From Aaron Coleman's Twitter:
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Judgment is crucial to making good decisions. Nothing replaces time and experience in the development of judgment. People can be very smart and still not have good judgment, or have limited good judgment because their life experience is narrow.
The more people who are affected by your decisions, the more lives depend on your judgment. That's a heavy burden for anyone to take on; if you make a mistake, you have to live with it.
People your age are not ready to take on that burden in public office. A lot of people who are older than you are can't manage it, either. It takes a long time and a lot of work to be a good person who can also withstand and confront the world's evil.
For personal and professional advancement, smaller steps are better steps. Meteoric rises are dangerous.
I think that you will be happier in the long term if you let this race go. Then you won't feel that you have to prove anything to anyone. If you live a good life after that, people will respect it and eventually you will have more to offer under much less stressful scrutiny. You might not even want to return to politics; there are many other professions that are less vicious, more fun, and more consistently helpful to humanity.
Sadly, the media continues to be much more forgiving of men's transgressions in the present than of women's permanently presumed character flaw of being female. When other people agree with you, it is not always good for you.
