I am worrying about the right abolishing the 19th Amendment at this point, let alone a woman President.

They have the infrastructure to elect anyone, while we need tall World class politicians to be our president.

We will lose. That is one of the saddest things I have ever written here.

a feminist than me. I have to laugh as it is so damned perverse and ridiculous. I'd like to think he was trolling, but...

by almost 3M votes and got screwed just like Al Gore by a idiotic Electoral system.

My female (and male) friends have all talked about this, and agree it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. Some are 20 years younger than the oldest of us, and even they don't think it'll happen in their lifetime! This is so discouraging, especially when cast against the gains we fought and won since the 1960's. (sigh)

I agree with whomever said the first female prez would be repug. I consider that, emotionally, to be a total betrayal. But they do have the support system behind them to get anyone they want elected. Thank god we didn't end up with Palin... even the repugs saw she was a "bridge too far." (get the pun?)

While we have to brace ourselves to put out he most electable among good democrats, and we have a huge number of them!, I think most of our work needs to be done to tear down the criminality of the repug voting policies and procedures. We HAVE to somehow come up with a way that *every* American can vote, their vote is sacrosanct (once again), and each one is counted toward a verifiable total. It ain't gonna be easy... I can honestly tell you I've lost all confidence in voting any longer. Not only am I on my 3rd gerrymandered district, but I'm a tiny blue spec in a field of red. And, as I back more progressive pols, my only party puts up Centrists and backs them to the hilt, while denying or denigrating the progressives. Talk about your vote... and opinion... doesn't count at all!!

Take Back the Vote! No voting by Satellites! And, tho the tech is there to a degree, no voting by Internet... it's not secure enough and until the repugs are defeated, it'll never be. We also need a lot more technically proficient people in Congress as Democrats. The repugs have tons of money to hire out all this criminality, not to mention a ton of their people are proficient, already. Most of all, we have to remake the government divisions, departments, and offices as close to what they were prior to trump, and expand the SCOTUS, while also setting term limits.

If we can ever get back to where gender is somewhat elevated once again, THEN we can talk about a female president. Like I said, not in my lifetime.

America is deeply misogynistic. More so than I had ever imagined. I fear losing my right to vote in my lifetime. I have given up hope for a woman President.

We Dems need to face reality and choose candidates that have a REAL chance to win. As much as I love both Hillary and Kamala, it wasn't in the cards for either of them to be President. We must use clear eyes and minds to choose our next winning candidate.

Given their spotty record of bashing Democrats and sane-washing Trump and Republicans, I worry that this is an attempt to influence a choice that may not play well in the middle of the country. I like how Newsom is responding to Trump, but it’s early days yet.

Inauguration, but that was long ago. He's young (very important IMO) and taking on Trump with no fear.

No matter how perfect and obviously great a candidate she would be. That's what Obama did, and he surprised (and delighted) many Democrats because Clinton was to be our nominee and next President, PERIOD! She was the perfect candidate for President regardless of gender, but you have to win hearts AND minds. Obama did, and it was all him not the political machine.

Ok now that is the second saddest thing I have ever written here.

who they select as a candidate. It will probably be a straight white Christian male, but I don't think it is because there are not enough decent people left. Those decent people are scared. They are going to steer clear of anything that introduces any amount of uncertainty that they have the candidate most likely to win knowing that other not so decent peoples votes are needed too.

but I am surprised she didn't realize that a woman speaker was more likely. The fact is, the vast majority of the women who have become heads of government in the world have done so via getting to be party leader and then running in a general election which is considerably more similar to the process to become Speaker than it is to the process to become President. People like Thatcher and Merkel got to be Prime Ministers or Chancellors by getting to be party leader and then their party winning power. In Merkel's case, I think she even had some coalition partners along the way.

I don't know how we will get a woman President, but I think the most likely scenario is a woman VP ascending to the Presidency with the 2nd most likely being a conservative woman winning the GOP nod. I think the 2nd is way more unlikely than the first.

Probably because after she ran for her first term in the House in 1988 for the 101st Congress, there were only 29 women in the House and 2 in the Senate. She had run for the seat previously held by another woman who finished the term of her husband, one of Pelosi's friends, and had won 2 more terms before deciding not to run again.

When she was elected SOH for the 110th Congress almost 20 years later after the 2006 Democratic party rout, there were 72 women in the House and 16 in the Senate.

As of the 2024 election, in the 119th Congress, there are now 125 women in the House and 26 in the Senate.

To quote the old Virginia Slims ad - "You've come a long way baby".



