Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Shattering the myth of the ‘glass ceiling’

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issue 24 August 2024

What a thrilling number of glass ceilings have been broken this century – with more still to come, apparently. In 2008 America elected its first black president. In 2012 Barack Obama was re-elected and so became the first black president to win re-election. In 2016 America had a chance to elect its first female president but the public blew it and failed to elect Hillary Clinton. Fortunately they somewhat made up for this in 2020 by voting in the first female vice president. A vote that was made sweeter by the fact that, on that occasion, the public had a two-for-one offer and were also able to vote in the first black vice president. Now the public have a further chance to improve themselves by voting for the first black female president.

Hillary Clinton had a chance to ruminate on this at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week, declaring that between herself and Kamala Harris: ‘Together we’ve put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling.

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Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.

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