The Democrats Have Never Nominated a Woman for President

The Democrats have never nominated a woman for President. 

I'll say it again: The Democrats have never nominated a woman for President!

I repeat!  The Democrats have never nominated a woman for President!

So what about Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris?  What, you actually think rank-and-file Democratic primary voters chose them?  You're kidding, right?

Harris's nomination is easy to explain.  When President Biden decided in July 2024 not to stand for re-election - a decision he should have made in March 2023 - the Democrats needed a new candidate and Kamala Harris was the obvious choice, she being the Vice President and all.  She won the nomination on the first ballot at the convention, all right - which was pretty easy for her since she had no opposition on that ballot - but she became the first Democratic presidential candidate since Hubert Humphrey to win it without having competed in a single primary.  And she suffered Humphrey's fate in the general election.

As for Hillary Clinton . . . well - need I remind you that she had the Democratic establishment so much behind her that the Democratic National Committee protected her from challengers like Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders by setting up debate schedules and rules of engagement that tipped the scales in her favor, although Bernie Sanders came close to defeating her at times?  As with Harris eight years later, Hillary Clinton wasn't so much nominated as she was selected.  Everything was fixed for her from the start, and it gave some credence to Donald Trump's complaints that the system of choosing a President is rigged . . . which he now feels gives him carte blanche to rig it in his own favor.  Now there's irony for you.

Truth be told, the Democrats have always done better when they have a candidate who is not a establishmentarian choice but is instead the product of a grass-roots movement.  Just look at John F. Kennedy in 1960, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Barack Obama in 2008.   The conventional wisdom is that Joe Biden was nominated in a fair and open contest without any input from the DNC once he gained traction in South Carolina in the 2020 primaries and wrapped things up just in time before the COVID pandemic set in.  It's more complicated than that, as I've explained before, but if the result was that Biden was able to defeat Trump and give us four years of government for the people, I'm not going to re-litigate it.  Suffice it to say that neither Hillary Clinton nor Kamala Harris could ever be President because they were chosen by a select group of party insiders who underestimated the Republican opposition.  If we see a female President in our lifetimes, she will be a Democrat, but she has to be a candidate who defeats the party establishment like Kennedy, Carter and Obama did.  She has to be a woman of the people.

Only trouble is, there are no obvious female candidates for 2028, assuming the Democratic Party is not banned under martial law (coming to a city near you!) by then.  Elizabeth Warren is too old, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is too young, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger first have to win their respective gubernatorial elections (and I have doubts about Sherrill, for reasons I will revisit on this blog soon), Kirsten Gillibrand, a Generation X elder like myself, is too self-righteous, and Gretchen Whitmer is too busy hiding her face in a binder when Trump is around.  (She should consider joining ICE after she leaves the Michigan governorship if she wants to stay masked and anonymous.)

As the old Mary Poppins song goes, a female candidate for President must be kind, she must be witty, very sweet, and yes, very pretty - a female Gavin Newsom, a polished and attractive politician who looks like an anchorwoman on the local TV news, so long as it isn't Kirsten Gillibrand.  She must be able to relate to people and connect with voters, as well as talk in plain, simple and direct English - and, if she's fluent in it, plain, simple and direct Spanish, when she's campaigning in Hispanic areas.  

And there's one other quality she must share with her male competition - she must be white and Protestant.  After the debacle of trying to elect a half-black, half-South Asian woman married to a Jew, just electing a woman who's more of a so-called "real American" is going to be a heavy lift.

Wanted: 2028 Democratic Presidential Nominee. No Women Need Apply.

I'm going to blunt and come right out and say it: The United States will not have a female President in our lifetimes.  That includes babies born today who live to be a hundred.

We need a white male Democratic presidential nominee.  Preferably a Protestant.

As a Catholic who voted for Kamala Harris, I am embarrassed by this statement, but I stand by it.  The presidential election of 2024 definitively proved that a woman can't get elected President of the United States.  Donald Trump is the second worst major-party presidential nominee of all time, surpassed only by himself when he was nominated by the Republicans in 2024 after the GOP nominated him in 2016 and 2020.  He made it clear that would govern as a fascist dictator during the 2024 campaign.  Yet when it came to a choice between a female presidential nominee - and a black female presidential nominee at that - and Donald Trump, the nation chose Donald Trump.  He won every demographic except for two - black women and white men married to black women - while many Democrats stayed home.

