[deleted]
Is it a massive undertaking to run as anything other than a white male in a heterosexual marriage who claims to be christian?
Yes.
Is that the same thing as being disqualifying?
No.
[deleted]
Submitted 3 weeks ago by diamondsky@lemmy.blahaj.zone to [deleted]
Comments
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
white male in a heterosexual marriage who claims to be christian
…and is above 6 foot
red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Who do you think would be more likely to be elected? A heterosexual white woman, a gay white man or a heterosexual white Jewish man?
NotAGamer@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
The white Jewish man. All he has to do is invoke the old testament and be very islamophobic. The right hates Muslims more than Jews.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Assuming they are identical in charisma/lack of real baggage and run the exact same campaigns I would expect it to go from best chance to least chance:
- Hetero white woman
- Hetero Jewish man
- Gay white man
But overall I do think the campaign and charisma will be the most important thing for the vast majority of Dem voters and all three could be viable candidates. Yes, they might pull a few less bigoted moderates.
Republicans won’t be nominating anyone other than a straight white ‘christian’ male.
Wilco@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
An openly gay man has a better chance of being elected than an openly atheist one.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
While there’s no rule on the books, of course, it took a massive (coopted) grassroots movement to elect someone with a different skin color. I think a lot of Americans are backwards thinking and he would struggle.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It really is this.
TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
That feels like a sound read on things.
I think a lot will have to change before America elects a woman, gay man, Jew or anyone else outside of the white straight man again.
One could talk about the qualities of each candidate and argue how Hillary Clinton, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris etc weren’t as strong as X other candidate, but twice now we’ve seen highly qualified candidates lose either primaries to a senile, milquetoast sack or generals to an unqualified demagogue.
The country is fucked up.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
it took a massive (coopted) grassroots movement to elect someone with a different skin color.
On the other hand, 08 Obama showed with charisma and popular policy, skin color didn’t matter.
He not only easily won the general, he carried a lot of down ballot candidates who were less popular.
2012 after voters realized he wasn’t who he said he was is a better example for skin color not mattering.
But if someone with comparable charisma ran on a comparable platform as 08 Obama, nothing else about them matters.
Carrolade@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Agreed. I understand people’s desire to look at the fact that both women lost, but we should also remember the fact that they both failed to unify their own coalition. This is a pretty big deal, if you can’t even unify your own coalition, your prospects are pretty damn challenging.
That charisma element is very valuable for that, as is tossing your own faction members enough policy bones to satisfy them even if you’re not fully pleasing them. Clinton and Harris both failed to do this, and took their coalitions a little bit too much for granted. Harris came close with the Walz pick, but Gaza weighed very heavily on her with progressives. She needed to do more to distance herself from Biden to thoroughly win them over.
Ultimately, I think our problem stemmed from them not understanding the appeal of the far right. This caused them to underestimate the strength of their opponent and fail to run as dynamically and aggressively as necessary. They played it too safe. With Harris in particular, I wanted to see the prosecutor prosecute the case against Trump, with the voters as the jury. Instead her stump speeches and interviews remained frustratingly soft. Hilary did this too.
We the people can look at Trump as some big joke, and make fun of him and his supporters as much as we want. But the opposition candidate has to take him deathly seriously, and give him the gravity he is due as a potentially fascist leader of the worlds most powerful military. That is no laughing matter.
This sort of speech by AOC is what we needed more of, and even it is a little bit soft: youtu.be/OO7SE4Zpd9s
Bernie could have done it too, I think. He did come fairly close in the primary, even though he was fighting upstream against lingering negative sentiment about “socialists” in middle America. I think the country has changed enough in the past 10 years, partly due to his trailblazing, that that’s no longer as much as an albatross as it once was though.
deadcatbounce@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Even in England, our gay PMs have to be married. At least until their wife finds out.
Squorlple@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Many historians believe the 15th POTUS, James Buchanan, was gay and closeted. Openly gay Pete Buttigieg (D) has ran for president within recent years but ultimately did not win his party’s nomination.
