Until this AM ....

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Right up until this AM I was confident that Hillary was on her way to becoming President.  I really wasn't even shaken by the Iowa results.  But this AM I came to the conclusion that she will not be elected President.

I came to this conclusion listening to morning sports talk radio.  If you really want to get the pulse of what the average person is thinking, listen to sports talk.  People care more about sports than any other topic.  And this morning I heard the giddiness and gloating in the voices as they discussed the prospect of a Hillary defeat.  I was stunned to hear it equally from women as well as men.  And then I realized that it isn't about it being Hillary, it is simply that in my lifetime a woman will never be elected President.

The reason isn't that people overtly think "oh a woman can't do this".  It is rather that we all look at the things that men and women do and we judge them differently based on their gender.

It has nothing to do with her being a woman. I'd be perfectly happy, or at least not too dismayed (due to disagreeing politics), with electing almost any of the other prominent women in politics to the White House (Liddy Dole aside as she's incompetent). There do, however, seem to be an inordinate number of Clinton supporters who allege sexism any time anyone says anything negative about Clinton.

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Name a single American female politician with "charisma".  They do not exist because we do not let them exist.  We always label them as too weak or too manly.  It's just how it is.

Sarah Palin. Kathleen Sebelius. Kirstin Gillibrand. Olympia Snowe. Barbara Mikulski even has quite a bit of charisma even though she's the same age as McCain.

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*Sarah Palin - Umm ... she's attractive but nationally she inspires the question "who?"  Prior to somebody posting about her yesterday I had never heard of her.  That doesn't scream charisma.

That means you're looking for someone nationally prominent, not someone charismatic. A state senator can be charismatic. In that case, you might consider Nancy Pelosi (who does have some charisma and is, of course, very prominent), though her problem is really that she represents San Francisco in Congress.

Mostly, it sounds to me as if you are politically ignorant, sticking your fingers in your ears and singing when anyone points out why women are perfectly accepted in politics.

Nita Lowey is another good example; she was considered a likely successor to Clinton had Clinton gone on to win the Presidency.

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Name a single American female politician with "charisma".  They do not exist because we do not let them exist.  We always label them as too weak or too manly.  It's just how it is.

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska

Sen. Olympia Snowe
Gov. Janet Napolitano
Sen. Amy Klobuchar
Sec. Condoleezza Rice

 The list can still continue to go on and on.

To be fair, Rice has never been elected to anything, so her position as "charismatic" is dubious. We've never seen her campaign.

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*Sarah Palin - Umm ... she's attractive but nationally she inspires the question "who?"  Prior to somebody posting about her yesterday I had never heard of her.  That doesn't scream charisma.

That means you're looking for someone nationally prominent, not someone charismatic. A state senator can be charismatic. In that case, you might consider Nancy Pelosi, though her problem is really that she represents San Francisco in Congress than anything else.

Nancy Pelosi may be party boss, but just go back through the posts about her on here.  You will see exactly how charismatic the Atlas Forum believes her to be.

Popular, not charismatic. And she's more popular than Harry Reid both here and in general, so good luck attributing it to gender.

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Sarah Palin - An ex beauty queen whose national prominence is negligible 
Olympia Snowe - Dismissed within her own party
Janet Napolitano - Has all the charisma of Bill Richardson
Amy Klobuchar - So charismatic that only political wonks have heard of her
Condi Rice - Are you kidding me?  The Ice Queen

Sounds as if you're very good as dismissing women yourself. The rest of us perhaps not so much.

*Sarah Palin - Umm ... she's attractive but nationally she inspires the question "who?"  Prior to somebody posting about her yesterday I had never heard of her.  That doesn't scream charisma.

That means you're looking for someone nationally prominent, not someone charismatic. A state senator can be charismatic. In that case, you might consider Nancy Pelosi, though her problem is really that she represents San Francisco in Congress than anything else.

Nancy Pelosi may be party boss, but just go back through the posts about her on here.  You will see exactly how charismatic the Atlas Forum believes her to be.

Popular, not charismatic. And she's more popular than Harry Reid both here and in general, so good luck attributing it to gender.

More popular than Harry Reid .... now there's a yardstick ....
Now if only she can reach Kucinich popularity .....

She's the leader of an unpopular legislature. Of course she's unpopular. *Yawn*

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Where is the female Barack Obama?  Where is the female John Edwards?  Heck, where is the female Ron Paul?

Given that there had been no figure like Barack Obama or Ron Paul in politics for decades (Ron Paul possibly not ever), it is asking a bit much of women to come up with counterparts. As for Edwards, he's just a pretty face with a southern accent, which takes you far in politics no matter what gender you are.

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Margaret Thatcher.

Party leader of the patrician Conservative Party in 1975 and PM in 1979. For all her faults the fact she was a woman was broadly irrelevant even to the die hard right. She never attained high levels of personal popularity yet she was extraordinarily succesful. Why? Because of her own strengths versus her internal party and political opponents. Because the electorate deemed that there was 'no one better' even if she never scaled the political heights. Hillarys problem is not that she's a woman, it's that the American voter may believe there is someone better. If it's not Obama it may have been her eventual opponent in November.

Prime Ministers, unlike Presidents, are not directly elected.  You know that.

Still, everyone is well-aware of who will become Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister and opposing party/parties leader(s) are the centers of all campaigns. If the UK were so hesitant to have a female PM, they wouldn't have voted Conservative in 1979, and it was by no means a landslide election.

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Gabu, did you like Al Gore?  Didn't you feel like everything HE said was fake?  Of course I always felt that Bush's statements were even MORE fake ... but that's just me.

I think an awful lot of politicians are fake.  Hillary is one of them.

Oh, and as for the #'s.  7 out of 50 Governors and 16 out of 100 Senators seems like an awful small # when you consider that women are just over 50% of the population.  And the reason I believe this small number has reached these positions but won't reach the White House is because Governors and Senators are seen as workers.  The President is seen as a Leader.

Every single time someone brings up a valid point to counter something you've claimed, you move the goalposts further away.  I think it's fairly obvious that you just want to believe that people are voting against Hillary because she's a woman.

Gabu, I refer you to elcorazon's post.  14% and 16% are pretty sorry percentages.  I'm sorry that in your mind all you need to do is say that there has been 1 of something to make it a "valid point".

I know your whole argument against Hillary is that she is "fake" and "not liberal enough" and that is perfectly reasonable.  But you don't complain about Edwards being fake.  And I hate to tell you this, but extremely liberal positions are not going to make it through Congress.

I think you will find a lot of non-Edwards-supporters willing to complain about Edwards being fake. I certainly do. It is worth pointing out, however, that Edwards's "fakeness" is and has always been less salient of an issue because Edwards was never leading in polls, or, indeed, anywhere but third.