Hillary Clinton’s Sisterhood of Comedy

Hillary Clinton will never—never, ever—be confused with a natural performer on a debate stage, at a rally, or in front of a camera. Even in the context of politicians, she’s not much of a thespian. President Barack Obama could comfortably banter with Zach Galifianakis on Between Two Ferns, Donald Trump acquitted himself just fine in a Saturday Night Live Drake parody video, and Al Gore hosted a full SNL and even anchored an extremely clever sketch in which he pretended to interview potential veep choices like an episode of The Bachelor. It's hard to imagine Hillary pulling off any of those sketches. We’ve had 30 years of her in the public arena, and she’s never once had a memorable off-the-cuff pop culture moment. It’s just not in her skill set.

But she does have one advantage that will work for her in this presidential campaign: This is the best time to be a woman in comedy in decades, maybe (probably) ever. Clinton is likely to become the first major-party female presidential nominee of our times, and she happens to be running when women are ruling comedy. It shouldn’t be a surprise that they are on her side.