And when the Democrats ran a white woman - who was also a Methodist - in 2016, Trump defeated her too. 

Two highly qualified women lost to a megalomaniac con artist.  I'm sorry, but in this case, two strikes is out.

Democrats who once celebrated the fact that a black woman and an Italian-American woman sat behind President Joe Biden at presidential speeches to Congress in 2021 and 2022 have to realize that we now have two white men with Anglo-Saxon names sitting behind a lapsed-Protestant President of German and Scottish origin because the Democrats have a problem reading the room when they nominate presidential candidates.  Kamala Harris lost not just because she couldn't communicate with voters - or at least she couldn't communicate with voters once the consultants took over.  She lost because too many voters - including many black and Puerto Rican men - tried to picture Harris in the White House and just couldn't bring themselves to see it.  Democrats love nominating female candidates for President because they want to make a statement.  Statement made.  Now we have the National Guard occupying Los Angeles like the Wehrmacht goose-stepping through Paris. 

So, assuming we get to have a presidential election in 2028 in which there is more than one candidate and neither of those candidates are named Donald Trump (because if one of them is, it means that the Constitution has been terminated and the election is rigged), Democrats have to ask themselves this: Do they want to make a statement, or do they want to win?

So forget about Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and especially New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand (who currently runs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - oh, yeah, that'll help the party win back the Senate in 2026!) as the Democratic presidential nominee for 2028.  And most definitely forget about Kamala Harris - Democrats don't rerun failed nominees of the past.  

Also, forget running another black man - many white voters think Barack Obama is one black President enough for awhile.  So that rules out Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, and besides, the failed presidential ambitions of his two predecessors have proven once and for all that governors of Maryland do not get elected President.  Vice President, yes (regrettably; I'm just old enough to remember Spiro Agnew).  President, no.  

And not even every white man in the Democratic Party is right for the 2028 presidential nomination.  Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania? Jewish.  Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts?  Jewish.  Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois?  Jewish, and also so squat, large and heavy-set, you could show a widescreen movie on his back.  He doesn't look like a President.  No Jews.  No Orthodox Christians either, least of all Greek Orthodox, because Greek-Americans, as Michael Dukakis proved, can't get elected President.  Vice President, yes (I'll cite the late and unlamented Spiro Agnew again).  President, no.

Also, no Catholics.  John F. Kennedy faced accusations in 1960 that he would bow to the Vatican.  John Kerry lost in 2004 because it was feared that he wouldn't bow to the Vatican (then under a Curia more conservative than the Republican Party).  Now that we have an American pope who's so woke he's almost a Unitarian, there are fears once again that a Catholic President would bow to the Vatican.  We need a white male Protestant, one with executive experience (sorry, Chris Murphy) as a governor.

Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky?

Andy Beshear.

But then, as I am a secessionist who believes that New Jersey should leave the Union and form a new country with five or more of the other Eastern states north of the 36°30′ parallel line or become a Canadian province, that's none of my business.  

Gretchen Witless

First Gavin Newsom tried to make nice with MAGA.  Now it's another governor's turn.

Unlike Newsom, however, who only sought interactions with high-profile Trump supporters on his podcast, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, embraced Donald Trump himself.  Even as Trump postponed sweeping tariffs for ninety days in light of the global economy cratering (and some foreign manufacturers, like automakers, holding back their products at American ports!), Whitmer said that she was not against tariffs outright and added that she understood Trump's motivation for initiating them.

If Whitmer understood Trump's motivation for initiating tariffs, she would be against tariffs outright . . . at least the sort of destructive tariffs Trump is pushing.

Whitmer could have stopped there, but she then met with Trump at the White House to discuss issues and crises pertinent to her state, like an ice storm that hit the northern part of Michigan, and the result was that the electricity surrounding her 2028 presidential ambitions, like the electricity for northern Michigan residents, went out with a loud thump.  She unwittingly found herself in the Oval Office while Trump signed executive orders demanding investigations of Republican critic Miles Taylor for calling Trump to task over his potentially illegal actions in his first presidential term and of former Trump official Christopher Krebs of having declared the 2020 presidential election to be free fair and secure.  (Trump also intimated that Miles Taylor could be guilty of treason, which, like publishing a blog critical of Trump could be soon, is a capital offense.)  As a visibly nervous Whitmer looked on, Trump praised as was a "very good person" who has been doing an excellent job."

