WASHINGTON — As Vice President Kamala Harris ascends to the top of the Democratic Party, elected officials, activists and operatives see her as a new chance to defeat Donald Trump and make history in one fell swoop.
Eight years after Trump beat Hillary Clinton, Harris could also become the first female president and the first black woman to hold the nation’s highest office.
Democrats are somewhat optimistic, now settling into a picture they didn’t have in 2016: a messenger in Harris uniquely positioned to energize voters. Supreme Court decision to overturn national abortion rightsmore evidence from the ballot box that women can win battleground states, and the knowledge that Trump himself is beatable — if still politically dangerous.
“Lessons that still apply [from 2016] People need to take Trump and his supporters seriously,” Shaunna Thomas, co-founder and director of the pro-women group Ultraviolet, told NBC News. “It’s a higher-level message than whether a woman can win the presidency.”
In 2016, Clinton’s campaign and air of inevitability left some Democrats complacent and resting on their laurels. “I think we’re not going to leave anything on the field this time,” Thomas said.
Now, many party operatives and groups pushing for Clinton to become the first woman president are trying to borrow a statement from President Joe Biden to “finish the deal.”
“Let’s get it over with,” said Mini Timmaraju, who heads the pro-abortion group Reproductive Freedom for All and was women’s suffrage director for Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “We ran against Donald Trump and we lost, and we’ve had an incredible, terrible loss nationwide over Roe, and we’ve done so much damage to our country that this is the last fight for us.”
A Harris victory in November would mean finishing what many of these operatives started with Clinton, stretching back to New York’s Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman in Congress to make her historic long-term presidential bid. 1972.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” he said.
Harris himself has cited Chisholm as an inspiration, even using the same colors Chisholm did in his presidential run in his 2020 campaign logo.
The influx of female lawmakers into Congress in 2018, as well as women who have risen to the top in key states, such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, also counter the “electability” argument used against female candidates. before, especially in the Democratic primaries.
“What’s fundamentally different from 2016 and 2020: the first is Dobbs, and that’s a big one. It just changes the dynamic everywhere,” said Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of EMILY’s List, which worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “But I also think that we are not at the initial stage. And here “selectivity” is very important. … So it’s a question of ‘who better to oppose Trump?’ not the question? We’re just going to hold it against Trump. And I like this contrast.”
Harris urged voters and skeptics alike to “break free of what has been” and believe that women leaders can win as long as voters support them.
After all, it’s been eight years since a woman broke through the glass ceiling to become the Democratic nominee and top the Democratic ticket, but an even more enduring one still lies at the top, involving the presidency itself. Clinton’s shock loss in 2016 resulted in a 2020 Democratic presidential primary that hinged on the idea of being “electable” and that any woman could defeat Trump after a woman fought to win the all-important Electoral College vote. Harris was one of five women who ran and lost in the primary campaign.
U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is running for governor, said: “You have a woman running for president who loses and everyone says, ‘Oh, I don’t know if a woman can win.'” “How many men have run for president and lost and no one says it?”
Even amid the optimism, “we are not naïve,” Timmaraju said, referring to the sexism and racism that still exists for non-white, non-male candidates. “We have our eyes open.”
This has already led to some questions about who Harris should choose as his running mate: whether to appeal to history with a choice that highlights his history as a woman or a person of color, or go with many still in the party. Consider the white man the “safer” choice?
In 2016, Clinton and her team briefly considered doubling down with two women on the ticket: Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Clinton ultimately chose Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. – even described himself as “boring”.
“I thought about everything,” Clinton said in an interview for the book in 2022.Featured: Why America Didn’t Put a Woman in the White House… he admitted that he was motivated to focus on the history of the moment, as some of his assistants did.
Clinton later concluded, “It was a reverse thing. “I mean, you would be asking a lot of voters to elect two women. That would be a big step. On the other hand, it would make history and let’s roll the dice. But that’s not why I ultimately decided to pick Tim Kaine. I was looking for someone who – and I think this should be the main thing – could be president right away. And he had the attributes that allowed me to imagine him really stepping up to be president with the country.”
This time around, there is similar excitement around the possibility of leaning towards women’s choice, as well as hesitation around asking too much of voters.
“People are always looking for a balance,” Reynolds said, watching President Barack Obama pick Biden as his running mate.
The choice was designed to allay experience concerns about Obama’s youth and relative inexperience, as well as bring a certain level of familiarity and comfort to the ticket. But Biden was also the white man on the ticket to become the first black president. A person close to Obama said in an interview for “Electable” that Biden “wouldn’t be saddled with the burden of racism that Obama was saddled with.”
And now the list Democrats floated Harris as potential nominees is overwhelmingly white and male, with only two Black men and a single woman among the names. Harris could choose a surprise candidate, and she hasn’t said anything publicly about who she’s interested in, but once again the conventional wisdom seems to be that a likely female presidential candidate needs a politically moderate white man. angry voters.
“It tells you we’re in America,” said Rep. Jazmine Crockett, D-Texas. “But even so.”
“Traditionally, when we look at who makes these tickets, it’s not like there’s a big bench of people of color,” Crockett said, pointing out that the U.S. still hasn’t elected a black female governor, and Wes still hasn’t. Moore, from Maryland, remains the only black man to serve as governor.
“I think this is a problem that we have to solve. We need to make sure our benches represent who we are in this country, and it’s not a matter of white men being the only people elevated to the highest office in the country,” Crockett said.
The demographic makeup of the bench aside, Harris’ supporters have been pleased to see many Democrats — from Biden to the Democratic leadership in Congress and some progressive rebels — all quickly lined up behind him in recent days. It was the kind of crowning that even his supporters said they couldn’t have imagined at the start of his time in the administration — a time when his work was marked by both fair and unfair criticism. When Biden promised to pick a female running mate in 2020, Women’s groups immediately took action and organized “We are behind him”. on the cusp of sexism and racism that any number of potential choices could face. Now, many of the groups that are part of these efforts don’t feel the same pressure to organize — although they will be ready if any of these attacks are caught.
“He’s got all of us now,” Thomas said, referring to the Democratic Party’s full embrace of Harris.
For now, Democrats are focused on ousting Trump — and possibly the glass ceiling with it.
“I’m very confident he’s going to win,” Spanberger said of Harris. “But if she doesn’t, it’s not because she’s a woman. Just like if Donald Trump is losing, it’s not because he’s a man. Because he is a terrible candidate with terrible policies.”