However, there are two determining factors for a more modern day scenario:
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While not categorically disqualifying on any legal level, would a lack of heteronormativity be rejected by the majority of voters (as processed through the Electoral College)? Bigotry unfortunately seems to be the winning method.
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Will there even be a specter of fair and free elections for POTUS in the future? (Doubtful)
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Will there even be a specter of fair and free elections for POTUS in the future? (Doubtful)
There will be free elections, eventually.
After a bloody conflict on the streets, that is.
Traitors have stolen the country and the US is in need of a second American Revolution.
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superkret@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
The real disqualifying factor would likely be that he doesn’t have a net worth above $100 million.
MissJinx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Aparently if he’s a nazi nobody would care that he’s gay
Buffalox@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s hard to say, it doesn’t seem like the CEO of Apple being openly gay has detracted from the popularity of the brand.
And as we have seen with Elon Musk and Tesla, an unpopular CEO definitely can detract from the popularity of a brand.
There has been no such reaction against Apple.
So my guess is, that it is possible, but it obviously depends on the candidate.If you had asked a few years before Obama was elected if a colored president would be possible, I would probably have guessed no. But Obama proved it was in fact possible when he got elected in 2008.
I think if the right person comes along, he or she can win disregarding color sexuality or gender.
Of the 3, it seems to me that currently not being a man is probably the biggest handicap.But in time politics will be dominated by women, the trend where I live (Denmark) is pretty clear, women will most likely dominate within a few decades. Just recently all the Scandinavian Prime ministers were Women. To me that was a very clear sign of a trend towards more women in politics, and more women gaining leading positions too.
We also had a gay man as a pretty popular leader of the conservatives of Denmark. So it is not much of a stretch to say a gay man could absolutely become Prime Minister here. No issue whatsoever.
USA might be a bit harder, but not impossible.TheImpressiveX@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Instead of the First Lady, would his husband become the First Gentleman?
cattywampas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Most likely, same as if a married woman were elected. Hillary Clinton said Bill probably would have been called First Gentleman.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Kalama Harris’s husband was “Second Gentleman”, so I’ll assume yes.
TheFogan@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Disqualifying no… though I would say it’s a disadvantage, just as being a woman is. IMO it’s a bigger disadvantage than being a woman, in the fact that more religious groups are outright opposed to gay people being allowed to be out.
So in short, it could win the democratic primary in theory. It would take an especially weaker than normal republican candidate.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Today, probably not in the near future.
Maybe in the 2040s we’ll see a gay/lesbian person become US president, but not 2028.
Remember, there was a long gap betweeen 1965 Civil Right Act and Barack Obama becoming president.
And Remember, the Obergefell ruling and Respect for Marriage Act are still very recent, and might even get overturned, which indicates that the country is still not ready to accept gay/lesbian people, especially into positions of power.
Just look at the recent “DEI” outcry.
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Disqualifying in a social sense? Unfortunately, yes I think it would be. It doesn’t matter how awesome your husband is, for a significant chunk of the American electorate, a candidate’s calibre is eclipsed by the voters’ prejudices. And there is a hysteria-level paranoia towards LGBT folks among these people.
It took ages for a Catholic to be elected President due to evangelical paranoia about ‘papists’. And we still haven’t elected a woman, which is insane when you consider women make up half of the electorate. We did have a black guy elected twice, but that was due to a few mitigating factors: a) the timing was right (in the sense that he ran when diversity was seen as more acceptable); b) he was ridiculously charismatic; c) he was also half white; d) he was a Protestant Christian (despite what the ‘secret Muslim’ clowns kept screaming).
IMO it sucks that someone’s orientation, ethnicity, gender, religion, or heritage still bars so many good candidates from running (because this isn’t just a case of the visible candidates like Harris, Buttigieg, or even the likes of Carson, Hilary Clinton, or Palin getting denied at the final hurdle; many candidates never make it close to running due to these biases). But this is the ass-backwards, self-immolating world we live in.
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You’re asking at least two questions, three imo.
