US is still not ready for a lady president

The long wait has finally ended, and the question of who between Vice President Kamala Harris and President Donald Trump would win in the neck-and-neck 2024 election has been answered: Trump won.

“God spared my life for a reason” Trump said in his victory speech after winning the presidential election. He continued, “And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together.” He made these remarks while recounting the assassination attempt against him in the state of Pennsylvania, a swing state that he won over Harris.

It was the second time that Trump was challenged by a female presidential candidate. First was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, which is the basis in declaring the winner, ran against him. The second time was this year when Kamala Harris challenged him. In both elections, Trump won.

However, in 2020, when he was challenged by a male candidate, Joe Biden, he lost. There may be many factors, but one of them could be that the American people still prefer to be led by a male president.

If we look at it, both Harris of the Democrats and Trump of the Republicans have stronghold states of their respective parties. With that, they can more or less count and estimate the number of electoral votes that they can get. What is crucial is how the seven swing states, namely, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin would vote for their president.

Historically, the states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin voted for Democrats on many elections but when the party fielded a lady candidate, Hillary Clinton, in 2016, they shifted to the Republicans whose candidate was a male, Trump. In fact Trump won six out of seven swing states at that time. Only the state of Nevada voted for Clinton.

But in 2020, when Democrats fielded a male candidate, Joe Biden, those swing states voted for him. Biden won six out of seven swing states. Only North Carolina voted for Trump, a Republican. However due to his age, Biden opted not to run for reelection. So the party fielded a lady candidate, Harris.

As a result, all the battleground states voted for the Republican candidate, Trump, which led him to his victory. It seems that these states still cannot accept being led by a female president, who would also be the commander-in-chief of the most powerful armed forces in the world.

Maybe they considered the fact that America’s superpower counterparts, Russia and China, have not yet had a female president. Of course, there are other factors they took into account.

So far, among the countries that sent their congratulatory messages to Trump were two that are at war: Israel and Ukraine. Trump is a supporter of Israel, but it remains unclear how he is going to support Ukraine.

Here in our country, both President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and former president Rodrigo Duterte congratulated Trump already. Let us see how the latter will support our country with the ongoing problem in the West Philippine Sea.