Vice President Harris faces the political reality that she may become the first female president of the United States, and her rapid rise is presenting Republicans and Democrats with new challenges about how to address gender-related issues to win over voters.
While she is not the first woman to lead the party as a top Democratic candidate, her emergence comes in a different political context, eight years after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton faced off against former President Trump.
Since 2016, the Democratic Party’s electoral gains have been made largely by women, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion at the federal level, has also played a major role in galvanizing women.
“Kamala Harris, unlike Hillary Clinton, has a bit more of a road map for what it means to run for president of the United States, and in particular against Donald Trump, because she watched 2016 like all of us,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Trump was a bit of an unknown in 2016.”
Trump’s election sparked a massive backlash from women, particularly left-leaning female voters. The day after Trump was inaugurated, millions of women protested in major US cities, including Washington. Two years later, a succession of Democratic women were elected to Congress in the 2018 midterm elections that were widely seen as a referendum on Trump’s two years in office.
“Hillary Clinton’s defeat was an inspiration to many women,” Walsh said. “A record number of women ran for and were elected to Congress. We have a record number of women serving in Congress right now. And in 2020, for the first time, we saw multiple women take to the debate stage.”
Two years after Trump was ousted from office, his nominees to the Supreme Court played a key role in overturning Roe v. Weill in 2022. That same year, Democrats were able to weaken the national Republican wave in the midterm elections. In 2018, Democrats also made gains in Virginia’s unofficial elections.
Since President Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday and endorsed Harris, Harris’ campaign has received strong support from women in general. Hours after Biden dropped out, 40,000 people signed a “Win With Black Women” call on Sunday, which endorsed Harris. More than 100,000 people signed a “White Women For Kamala” call on Thursday.
“Over the past seven years, we’ve seen a real movement to build a multiracial coalition of women working hard to protect each other,” said Jess Jollett, executive director of Progress North Carolina, who participated in the call.
Harris is sure to face special criticism because she is a woman, but Republicans are warning that it may be a losing battle. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and other Republican leaders have called on their colleagues to refrain from attacking Harris because of her diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Republicans have lambasted DEI in recent years but have also been active in courting black voters in this election, outlining the balance they need to strike in attacking Harris.
“This election is about policies, not about personalities. It’s not personal about Kamala Harris,” Johnson said Tuesday. “Her ethnicity and gender have absolutely nothing to do with this election.”
Longtime political observers agree that Republicans need to focus on policy in this election and avoid sexism and racism.
“My hope is that she will be evaluated just as every president, male or female, should be evaluated on character, integrity, policies and ability to perform the job. Hopefully, at this point, we’re past that,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to First Lady Laura Bush.
“The leadership is saying don’t go after gender or ethnicity. That’s not what this campaign is about, and it shouldn’t be. There’s a lot more at stake — the future and direction of policy in the country. Kamala Harris has spoken about that from her side, and the Republican Party should be speaking about that too,” she added.
Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, broke many barriers when she served as vice president and would likely do so again if elected president.
“It doesn’t help anything, it doesn’t help anything,” former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told CNN this week in response to comments made by Republican senators about DEI. “We’re talking about a liberal senator who has literally not accomplished much. We don’t need to talk about her appearance or her gender.” Harris has also faced criticism about her family in ways that are unique to women.
Footage from 2021 resurfaced this week of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), President Trump’s running mate, calling Sen. Harris and other female politicians “kid-free cat-women” despite the fact that Vance is the stepmother to two of Sen. Emhoff’s children. Some women were openly upset by the remarks, including actress Jennifer Aniston, who harshly criticized Sen. Vance for the incident.
When asked about potential pitfalls the GOP could face if Trump and Vance emerge as top candidates, one GOP strategist pointed to the Democrats’ problem with male voters.
“The question here isn’t, ‘Does Trump need to worry about scaring off women?’ That’s already been decided,” said a Republican strategist. “It’s, ‘How many men is Kamala going to scare off?'” the strategist said. “If she was that good at rallying minority voters, she wouldn’t have dropped out before the 2019 Iowa election.”
While Trump generally has stronger support than Harris among white male voters, other Republicans say he has room to win over persuadable female voters.
“Historically, I think women have tended to be the harshest critics of other women,” Republican strategist Erin Perrin said. “We understand what it’s like to be a woman because we’re women, but women tend to be the hardest to persuade. Women voters tend to be harsh on one another, which is why they’re such a large voting bloc that it’s easy to persuade.”
“If I were a Democrat, I’d be more worried about how hard it is to attract and retain women voters than I would be about scaring away male voters,” she added.
