Daughter Allie celebrated the week of her 34th birthday hearing a repeat of the message she received in 2016 after working for the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren suspended her campaign, following in the footsteps of other talented women who started — and failed to finish — the long journey to the White House.

In this year, a century from recognizing a woman’s right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, this country still isn’t comfortable with a woman in the Oval Office unless she happens to be visiting her husband.

My son and I had this conversation following the election of Barrack Obama to his first term. Voters, I said, are more accepting of the nation’s first black president than they are of the first woman president. He argued it would happen almost at the same time because Clinton would follow Obama as president.

He was wrong. And those of us who believed this election might be different also were wrong.

In the days since Warren’s announcement, there has been much discussion about why she didn’t catch on. She wasn’t likeable. She reminded voters of a schoolmarm. Never mind that she was funny, smart, and determined to make this a better country by leveling the economic playing field between the super rich and everyone else.

I will never believe — and neither does my daughter — that Warren’s failure wasn’t due at least in part to her sex. Richard Nixon managed to become president and no one ever accused him of being likeable.

The day Warren suspended her campaign, a friend and I attended a presentation that night at Salina’s Smoky Hill Museum about the war waged by women to secure the right to vote.

It was a reminder of how far we’ve come. And how far we have to go, for our daughters and our granddaughters.

Elizabeth Warren probably won’t be president, but she is an inspiration to many, including the countless little girls she encouraged with her “pinkie promise” that women should run for president.

I like to think every one of those little girls believed her and more than one will work to finish the job she started.