gender that done it.
Alternatively, you can claim Hillary and Harris were too conservative and Biden was “The Most Leftist President since FDR”.
Alternatively, you can just blame pendulum politics and note Hillary and Harris were following Dem Presidents while Biden got to run against an unpopular Republican.
Idfk. But its not something you can just throw the Periodic Table at to get an answer.
Yea, it’s toootally the sexism and not the absolute dog shit policies. Hilary even won the popular vote. Fuck off with this victim card crap.
TBF we elected the white man with the exact same platform and owners as Kamala.
The only real difference between her and Biden was her skin color and gender.
There were many many other differences, you just choose not to see them. The main example being that for Kamala’s election we just had 4 years of Democrat ruling so voters with a gnat attention span already forgot what Trump was like.
You have not described a difference between the two canidates
The incumbent party rarely does as well in the second term election as they did in the first term.
The difference between the two candidates was 2020 vs 2024.
Harris would have won in 2020. And if she had, she probably would have won in 2024.
Harris was the least popular candidate in 2020, she likely would have lost in 2020, which would have probably been better as trump would already be gone.
Least popular Democratic candidate in 2020. After Trump’s first term, any Democrat but Hillary would have won.
It’s called “irony.” And “sarcasm.”
No, Biden was elected after Trump 1. Then people wanted more change and it became very clear that Biden was not going to win his reelection (not because of policies alone). Harris simply didn’t either, but she didn’t lose where the old white man would have won in the same circumstances and everything else equal. Harris being equal to Biden is what lost votes, not her gender.
I think that being equal to Biden, Harris could have won as a centrist…if she was anointed instead of Biden from the very start. By suddenly switching their designated candidate mid-race, the DNC destroyed any momentum that was built up.
This is not advocacy for Kamela, just that her circumstances as a candidate was ass. I ultimately blame the DNC, because it was their decisions that set the stage for everything that was to follow.
To be absolutely clear, fuck the dnc! They are responsible for both trump elections! But it was a mix of circumstances that lead to Harris being the candidate. Namely funding. I’m not defending the decision, or her. But it was an unfortunate situation.
Shes right too many stupid people and insecure men in the states
Nope, I’ll just never vote for a chick to be president.
It’s not your genitals. It’s because you’re not a progressive
Also thank fuck she has no intentions of getting back into politics! But we had a kinda progressive option with Bernie. And the corpo dems torpedoed him harder than they ever fought against trump.
That’s because it was Hillary’s turn
I agree Michelle shouldn’t run. I’d argue, though, that we’re ready for a woman leader, but we need one presented without a bunch of past baggage (Hillary) or a party agenda (Kamala and arguably Hillary, too) and with their own ideas and not what the think tank says will win.
I’d say it’s pretty hard for a woman to both have enough experience to be taken seriously as a candidate and simultaneously have no past baggage or party agenda.
And I don’t think most male candidates are held to that standard, either.
The misogyny is palpable. In the country as a whole.
country as a whole
Species as a whole.
More progressive cultures are getting over this tribalistic, divisive stuff – they will tend to flourish over time.
More conservative cultures will double down on division – they will tend to wither.
While they certainly implode… I think there’s the old problem.
Like say you have 5 co-operative communities that focus on building up great resources, polite trade with eachother, no focus on millitary.
Then you throw in 2 Viking type communities, extremely warlike, that have no independent ability to gather resources… but specifically focus on pillaging.
Obviously the vikings take out the poorly defended villages to build up resources, before going after eachother, in the long run everyone dies out because the vikings wreck everything for everyone, and leave nothing for themselves.
I feel like that’s kind of a form of what happens with capitalism vs socialism types. we’ve got elements that really just want peace… but the warlike ones will just continue to survive, as long as there are enough peaceful societies to wreck… and unfortunately the peaceful ones are the ones to go down first, in spite of being the only ones that would survive long term without the others existance.