Remember when Elissa Slotkin said that the energy for the top of the Democratic ticket in Michigan in the 2024 presidential campaign wasn't there?  Well, that's why Whitmer is making nice with Trump.  As Allan Smith and Henry Gomez of NBC News wrote, "Whitmer is among a handful of prominent Democratic governors viewed as potential presidential contenders in 2028.  But unlike some of her contemporaries, Whitmer has chosen to seek out a stronger working relationship with Trump in his second term. Trump won her state last fall, and Whitmer views herself as more of a center-left moderate with a middle-of-the-road, Midwestern constituency — one that is receptive to Trump’s message, including and especially on manufacturing and tariff policy."

Whitmer forgot one simple fact, though . . . her strategy might be effective in winning Michigan in 2028, but as a national candidate for President, she has to carry enough other states to win the Presidency.  And Democrats in other states are appalled at what she just did and said, with one Democratic operative calling it "a disaster."

Once again, I am for dissolving the Union and breaking up the United States into separate countries.  Whitmer might still be able to get elected president of a post-Union Midwestern republic.  But after how she just "handled" Trump, no one outside of Michigan wants her to run for President of the United States.  Probably even no one inside of Michigan as well.

Kamala 2028. NOT!

The margin between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump has narrowed to the point where the difference between them is about 1.5 percentage points and three million votes, 239,000 of which in key swing states would have elected Harris President had they gone the other way.  Trump is now going to be a minority President, with less than 50 percent of the vote, despite getting the most votes.  In this environment, some folks are already talking about the possibility of Harris trying again for the Presidency in 2028.  A poll already shows her as the favorite for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

Sorry.  Ain't gonna happen.

The most obvious reason is the reason I've been bringing up on this blog over and over and over - Democrats don't give losing nominees, whether at the presidential level or down the ballot, second chances.  Harris will be no exception.  Excuses will inevitably be made as to why she shouldn't run again.  Democrats will say that she had trouble connecting to crucial working-class voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan.  They'll say that she carried reliably Democratic states like New Jersey by margins that were too narrow.  They'll point out her ties to President Biden and that the country will demand a clean break from the past in 2028.  

Also, Democrats know that there are too many people in These States who can't accept a woman of color - or any woman - as President.  That remains the clearest reason for Harris's loss.  The Democrats don't want to have to go through that again.  This is why you won't see a woman as a leading candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, assuming that the Democrats are still around in 2028 and opposition presidential candidates are allowed.  Sorry, Gretchen Whitmer.

A white male Democratic presidential nominee with Harris's qualifications would have been sent to ride off into the sunset as well.  How long have Democrats shunned unsuccessful presidential candidates and denied them a second bite at the apple?  How far back do you want to go?  If you look at the electoral history of Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party and its successor, the modern Democratic Party, from 1800 to 1856, you'll see that they won thirteen out of fifteen presidential elections, and the only nominee who never served as President, 1848 nominee Lewis Cass, was never considered again after his loss to Whig nominee Zachary Taylor.  After President Martin Van Buren lost his bid for re-election in 1840, he made two tries to win the party's presidential nomination thereafter; he failed both times.   

Aside from Grover Cleveland (who was elected to his second nonconsecutive presidential term in 1892 in a rematch with Republican President Benjamin Harrison after having won the popular vote against Harrison four years earlier while losing in the Electoral College), Democrats have given additional chances to only two failed presidential nominees - 1896 nominee William Jennings Bryan (nominated two more times, in 1900 and 1908) and 1952 nominee Adlai E. Stevenson II (nominated again in 1956).  Needless to say, neither of them became President.  Democrats simply don't like losers and will move heaven and earth to ensure that losing nominees - presidential or otherwise - don't get another chance.  They'll sow doubts on TV talk shows, discourage donations to losing nominees looking for another shot, and say that want to "look forward."   

Oh yeah, there are rumors that Harris will run for governor of California in 2026 when the term-limited Gavin Newsom steps down.  Good luck with that.  But then again, even a former Vice President from California who loses a gubernatorial election there can make a national comeback.

There's a precedent, and it's been set by a lesser public figure.

Carolina Bound

Last month, as you will recall, I wrote a letter to former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley asking him to consider running for President in 2024 if President Biden does not.  After nearly a month, I still haven't gotten a reply.  But the political news from the past week has all but made that moot.  Because if there was any doubt about Biden's plans for 2024, that doubt was swiftly quashed with Biden's successful effort to get the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to change the order of the schedule of the presidential primaries and caucuses.

