There is at least a little irony in that the candidate who is most similar to Hillary from a politics perspective is Biden, and everyone seems to think he's the most electable. But she will be compared to Hillary because ovaries, even though they are miles apart. Maybe you're right and it really is as simple as America won't vote for a woman. Depressing.
Yes, it's depressing and unfortunate. But let's separate out ideology and gender for a second. As a woman pol, it's so tough striking the right balance between being assertive and having an agreeable personality and still come off relatable. Of the Dems in the race, I think Harris pulls this off the best by far because, to me, she's the 2nd best communicator to Buttigieg in the race. I think 1 of the reasons Klobuchar and Gillibrand haven't gotten any traction is they're both pretty bland in terms of personality (and I was briefly on the Klobuchar train a few months ago and was disappointed she got zero traction). Warren is a much more forceful personality, however she doesn't have a sense of humor and isn't that relatable - her personality is more like Hillary's than anyone else running. Neither Warren's personality nor her ideology are going to serve her well in states like VA, NC, FL, AZ or NV - though I'm not sure it would hurt her quite as badly in the midwest battlegrounds. And while this sucks, at the same time we're electing more women to congress and to state houses in the last couple of years. Here in VA for example, we flipped 16 delegate seats with women winning a handful of those, and 6 months ago we flipped 3 house seats with women winning all 3. So it's getting better.
As for ideology, the left wing of the party is certainly generating the most press these days, but it's not like the ardent left was responsible for flipping the house last year. The AOCs of the world mostly won safe blue districts, whereas it was the Spanbergers and Lurias who mostly flipped the reddish purple districts in states like VA, NJ and PA. And yes, ideologically, Biden is much closer to the Clinton/Obama wing of the party than some of the other Dem aspirants. But I would also submit to you that ideology is way down on the list of reasons Hillary lost. Way further up on that list of reasons was her personality, her shitty tin eared campaign (for the 2nd time in a row), her paying more attention to GA & AZ than MI & WI and the shite email controversy starring Comey. I hear many here and in the press calling for bold leftward change. But I again say that history isn't exactly on your side. Our 3 most progressive nominees during that period were McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis, whereas Carter, Bubba, Gore, Kerry, Obama and Hillary were more centrist Dem - and of the latter group, only 2nd time Carter and Kerry lost the popular vote. Getting back to this year, Biden enters the race to a lot of press saying his time has passed (and yes, we all wish he would have run in 2016), and it's not like he has well formulated positions - he seems to be the slowest in developing those. But he's leading in the primary polls, and more importantly, he fares much better in the state v. Trump polls than anyone else. Now this could all change in the next 7-8 months, but I find it interesting and 1 year ago I would not have predicted we'd be where we are.
