Misogyny isn’t the reason why Elizabeth Warren didn’t become the 2020 Democratic candidate for President of the United States, nor Hillary Clinton who did become its candidate four years earlier, didn’t become president.

Rather we need to ask what was it that made Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel and Theresa May among others, leaders of their countries that Warren and Clinton lacked?

It isn’t that misogyny must, by definition, be greater in the USA than in any other democracy in the world. After all the USA gave us the popular leadership of Ellen, Oprah and The View.

The answer is that these other leaders had something that spoke to their electorates.

And that was, they weren’t afraid to be themselves—warts and all. Whereas Warren and Clinton made the worst mistake in politics possible: They listened to their spin doctors who shaped them into avatars. Clinton admitted as much in her post-election biography, “What Happened”.

Warren and Clinton were mirror images of each other: wannabe leaders who shunned their own auras. And the electorate shut them out—more harshly in Warren’s case for not learning from Clinton’s debacle in 2016. Warren couldn’t hold her own State.

Therefore, the USA will definitely, one day, have a president with a gender other than male.

But only when that person takes the stage without scandal in their baggage, without running to the podium waving to prove they’re younger than their actual years, without laughing with strained bravado, or asking to be elected because they’re not a man.

But that person will also offer a better voiced vision than their opponent. For that’s ultimately what wins voter admiration and fulfils the dream.

Epilogue

Yet, just when you think the dust is settling, something unexpected has occurred in the 2020 Democratic race. Joe Biden, the party’s frontrunner, has begun exhibiting signs of severe memory exhaustion, confusion or dare I say dementia; while Bernie Sanders, his only viable opponent in a fog of heart disease, has linked his domestic policy to Fidel Castro.

That only leaves Tulsi Gabbard in the race, a woman whom the media wants to shun. Yet, curiously, neither Elizabeth Warren nor Hillary Clinton have endorsed anybody. And that brings opportunity.

If Biden continues to falter or pulls out before the Democratic Convention for “health reasons”, could Hillary Clinton step up for nomination from the convention floor? Would she even consider the possibility of an all-female Clinton-Warren ticket?

With 2016 still festering, Clinton is now bitter, angry, raw, and scoring for a fight. This is the type of Thatcherite obsessiveness and Meir-ite chutzpah that won them their elections.

Till today, I’d been thinking Clinton was positioning herself for a 2024 run of sorts (at age 76). But Biden has left the door ajar right now.

The clock is ticking. Should she enter? With a genuine hatred for Trump—who’s well and truly shown his campaign stylebook—she could just pull it off not fearing the unknown. We indeed, could just see America’s first Madam President-Elect this year.

But she’ll need to move fast.

© 2020 Adam Parker.