I didn’t say “undefended”
It’s the point though, not even completely undefended, still not 10% of the same level of defense as the primary points of capitalism. IE just note how much force, propoganda etc… is pushed at any country that isn’t capitalist enough. Right now fishing boats are being bombed. or even non military force, like the trade embargo’s on cuba etc…
and heaven knows how many government sponsered coups etc… Point is a lot of resources go into doing everything possible to make things that aren’t capitalist enough have a very steep uphill climb.
Bet it all on black and maybe you can win some sort of prize, but you will still be spending the houses money until we all start to agree that liquid cash is not a stabilizing mechanism for mediating our intermittent desire to hold various kinds of power over one another in different situations typically encountered throughout our lives, and that more complex and mindful methods/systems of resource allocation + public investment strategies can be developed as well as successfully popularized in a way that can be intrinsically understood and widely accepted by most new or developing (younger) people who will be steering the general trajectory of our worldwide “society”.
I’m pretty sure socialist and communist countries also do perverted things like blatant propaganda, needless use of force, etc.
Cuba is a great example. Cuba wasn’t embargoed ‘because Communism!’ (though that was, stupidly IMO, part of the USA political messaging)
Castro did summary political executions & imprisonment , killed the free press , enacted torture …
What exactly did you want? Continue doing business like “NBD, you do you?”
I’m not doubting the problems of any government. however to make the case that it’s not grounded on the fear of communism… It’s not like that’s exactly uncommon in countries we are continuing to do business like NBD, Isreal, Russia, Saudi Arabia to name a few off the top of my head.
Again not disagreeing with the general concept that communist countries aren’t exempt from committing atrocities. Difference is a capitalist country does them “it’s a growing pain”, or “they are starting out, once they get big enough they’ll fix it, just like the US did”.
Yeah that’s what I thought… In the 1970s.
I’m sorry to say it’s not going as well as I’d hoped.
Not true. Clinton won the popular vote
I want to vote for a woman, but not a Zionist with plans for lots of tax rebates
I didn’t vote for Biden, I didn’t vote for Clinton, I didn’t vote for Harris, and I didn’t vote for Obama (but I did caucus for him because public option)
It’s hilarious. Everyone in this thread literally ignoring the lived experience of women, trying to convince everyone their country isn’t misogynistic.
The majority of people voted for Clinton, a woman.
You can ignore the lived experience of your pizza delivery guy without hating him.
People laugh but I 100% believe AOC would win.
I think they’re laughing nervously because deep down they fear that you’re right. I certainly think you are.
I’d like to see her win; just not sure it’ll happen.
I didn’t vote for Hillary or Kamala, but I’d vote for AOC.
Who’s laughing that’s not a useful idiot?
What we also don’t need is yet another political dynasty.
AOC
Great VP pick
Eh. She already meets the requirements. She’s old enough. That’s it. And she is eminently more qualified than the current president. She’ll be 39 in 2028. The youngest president, Teddy Roosevelt, was 42.
I still think being young AND a woman AND progressive might be courting a bit more voter reluctance than I’d want to gamble with. The progressives will eat it up, but we’re gonna need some moderates to get over the finish line.
I’d prefer she go VP for a Tim Walz type for two terms and then run after that. She’s only going to get better at navigating DC politics, which she’ll need to actually accomplish any of whatever platform she runs.
I feel like pushing AOC in 2028 is premature. I’d definitely vote for her and hope she wins, but the odds don’t seem great and the consequences of losing are more dire than I’m personally comfortable with.
Look what thinking cautiously has got us. Look what thinking audaciously has got them. What rational rational Republican voter would have thought that Trump was a good potential candidate in 2016? Rational opinion was that Trump was a candidate doomed from the start. Yet the Republicans through caution to the wind and went for the inspiring candidate. And look what it got them.
