I know you being somewhat sarcastic, but the problem is the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president - which I say based on her atrocious record in California and as VP. Her gender doesn’t factor into this.

Or in the case of Clinton, the party used undemocratic means to counter a political groundswell for a candidate they didn’t like, triggering an apathetic exit and no turnout for the most important voting bloc.

Most critically, the party seems utterly incapable of learning from these mistakes, and only doubles down on the worst decisions in the next election.

As it stands, we’d probably get a trans candidate (if there is one available) in the next presidential election. Which I’d want to celebrate.. but under present circumstances it would lead to an absolute electoral defeat. The Democratic Party leadership needs to learn to read the f$@!ing room, and put forward candidates with broad appeal.

I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.

At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.

So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)

† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.

How did she do in the primaries?

Please consider that Republicans voted for Sarah Palin.