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.”
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.
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.