Vice President Kamala Harris has now clinched enough support to become the Democratic nominee for president.
This comes following President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign over the weekend, driven out by mounting pressure following a disastrous debate performance and subsequent weeks of debates around his mental fitness.
This shoulder tap is the culmination of decades of civic service. Harris, 59, previously served as attorney general in her native California before getting elected as the Golden State’s senator. She was also a district attorney in San Francisco. And, she is the first woman – as well as the first Black and first Asian-American person – to serve as vice president.
With her candidacy comes a returning glimmer of hope that a woman might one day be president. Americans have expressed readiness for this – a 2023 Pew Research Center poll shows that well over a third of Americans feel a woman president would even surpass a man in regards to embodying key leadership qualities like achieving compromise and remaining honest.
The momentum is there for Harris, too. She’s secured pledges from a deluge of delegates ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention – enough to solidify her nomination – and has fundraised over $126 million in just three days.
All of that said… we do exist, to borrow much-memed words from the woman of the hour, “in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Which means I know how this can go.
Hell, it’s already begun. Conservative politicians and combative online posters alike are already labeling Harris as a “DEI hire.” Republican Rep. Tim Burchett added that, “When you go down that route, you take mediocrity.” Naysayers also complain about Harris’ lack of biological children, while wondering whether she’s the sort of person you’d want to grab a drink with. (Yes, we’re still doing that.) All of this atop critiquing how she communicates her vision, as well as irrelevant questions about her past romantic relationships.
The lyrics may change, but the tune remains all too familiar.
Same Old Sexist Song
Plenty of women have run for president over the course of American history.
The first to credibly do so was Democratic Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York. She vied for the presidency in 1972, but failed to raise adequate funds or escape the notion that her candidacy was solely symbolic. (In a 1982 interview, she largely blamed sexism for this, noting that “I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black. Men are men.”)
Only one woman has ever secured the nomination of a major political party in U.S. history – former Secretary of State and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, in 2016. And apart from Harris, only two women have ever been confirmed as major-party Vice Presidential nominees: Republican Sarah Palin in 2008, and Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.
Clinton faced heaps of vitriol during her ultimately failed race to the White House, for incidents such as the Whitewater real estate scandal of the 1990s, and the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi that happened during her tenure as Secretary of State – as well as fielding meaningless complaints over, say, the sound of her speaking voice.
In 2020, a crowded Democratic primary race saw six women – including Harris, as well as fellow Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar – angling for the nomination. Warren ultimately lost following conflict with another (male) candidate, one with an especially vocal fan base: Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. She also struggled to win over voters with her detailed plans for solving America’s problems. Klobuchar lost amid accusations of being either a bad boss, or too careful and reticent as a candidate, depending on who you asked.
Harris is now getting another shot at the presidency. To be fair, criticism of her extends beyond the fodder detailed above – namely, to her involvement in a justice system that has long brutalized broad swaths of the populace, and her uneven attempts to address its myriad woes.
Yet the men have often had just as much, if not more, to answer for – though wrong steps and misdeeds have yet to keep men from assuming the presidency.
George W. Bush started a devastating and ultimately pointless war in Iraq and adopted a feckless non-approach to addressing climate change, yet still won re-election; Obama greenlit a significant number of airstrikes in nations around the world, but is recalled by many as an uncomplicated hero; Donald Trump won the presidency against Clinton without any public service experience, and following the mockery of a Gold Star family and the release of recorded evidence of his predatory nature. Among a pile of other, troubling gaffes and revelations.
A Trump re-election comes with real stakes, as we would likely see the enactment of much of Project 2025, a suite of policies that would undo decades of social and economic progress – not to mention, the naming of more judges who’d revoke even more of our rights (after Trump appointees repealed Roe v. Wade). It would see the installment of a man who openly admires autocrats and wishes to himself be regarded as a sovereign, immune to consequences, rather than an accountable president.
Can a woman candidate with decades of experience – and more than three years spent a heartbeat away from the presidency – turn a 248-year-old tide away from that outcome?
Hope (Tentatively) Floats
When Harris gave her first address as the de facto Democratic presidential candidate on Monday, I was with my family. My mother, among those gathered, offered aloud that “maybe this is it” – maybe we’ll finally elect a woman to our highest office, she meant.
Seconds after my mom spoke, Harris named the need to tangibly support American families with federal-level programs and policies when she called for “a future where no child has to grow up in poverty – where every person has … affordable childcare and paid family leave.”
I’d pinpointed those two items as ones that Biden and Trump had repeatedly ignored, in both words and actions. In that piece, I also examined efforts spearheaded from women legislators who have been pushing for both – because as America’s primary caregivers, women tend to understand the need for such programs on a deeper level.
Proof of that perspective shone in my face as I watched Harris name such policies as vital – and as the responsibility of the president to bring to fruition. But then, I also recalled “the context of all in which you live, and what came before.” I recalled how we’ve treated women presidential candidates in the past, qualifications and fresh mindsets be damned.
Weary, wary hope bloomed in me as I contemplated the notion of electing a commander-in-chief who would view our shared problems – and consider solutions to them – through that unprecedented lens. Yet in tandem, dread pooled too, at the likelihood of us repeating the past by rejecting yet another competent, if complicated woman in favor of a devil we know.
“Maybe it is,” was all I could offer in response to my mom. ◼
