Former first lady Michelle Obama stood by her earlier statement that the country is not ready for a female president because of deep-rooted sexism.
In November, Obama said people should not be asking her to run because the country is “not ready” for a female president. She elaborated on these remarks on the Call Her Daddy podcast, saying qualifications have not been the problem with candidates.
“Let’s not be mad that I made the statement, but let’s look at the fact that we’ve had two really qualified female candidates,” Obama said. “They’re not perfect, and they don’t cross every T and dot every I, but there’s a falling shortness that is happening.”
Obama said people need to “stop pretending” and “be real” about the reasons women have had unsuccessful presidential bids.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris are the only two women to have won a party’s presidential nomination and be at the top of the ticket. In both elections, Clinton and Harris lost to President Donald Trump.
In 2008, Clinton ran against former President Barack Obama in the Democratic Party primary. The former first lady said people were more “comfortable” with her husband as a “newcomer” than with Clinton.
She said change takes time and “context matters,” highlighting that the Equal Rights Amendment was not that long ago for a country that has been around for “hundreds” of years.
“The remnants of what has been there and what we’ve been socialized is really deeply embedded in who we are and whether people really feel yet that they can follow a woman as president,” she said.
“We would just be silly to think that there aren’t gut [feelings about female candidates] … we’re not even analyzing what those feelings are about because we are trying to pretend like it’s all better,” she added.
She questioned whether it would be better if people had been “feeding off of this bone” of inequality for years.
“It doesn’t just go away, it takes time,” she said. “But we’re moving in that direction.”
The former first lady elaborated on this point, saying the reality is there are men who have said they would not vote for a woman as president. She said people need to have conversations about this point and find out “what that’s all about.”
Despite women not being able to “crack the ceiling” of becoming president yet, she highlighted that there are female governors.
Currently, 14 states are led by female governors, including four Republicans and 10 Democrats.
She said there is also humor in her November statements about female presidential candidates, which she said she made so people would “stop” looking at her.
“It’s just a reminder that I am not a politician, not interested in it,” she said. “It’s not who I want to be.”
The former first lady’s podcast appearance is part of the media tour for her latest book, The Look.
Host Alex Cooper also posed a hypothetical scenario, asking if Trump changed the law on term limits, would the former first lady’s husband run for a third term? She said she “hopes not.”
“I would actively work against that,” she said. “I would be at home working against it.”
When pressed on her response, she said she believes in the “need for new vision.”
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“We’re changing and growing so fast, this is a hard job, and it requires new energy, new vision, all the time, new ways of looking at the world,” she said.
“I do believe that eight years is enough,” she added.