Elizabeth Warren's withdrawal from the Democratic presidential contest means the field of people who have a plausible chance of being elected president is down to three _ all men. In a campaign that featured an unprecedented number of women candidates, many Americans hoped the male monopoly on the presidency would finally be broken. But not this year, it appears.
Last September, Warren led the Democratic field in a YouGov poll, but she fared poorly once primary and caucus votes were cast. Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Marianne Williamson gave up long before that. Though Amy Klobuchar managed a surprisingly strong third-place finish in New Hampshire, she quit after a weak showing in South Carolina. Only gadfly Tulsi Gabbard remains.
It's hard to know exactly what persuades or dissuades voters in a presidential campaign, particularly one as crowded as this one. Warren made some missteps: taking a DNA test to confirm her Native American ancestry, ducking the question of how to pay for "Medicare for All" and proposing a wealth tax that experts said would not yield the revenue she claimed. She also had the tricky task of peeling away support from Bernie Sanders without alienating moderate voters. In the end, she campaigned to the far left, which may have turned off moderate Democrats.
A bias against women, conscious or unconscious, probably did cost her. One study found that a quarter of Democratic primary voters are more sexist than the average American and that they are more likely to support male candidates. Whether this effect determined the outcome isn't clear.
But Warren's loss hardly proves that Americans can't accept a woman in the highest office. In 2016, Hillary Clinton amassed 3.7 million more votes than Sanders to capture her party's nomination _ before beating Donald Trump by more than 2.8 million votes in the popular vote.
The backlash provoked by his election spurred more women to seek office _ and voters were happy to elect them. The 2018 midterms brought the number of women in the U.S. House and the Senate to record highs. Nine women were elected governors. If some Americans are leery of a woman in the presidency, most are fully receptive to electing women to other offices.
That's demonstrably true in Illinois, where the mayor of Chicago, the city clerk and treasurer, and the president of the Cook County Board are women, and more than one-third of General Assembly members are women. So is one of our U.S. senators, Tammy Duckworth.
As for presidential politics, here's another consolation: Many Democrats expect either Joe Biden or Sanders to choose a female running mate. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, says, "I doubt very seriously you'll see a Democratic slate this year without a woman on it." The women who fell short in the presidential race may have laid the groundwork for another try in 2024 or 2028. Biden is proof it takes voter familiarity, and sometimes several tries, to be competitive nationally.
We are a long way from achieving equal representation for women. What is undeniable, though, is that the barriers faced by women in politics have greatly eroded. Warren and this year's other female candidates, in many ways, proved that.
