On top of everything else, this may have poisoned the well for any woman for a generation.

[KamaAina]

At least.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Nope. n/t

[KamaAina]

2. I hope not, but you know it'll get thrown in anyone's face

Elizabeth Warren, even.

[PoliticAverse]

3. And some people on DU thought Obama shouldn't be nominated because they thought a black man...

couldn't win a presidential election in 2008. The right one could. And the right woman could win the presidency.

[elleng]

4. Yes indeed.

[Jean-Jacques Roussea]

6. But this was our last free election

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. The 2012 election was more likely the last "free" one.

This one was f*cked up.

[Yo_Mama]

41. Exactly. Thanks. n/t

[elleng]

5. No.

[still_one]

7. The well was poisoned long before now.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. What exactly is "this" in your title referring to?

Pronouns point to something, and in your sentence "this" isn't pointing to anything at all.

Care to clarify?

If, by some distant chance, you're referring to Hillary Clinton's losing this election, many of us understood quite clearly that if she lost it would mean that it would be a very long time before another woman could credibly run for President. Rather like Al Smith's losing in 1928. For those of you who don't know, he was the first Catholic to run for President. When he lost, it was 32 years before another Catholic candidate ran.

[DonCoquixote]

9. I would not think so

While part of me would love nothing more than the electors to do their job and depose Trump, he has one silver lining, unlike a Mike Pence, he will not be able to mask himself, which means that after he is done, the nation might very well want a woman , or at least a hard liberal, just to get the taste out of their mouth. The same "good workinclassfolk" will not be there to support him once those jobs do not come.

[BlueProgressive]

10. Of all the reasons Clinton lost the election, I consider the fact

that she is a woman to be at the very bottom of any possible list....

She does lead the popular vote by nearly three million, so enough people were willing to vote for a woman for president-- just not entirely in the right places to win the electoral college.

[jonno99]

27. +1 nt

[Paladin]

30. +1.

[JudyM]

66. +1. And folks who keep saying she lost because of sexism don't get that the only voters who voted

against her for that reason wouldn't have voted for a dem. I don't doubt that some portion of the electorate considered gender relevant, but those folks were on the "Right" anyway, and wouldn't have liked her more progressive positions.

[baldguy]

11. Only if we allow the media & the corporatocracy to poison it.

[el_bryanto]

12. Well - it's possible

But unlikely in my opinion - the only way things'll go that way is if Trump radically changes the country to the point, well, no woman or non-white person would be considered viable. It's possible he'll do that, but it's also possible that his self-evident failures will keep that from happening.

Bryant

[NCTraveler]

13. We have been clawing our way out of the poison well throughout history.

No clue what you are talking about here as there is little to go on.

What statement about women has been made that has "poisoned the well for generations"?

[KamaAina]

38. A woman somehow managed to lose to a vulgar talking yam.

There will be those who won't want to go there again.

[NCTraveler]

45. I don't get your point.

We have been going up against and losing to vulgar talkin yams since the beginning.

We are stronger than you give us credit for. We aren't going to curl up and hide because of a loss to Trump.

Did white men run and hide because Obama beat the snot out of them?

[Orsino]

14. The well was pre-poisoned.

For a couple of centuries before Hillary Clinton was born.

[Lurks Often]

15. Hillary Clinton's gender was not the reason she lost

It MIGHT have cost her some votes from people who normally vote Democratic, but certainly not enough to change the election.

[duffyduff]

17. Go ahead and engage in that fantasy.

Misogyny was a major theme in this election.

You just don't want to face reality.

[Lurks Often]

44. Think what you like

but maybe I'm not the one engaging in a fantasy.

And so there is no misunderstanding, I never said or thought Sanders could win the general election and would have been shocked if he had won the Democratic nomination.

[JTFrog]

25. Denial, Egypt and all that. nt

[geek tragedy]

16. while she faced obstacles due to her gender, Clinton's flaws and mistakes as a candidate

were much more damaging.

[Coyotl]

18. Absolutely WRONG!

Now approaching 3 million!

[kentuck]

19. Sad but true.

Hillary was the change that history needed to move forward with gender equality. This may have slowed it down immensely, if not stopped dead in its tracks?

[cry baby]

20. Women are stronger than you're giving them credit for.

There will be another sooner rather than later.

Don't worry about that!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

21. yes, because every time a white man loses no other white men are allowed to run

forgot about that clause.

[JTFrog]

26. Lol, right? nt

[LexVegas]

33. This whole thread doesn't smack of sexism at all. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

35. nothing is sexist now, unless it's being pro-woman. then it's sexist and identity politics.

[KamaAina]

39. It does indeed smack of sexism.

Not mine, but society's.

[LexVegas]

22. Fail. nt

[SMC22307]

23. Nonsense. (n/t)

[JTFrog]

24. Dream on. "More Than 4,500 Women Have Signed Up to Run For Office Since the Election".

http://time.com/4594114/she-should-run-women-election/

More Than 4,500 Women Have Signed Up to Run For Office Since the Election
Mahita Gajanan @mahitagajanan Dec. 8, 2016

Through the She Should Run organization

Courtney Peters-Manning decided it was time to run for office immediately after the 2016 election election results came in. Upset by the “incredibly divisive rhetoric” coming from all sides of the political spectrum during the campaign year, Peters-Manning, 39, felt inspired to do more.

“The election was a kick in the pants that I had to step up and be more involved,” she said.