And although today that ad would be considered sexist, there was a good write-up by the-now almost-defunct VOA in 2016 talking about what was going on back in the late '60s and recent politics - You've Come a Long Way, Baby. But It's Still a Man's Game

So given how much Congress has been "an institution by men, for men", one would naturally look more at the general populace itself for elevation of women in politics, given the demographics being more diverse there than in Congress (where the SOH is directly elected by members of Congress and not the general populace).

It doesn’t look they much better. Most were daughters of founders or previous popular prime ministers (I’m thinking South Asia here).

In the case of japan, their most recent prime minister was not actually heading the party when they got elected.

I think it’s only a few cases like New Zealand where a female got elected outright in an election.

It’s even rarer when the woman that got elected was from the more liberal party. Many female heads of state have been authoritarian in nature. They have to “prove their way” as being “tough”. Basically like Margaret thatcher, the “Iron Lady”.

In short, Pelosi is probably right, but I think the time will come for the right democratic female to get elected president. I’m actually not as pessimistic as her, because we have seen women being elected governor to 32 states. A few of the 18 that haven’t are blue states, and voted for Harris:

18 states have never elected a woman as governor:

California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada (Harris lost but Hillary won), North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Virginia (until 2025 election of Abigail Spanberger).

their only female governor was a Lt Gov who was elevated for a couple of weeks when Voinovich was elected to the Senate.

2) I want off this ride. This country disgusts me. We can’t have a woman president, but we can have a diseased, degenerate, felonious traitor for two goddamned terms!

...for an 85 year old woman in good health is according to a New York actuarial table I just accessed is 6.24 years.

Thus she may not live to see it.

Previous "can't win" types candidates are Catholic (Al Smith, 1928) and Black (Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson) and divorced (Nelson Rockefeller.)

We do still have the prohibition in our now defunct Constitution against foreign born, put there it is believed to "protect" the country from an Alexander Hamilton presidency.

We will have a woman President, particularly as the consequences of not having a woman President are as clear as they can be.

which was the exception to the natural born citizen rule (as were Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe). I am not sure if any of them were born in say England as opposed to the US but they were citizens at the time of the founding and thus eligible.

...Hamilton to run for the Presidency, since he was a citizen at the time of adoption of the Constitution.

I had always believed the clause was directed at him; whence I came to believe that I cannot recall. On reading the actual clause I see it couldn't have been directed at him.

Thank you for disbusing me of an incorrect undrrstanding.

It adds weight to the defeatism seen in many comments here. Is this happening with other issues such as Climate Change? Should we stop trying because we haven't been successful? Just give up? Civil rights? Economic justice? It's hard, so we should quit trying?

I have to admit that having a female president, while absolutely a great thing, isn't even a super high priority for me. I've never been much of a glass-ceiling kind of guy (yeah guy), sorry, but I am interested in seeing every candidate have an equal chance without regard to race, gender, etc. And if a good candidate is female she should run and be supported without regard to gender. Maybe we should, you know, STOP DISCRIMINATING.

I hope candidates like Kamala Harris, AOC, and Jasmine Crockett can run for any office they wish to because they are great leaders. We shouldn't be thinking "it can't happen now". We should just know that it will happen.

Nancy Pelosi was the best speaker I've seen, but having said that I really hope this particular statement is a sign that she does not intend to run for president in 2028 because she has a bad case of O.L.D. Yeah, that's right, there are times when we should discriminate.

People forget that Pelosi is a master of political discourse. She literally "grew up" in the halls of Congress, from infancy until around age 8 (I think), while her father was a member of the House before leaving to become mayor of Baltimore.

Out of 6 children, she was the "baby" and the only girl.

IMHO, her words are a "challenge to prove her wrong".



(baby Nancy and her big brothers, who look like "Spanky and the Gang" )

MFer is going to be POTUS for half that. It's not hard to suggest that a woman isn't going to get the Dem nomination in '28.

America will elect a woman in my lifetime. AOC, for instance, has decades to run - she should replace Schumer when he retires, and run from the Senate.

But, as it stands, I feel like it's hard to see a time in the near future where it happens. Misogyny has become so normalised and ingrained in political discourse (on all parts of the political spectrum - it's not just a right wing problem), rationalised with euphemisms and always lifting the bar just too high, that not only is it hard to imagine a female POTUS in the near future but I fear other countries who've elected a female leader in the past might become hesitant to do so.

That said, I do worry this kind of thinking is self-fulfilling. That we become so sure that a woman can't get elected that we intentionally exclude women as an option for candidates. I think if you say "We can't run a woman/must run a man", you might be a part of the problem.

Finally, on a more hopeful note, this sort of stuff often changes quickly and can seem impossible one minute and likely the next. I think if we went back to 2005, there would be many out there who would be certain the idea of a black president is a fantasy in the modern political environment and might be possible in the distant future but "not now."

Even Mexico has a woman president now.