On Wednesday, Nov. 5, Michelle Obama took to a stage in Brooklyn for a conversation with actor Tracee Ellis Ross about fashion and politics. At one point during the evening, Ross asked Obama about the prospects of a woman becoming president. “Well, as we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready,” Obama replied. “That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running, ’cause you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time.”
It had been just 24 hours since election results rolled in from New Jersey, where a woman was elected governor by 14 percentage points, dramatically outperforming preelection polls; from Virginia, where women were elected both governor and lieutenant governor; from Detroit, Albany and Syracuse, which all elected their first Black women mayors; and from Georgia, where a woman claimed a seat on a powerful state board — a red-to-blue flip in a purple state that made her the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Georgia’s history.
Maybe Obama hadn’t had time to fully digest these results; maybe, as my friend and Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod said, it’s simply the case that “she’s right until she’s not!” Whatever the reason, Obama was repeating an all-too-common view about the viability of women candidates. “I do think,” former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle told Politico last year, “that the country is still sexist and is not ready for a woman president.” Mikie Sherrill, now-governor-elect of New Jersey, told NBC during the campaign that, among “insiders,” there was doubt about whether women could win, and she relayed that when she first ran for the House in 2018, a Democratic official told her that “people didn’t think a woman could win in New Jersey.” As someone who works to advance women in politics, I have been told repeatedly by Democratic donors in the past year that when the stakes are high, nominating women is just too risky. One major donor told me after Kamala Harris’ loss that she would never again write a check to a woman candidate for president. “It’s just throwing money away,” she said.