PHILADELPHIA—“Daddy,” my daughter recently asked me, “Why are there no girl presidents? Is it because boys are stronger than girls? Because they’re smarter?”
It left me speechless.
On Thursday night, in the city where the Founders declared all men created equal, I found my answer. It’s because no major party has ever tried nominating one before.
“Tonight, we’ve reached a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president,” Clinton said as she accepted the nomination. “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come.”
It wasn’t the theme of her speech. But it was the unspoken subtext that ran through it. And Clinton took pains to frame the achievement not as the triumph of some subset of Americans, but as a victory for all Americans. She proclaimed herself both “happy for grandmothers and little girls,” but also “happy for boys and men—because when any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone.”
It’s a barrier that proved surprisingly enduring.
Women constitute 51 percent of the American population, cast 53 percent of the votes in the last presidential election, and earn 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees. It’s easy to look at those numbers, and believe the election of a woman to the highest office in the land an inevitability. And for a long time, people have.