President Biden requested that South Carolina be the first state to hold a primary for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination on February 3, followed by the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucus three days later.  Georgia would hold its primary on February 13, and Michigan would go next on February 27.  All of these dates are Tuesdays except for South Carolina's date, which is on a Saturday; Saturday primaries have been the standard there.  The DNC voted on the change and passed it overwhelmingly. 

Oh, Joe's running, all right.

Biden argues that South Carolina is more demographically representative of the party, with its large black population, and of the country, and thus it makes sense that South Carolina Democrats set the pace with their choice.  (The South Carolina Democratic Party is majority-black.)  It's also no coincidence that Biden won the 2020 South Carolina primary after biting the big one in the previous three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.  I'm sure that South Carolina's Democratic Representative Jim Clyburn is pleased.  I'm sure that DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, another South Carolinian, is also pleased.

The change poses a great deal of problems, though.  Here's the first one.  No one is going to object to stopping Iowa from going first after it botched the reporting of the results of the 2020 caucus to the point where it hardly mattered that Pete Buttigieg won it.  But refusing to let New Hampshire go first runs afoul of a New Hampshire state law that demands that its presidential primary be first, with no ifs, ands or buts about it.  That could be a sticky wicket.  Second, South Carolina is such a strongly Republican state that it becomes meaningless for Democrats in the general election, as it hasn't voted Democratic for President since 1976.  Third, primaries are run by states, not parties, so South Carolina's Republican governor and Republican legislature would have to sign off on any change - and unless the GOP moves up the South Carolina primary to first-in-the-nation status to help former South Carolina Republican governor Nikki Haley, another possible 2024 presidential candidate, it won't do so (especially when Donald Trump wouldn't want competition from Haley, his former U.N ambassador).  Fourth, despite the fact  that New Hampshire's primary would take place three days after South Carolina's, so much focus would be on the Palmetto State, with its larger area and population and its bigger media market, that it would give the retail politics of New Hampshire, where presidential candidates can meet voters face to face and accumulate supporters one small living room or country inn at a time, short shrift.  The greater expanse of land and people in South Carolina prevents that sort of thing there.  That would mean a tougher time for dark-horse candidates like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton from breaking through.  Joe Biden himself was a dark horse in both his 1988 and 2008 presidential campaigns, but he never made it to New Hampshire in either try and came in fifth there on his third try in 2020, and, again, it's no coincidence that he doesn't want New Hampshire to go before South Carolina. 

The fifth problem is that Democratic presidential hopefuls who have the best interests of black voters at heart but don't necessarily connect well with black voters have no chance of getting momentum out of South Carolina.  After his difficulties with blacks in his hometown of Baltimore over policing when he was mayor, which crippled his 2016 presidential run, I doubt that Martin O'Malley could make a go of it in South Carolina even if he runs in 2028.  Pete Buttigieg would also have problems with black voters in South Carolina after his own policing issues from when he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.  Both O'Malley and Buttigieg also suffer from being the type of  presidential candidates who look like Presidents out of central casting and appeal to white yuppies, much like Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, or the horrible John Edwards, and black voters have historically resisted such candidates.   

The 2028 presidential hopeful who benefits most from this primary schedule change is Kamala Harris, simply by being black and having a good rapport with the black voters who form the Democratic Party's backbone.  Remember also that Jim Clyburn said she should be Biden's heir apparent.  Aside form the obvious fact that Democratic presidential heirs apparent (Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton) never pan out, Kamala Harris is extremely unpopular and has never been tested in a presidential campaign.  (Her 2020 run imploded before anyone even cast a ballot or participated in a caucus head count.)  The Democratic Party doesn't just need a candidate who can play well among South Carolina Democrats in 2028; it needs a candidate who can pay well nationally.  Who knows - maybe the 2028 primary will actually produce someone like that.

As for Martin O'Malley . . . I'd better get used to the idea that he will likely never be President, just as we'll likely never send humans to Mars or build a high-speed passenger rail network at home.  O'Malley once said that he believed the the U.S. was capable of doing both at a forum during his 2016 presidential campaign, but his Kennedyesque call to greatness obviously impressed no one in the audience.

Oh yeah, the forum where O'Malley spoke was in South Carolina.