Every election we choose the path of least resistance. Every election we talk ourselves out of the truly inspiring candidate, all in the name of electability. How many Democrats have voted against the progressive primary candidate, the one who could inspire, the one who could rally…all in the name of electability? Hillary was the candidate in 2016 because she was more electable than Bernie. Biden was the candidate in 2020 because he was more electable than Bernie. Biden was nearly the candidate in 2024 because sticking with the incumbent was simply the rational and cautious move.
Maybe it’s time we have faith for once. Maybe it’s time we believe in ourselves and our message for a change. Maybe it’s time to stop talking ourselves out of running our strongest potential candidates. As a great poet said, you have to believe in impossible things, or else they can never come to be.
The difference being that the right wing is populist and authoritarian by nature. You can’t drum up the left with the same methods as the right. Biden was a boring geriatric neo-lib, and he’s the one who won.
I don’t wanna wish on a star when I’m gambling with fascism. Yes I want progressive policies, I want more than progressive policies. I would have no problems with AOC being the president. But it’s not about what I want. It’s not about what you want. It’s about what the 10s of millions of voters who don’t lean far left want.
I don’t have that kind of faith in the average American voter, even the average non-Republican voter. I think progressive policies are a winning platform, I just think AOC specifically is too risky of a run right now. Run Tim Walz, or some other 50-65 year old white progressive, with AOC as VP. That’ll make it easier for her to demonstrate the efficacy of her platform so she can run afterwards.
I like her, if anything she’s a bit moderate for me, but she’s DC young. The stodgy moderates might not show up because they’re afraid she’s inexperienced. If you can find a way to sway millions of voters between now and then, great. I’d love to see it.
But we’re not doing ourselves any favors by appealing to our hearts at the expense of our brains. Maybe the next 3 years will alter the political landscape in a way that makes her a safer candidate. I’m both excited at that prospect, and terrified at what would be necessary to do that. But if not, we have to face the landscape as it is.
A chance at the best candidate isn’t necessarily worth the risk of the worst candidate. We cannot afford to be reckless right now.
Any woman who runs will be running with the baggage of feminist politics. This is not the right time for it.
I disagree. I just think what I want is a candidate that has a coherent policy and their campaign to be elected isn’t solely/majority “but I could be the first female president” slop. Hillary and Kamala could have been great presidents, but when the selling point is “I’m a woman” and not much else, that’s not going to resonate with enough people to win an election.
That’s what you want. And if Lemmy elected the president, I seriously believe the country would be a better place. But it doesn’t, so what you or I want doesn’t really matter that much. What matters is what the stodgy moderate majority wants, and a large portion of them are subtly guided by subconscious bias.
And yet the same doesn’t apply to men for some weird reason
Michelle Obama is not the woman I’m looking at to run. In fact, having launching the political careers if spouses and other family members on the political success of a family member is a terrible idea. This is the main reason why I thought having Hillary Clinton run for president was a bad idea, and I opposed Jeb Bush for the same reason (though I’d vastly preferred either over Trump).
Though I’m aware political dynasties in the US have a history going back all the way to the Adamses.
We just don’t want neoliberals running. We’re done with that. Everyone is. I hope AOC runs.
They said that about a black president. So. No. I don’t agree. AOC is very popular.
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?
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.
AOC is very popular.
Among liberals.
She won’t win a national election. Too many Americans don’t like her.
AOC is popular only in the northeast USA, like the others. She also politically untested. I agree with Michelle.
…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.
Popular in the SW too
And NW
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.
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.
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
spitting distance? That is one Magic lougie, Jerry.
Yes. Spitting distance. They were both close elections. What rock have you been living under?
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
The problem with H. Clinton and Harris were that they were annointed. If a woman candidate was brought forth by a proper primary, I think she’d blow the Republican out of the water.
Or a progressive woman who wasn’t part of the Democratic Party at all.
Yep. We seemed to quickly forget that Harris did campaign in the 2020 primary. She was trounced. She was polling something like 16th and withdrew well before the actual California primary.
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?
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.
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 depending on decorum and norms. And a lot of laws depend on the whims of those with power to actually enforce them…
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.