The first is the title question, which is a fairly obvious: not currently, and it’ll be a while before it’s realistic.
The second is about the balance of traits that makes someone acceptable as a candidate that could win.
The third is your husband in particular.
You did indeed list off some of the more salient traits that would factor in. If an openly gay man is gone to be elected the first time, there’s a high chance he’s going to be white, and at least pretend to be christian.
But your husband? Probably not. You mentioned a lot of things, but not public awareness or previous elected offices. Having not held office before isn’t a total fail, but being a complete unknown? Never happen in the modern age. There’s no way he’d even get the party nomination, much less win. That kind of thing would end up wrecking him if he was hetero at a presidential level. In congress? Yeah, doable. But not for president.
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pete Buttigieg is doing pretty fucking well, politically. It helps that he’s a medal-wearing veteran. I think that’s actually an important credential for most politicians but in the case of a gay man, perhaps moreso because it helps silence any slurs against his manhood.
To be honest I think gay people are doing pretty fucking well these days versus when I grew up. There are still plenty of firsts left to happen, like President. But my whole childhood and young adulthood, gays were public enemies and the focus of conservative ire at every turn. They seem to have switched targets to trans people now, which is awful. But it has left gay people in an unusually quiet space. The marriage question is settled in all 50 states. With that, we seem to have moved on.
Pacrat173@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
If you agree with the idea that James Buchanan was it’s already happened.
Goretantath@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
For all we know with how secretive they have to be lest they face prosecution, one probabaly already was gay and just had a wife to satisfy the constituents.
GenerationII@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The United States is (not very) slowly sliding into full blown fascism. Things are getting less progressive here, not more. If you think that the current elimantionist rhetoric centered around trans people won’t make its way to you and your husband, then you haven’t read a single word of history. Shit’s about to get a whole lot worse for folks.
Lucky_777@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
100% yes. You’re talking about having to appeal to a racist and sexist minority but a big enough minority to sway elections. Not happening until MAGA is crushed.
yesman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Cynicism coming in hot: A gay man is still a man and therefore has the advantage over any woman.
rivan@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Lincoln was already president, so yeah I’d say it’s possible.
WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yes.
If you’d asked me in 2008, I would have said no.
tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Statistically speaking, we’ve already had one or more.
Non-closeted is another matter. Cult of personality and whatnot.
remon@ani.social 3 weeks ago
No, Putin doesn’t like the gays.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Disqualifying? No. However, he’d run up against similar prejudices that make it difficult for a woman to win the presidency.
Remember that Pete Buttigieg was in the running at one point.
andros_rex@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Here’s what Rush (rest in piss) had to say about Pete during the 2020 run.
I’ve also seen tons of disgusting comments from Republican politicians and conservatives online speculating about the sexual positions he prefers with his husband.
There are also lots of disgusting comments about his family - here’s Mike Pence:
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I just think it’s funny that Rush Limbaugh thought that much about two guys kissing, and encourages others to do the same.
SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I always laugh when anyone seriously refers to Trump as a “man’s man”. He’s so pathetic and weak. Is that now America’s idea of masculinity?
I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s always the grossest old men who are like “I just don’t want to imagine two men fucking, It grosses me out.” Like buddy… do you think I want to imagine your fat saggy self sweating and grunting away, regardless of partner choice? No, no I do not. So I don’t. It’s not that hard.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
iron closet
Snowclone@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Mike Pence is so deeply in the closet he’s coming out the other side. He needs Buttgieg at work or his whole world falls apart and he gets depressed? Buttgieg isn’t in his office so planes are gonna fall out of the sky? Very forlorn and unrequited.
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Somehow
PalpatineRush Limbaugh returned.Oh, someone quoted him? Don’t even do that, y’all!
hazypenguin@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Americans being sexist, racist, and homophobic?
Why is it that’s way? Other western countries have managed to elect gay, female, and people of different races to lead them. Sure, Obama won, but I very much doubt the people that voted Trump in would do so with someone like Obama.