The Democratic Party’s quiet debate over whether voters are willing to elect a woman as president burst into public view this week, with two of the party’s most prominent female figures offering starkly different views of American voters.
The former first lady Michelle Obama delivered a blunt assessment of male voters and the American psyche in an interview released on Wednesday, defending remarks she made in November that the country “ain’t ready” for a female president.
“There are men out there that were not going to vote for a woman,” she said on the podcast “Call Her Daddy,” which is popular with Gen Z and millennial women. “Let’s just be real about it and let’s put that on the table and talk about well, what’s that about? Let’s not be mad because I made the statement.”
A day earlier, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, widely considered to be a potential contender in the next Democratic presidential primary race, pushed back on Mrs. Obama’s conclusion.
In an interview with NPR released on Tuesday, Ms. Whitmer said that while “I love Michelle Obama” and “the last thing I want to do is disagree with her,” she drew a different conclusion from the party’s defeat in 2024.
“I think America is ready for a woman president,” Ms. Whitmer said. “The question comes down to a choice between two people, and what we saw in this last election, while Kamala Harris didn’t beat President Trump, we saw women get elected across the country.”
As Democrats begin looking toward the next presidential primary contest, the party has again begun a debate over the electability of female presidential candidates. That discussion has trailed the party for the better part of two decades.
Since Hillary Clinton’s first attempt to break what she called “that highest, hardest glass ceiling” in 2008, half a dozen other women have made serious bids for the party’s nomination. None have won a competitive primary contest.
Now, after two election cycles in which the party failed to win the White House with female candidates, the question has become even more fraught for Democrats who are still scarred by Mrs. Clinton’s loss to Donald J. Trump in 2016 and Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat to Mr. Trump eight years later.
Mrs. Obama described both Ms. Harris and Mrs. Clinton as “really qualified” for the presidency. And yet she said that in 2008, Americans were “more comfortable” with Barack Obama, then a political “newcomer,” than they were with Mrs. Clinton, a former first lady and senator from New York.
Still, Mrs. Obama attributed the bluntness of her earlier remarks to her “wry humor” and a desire to stop being mentioned as a potential candidate herself. She encouraged young women to “keep climbing” in politics.
“We’re still growing. So, yeah, I think it’s going to happen,” she said. “Are we ready now? I don’t know. Prove us wrong. I would love that.”
The podcast host, Alex Cooper, agreed with Mrs. Obama’s assessment of the political moment.
“It’s like, how could a woman hold the highest seat in the government when she has less rights than half the population?” she said. “How would that work? We don’t have legally equal rights to men. How would a woman sit above men?”
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
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