She signed up for an incubator program with She Should Run, an organization that trains women for public leadership roles, becoming one of more than 4,500 women who have decided to run for office through the program since the election. The just-launched incubator is designed to build a community of women interested in entering politics and provide them with the tools to do so, the group’s co-founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro said.

Women remain the vast minority in government positions in the U.S., making up only about one-fifth of Congress despite accounting for more than half of the population in the country. Representation is paltry at the state level as well, with the proportion of women in state legislatures at just 24.8% going into 2017, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Cutraro, who was not expecting more than a couple hundred women to kickstart their political careers through the incubator, said mobilizing the thousands of women who joined is a welcome challenge. The incubator will help women “connect the dots between their current leadership skills and what it takes to run for office,” through online courses that help them network and build a personal brand, Cutraro said.

We will not go gentle into the good night.

[jonno99]

28. THIS! nt

[NewJeffCT]

43. that is awesome

I hope that number keeps climbing and climbing.

[WheelWalker]

29. Not a chance.

[rzemanfl]

31. Even if she'd won they'd say "The next time they run another Donald Trump,

we'll run another woman."

[NewJeffCT]

34. I don't think it poisoned the well for women

1) She won the popular vote by almost 3 million.
2) Trump turned out rural white voters that were anti-immigrant and racist, bigly improving on numbers that both Romney and McCain received. Romney and McCain both got in the 60-61m range, while Trump got 63m voters.
3) There was unprecedented outside interference from Russia and Wikileaks. I'm sure if Sanders had won the nomination, his emails would have been made public as well and anything he did in the past would have been dragged through the mud.

My concern is that the leading women in the Democratic Party are older. Who are the next generation of women leaders in the Democratic Party? Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Tammy Duckworth, Kamala Harris? Anybody else?

(Note - I'd say that about the men being older as well - Biden, Sanders, Schumer, Reid, Clyburn, etc. However, there are some younger men that should have good futures - the Castro brothers, Cory Booker, etc)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

36. kamala harris is 52, Gillibrand is 50, amy K is 56.

[NewJeffCT]

46. I'm sure I missed several

anybody you would add to the list of future leaders?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

47. No, but who knows who'll come up before 2020

[WhiteTara]

37. Remember the only female emperor of China?

After her successful reign, the men destroyed all images of her, reversed her policies and there has never been another woman in true power in China since...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian

http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine6.html

The hatred of women is millennium old.

[bettyellen]

50. Interesting! Was just reading a similar story about a female pharaoh

[WhiteTara]

55. In a man's world

Women leaders are one and done. Then back to the men. In our case, none and done.

[Yo_Mama]

40. I really, really do not think so.

Of course, until we get another woman willing to run for the presidency, which obviously cannot happen for years, it is all speculation.

My belief is that a well-qualified woman without all Hillary's negatives would not have much difficulty, and probably would have an electoral advantage compared to a man.

Now the task for us is to make sure that woman is a Democrat.

[zipplewrath]

42. Quite the opposite

I suspect she has made it all the more possible. Unfortunately, the next one will probably be a republican, maybe an Hispanic republican.

[NewJeffCT]

48. It's possible

but, I always thought the first black president would have been a black Republican (Colin Powell, for one). However, I was wrong.

[Crunchy Frog]

49. It's too bad that so many alleged feminists on here

Are blaming the loss on Hillary's gender, rather than on any individual weaknesses she may have had as a politician or candidate, or any problems related to the way she conducted her campaign.

It's much easier just to blame it all on "misogyny", which of course implies that it would be impossible for any woman under any circumstances to get elected president in this country, so we'd better not even try.

This infuriates me, as I believe that some of the very best potential candidates are women, and the party machine may decide to simply lock them out of the running; the result of once again drawing the wrong conclusions from an election loss.

[janx]

51. I could not agree more, Crunchy.

[Crunchy Frog]

56. Hi. Howya doing?

[janx]

59. Fine, thanks. Just finished grading

this semester's final research essays. I hope you are doing well!

[Crunchy Frog]

61. Yes.

Me and my two babies who turn 8 in January. Ten days after Trump takes office.

[TonyPDX]

57. You said it, Crunchy!

[Willie Pep]

60. It would be sad if people concluded that we can't run a woman again.

I agree that some of our best potential candidates are women. Misogyny is still a strong force out there but I don't know if we can even reach hardcore misogynists anyway.

[KamaAina]

63. I am not blaming the loss on her gender

but pointing out that, rightly or wrongly, it will be held over women's heads for years to come.

[unblock]

53. doesn't really apply if she's a republican.

they all loved thatcher.

not that there would be much of an upside for women or anyone else in that scenario....

[tritsofme]

54. It's been 12 years since we had a white male nominee. John Kerry really must have poisoned the well!

[bravenak]

58. Oh bullshit

If that's how shit is then GWB shoulda poisoned the well for white men for a generation. If you think that women, minorities and other Americans are going to wait another damn generation for equality, I see why you cry. This nation is not getting any less female or dark skinned anytime soon or ever, we are in historic times. Trump IS the last gasp of white male hegemony.

[KamaAina]

62. GWB won, or at least took office.

Big difference.

[Eleanors38]

64. I doubt it. The GOPers would have no problem electing a FR woman. Know any?

On the other hand, Democrats have potential in Elizabeth Warren.

[budkin]

65. No way

Not all women have the baggage that Hillary had.