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What the History?!: The FIRST Female Presidential Candidate
2016 seems like a lifetime ago. Shit, February seems like it was a decade ago. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton almost shattered the highest of glass ceilings. (And life would be a lot better if she had and we didn’t have to deal with this orange clown absolutely bungling the pandemic response. Can you imagine how much smoother things would be with a badass smart organized mom/grandma in charge. Sometimes I cry in a ball on the closet floor when I think about what we could have had while listening to the Michelle Obama reading children’s books on PBS kids)
But our gal Hillz wasn’t the first female candidate. There have been other women along the way. And most recently in the 2020 cycle, we finally had an incredibly diverse field of female candidates! Even if that field of dreams was winnowed down to just white dudes, we still elbowed our way in the door a bit more this time. But the very first woman? It wasn’t Maragret Chase Smith or Hillary Clinton. Before women even had the right to legally cast their vote, there was Victoria Claflin Woodhull. Vicky was a colorful shapeshifting charlatan of sorts. Feminist icon? Nope. Snake-oil saleswoman? Almost literally. Opportunist? Absolutely!
In 1872 Vicky was 34, which, Constitutional nerds like myself and eighth graders alike know, is a year too young to be president. She…
