Madam President

 Elizabeth Warren published a book that lays the cause of her defeat in the primaries largely at the feet of sexism. Jon Chait had a problem with it, but I think Matthew Yglesias has a better take on it. The problem is that Yglesias glosses over a critical fact: almost every female Head of Government has been a Prime Minister. (I said several times during the primary that I thought Warren would make an outstanding Prime Minister.)

In a parliamentary system, you vote for a party as much as an individual. There is usually a separate figure who serves as Head of State - either elected or hereditary - and the PM is a product of working his or her way up the professional ladder. When a voter in Birmingham or Toronto or Auckland or Berlin goes to the polls, they vote for the party they want to see running things by voting for a member of the parliament (or in some cases simply the party; in New Zealand you vote on both). This removes the personality question largely off the table. 

Presidents are elected based on some form of personal charisma. You (and I) may find Trump loathsome, but he clearly had and has a charismatic hold on people. His sneering belligerence was a selling point as much as a liability. The President is a representative of the entire nation and - among other things - Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces. There are a ton of sexist assumptions that weigh on a presidential candidate like Hillary Clinton that simply don't apply to Jacinda Arden, Teresa May or Angela Merkel. 

The general pattern of history shows that we break the color barrier before the gender barrier, but I hope we get there sooner. However, our first female president will largely be bound by the same constraints that Obama was bound by: taking care not to poison the well for future candidates. One reason Biden can be bolder than Obama is that "Old White Guy" doesn't have to worry about establishing a bad precedent for other Old White Guys. 

We currently have a female Speaker of the House. I would love for Warren to succeed Schumer as Majority Leader some day, but maybe that's Amy Klobuchar's future. The simple tautology of "we won't have a female president until we have a female president" is a reflection on how we elect people to that office and the sexist assumptions that we rely on when we do.

I don't know how much sexism cost Warren. I know Hillary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump. I know the electoral dynamic that gave us 2016 is not solely about sexism and perhaps we should refrain from risking a loss in 2024 or 2028 until that long awaited demographic transition occurs (or the GOP gets less batshit insane). Ideally, 2028 is Harris vs Traitor-Greene and we can tease simply misogyny out of it.

I very much want to see a Madam President, but right now I fear for any Republican return to power, given the toxic, anti-democratic nature of their current beliefs. How much am I willing to risk? That question is not unreasonable nor are the underlying assumptions about how sexist biases influence the selection of president, because it is the presidency and not the prime ministership.