With Kamala all but certain to sweep to power in 10 days’ time, there are two things that have sucked out some of the energy about the history that will be made.
Hillary had been expected to do it 8 years ago but failed. IMHO, the enthusiasm for the history that was expected to be achieved crested and peaked at that moment in time. By this point, even if Harris gets it done, the novelty has somewhat already worn off.
Trump poses such a severe threat to the nation and to the world that, predominantly, the feeling that Democrats will have when Trump is defeated will not be so much one of joy but relief. The election coverage will not be so much about Kamala taking power but rather Trump being denied power.
This is not at all like 2008, when Obama ran against a normal centrist sane Republican (McCain) and there was little to worry about if McCain had won. As such, that election narrative was nearly entirely all about how Obama was going to make history by becoming the first nonwhite president.
Even though Kamala is a woman (and a nonwhite one at that,) this election is still a Trump election - all about Trump, Trump, Trump. Trump the fascist. Trump the Russian agent. Trump the Project 2025 enabler. Trump the bigot. Trump the racist. The media, in fact, has put very little attention on the aspect about Kamala breaking the glass ceiling - it almost goes un-emphasized.
So while Kamala will still get much mention about being the first woman to become US president, it will be, IMHO, only about half as much focus as it would have been under normal circumstances.
We can debate her likelihood of winning or not in the other threads. I would prefer this thread be about the significance of her about to become the first woman president.
I won’t fight the hypothetical, despite its utter ludicrousness.
Tell that to my wife. She’s positively giddy every time she hears or sees Harris speaking. She says in a dreamy voice, this woman could be the next president.
But it does seem that, from a media standpoint, the historical significance of a woman being president for the first time is not getting its due. Compared to the intense media focus that there was in 2008 about Obama being poised to become the first nonwhite president, Harris’ gender is mostly sailing under the radar.
To be sure, at about 10 PM on November 5, every media source is going to have to report on the significance of it. Every news story that night will mention Harris having broken the glass ceiling. But overall, the attention that angle has gotten over the duration of this election cycle is only a fraction of what Obama had in 2008 for being a black candidate. Trump is still consuming most of the air in the room.
And even then, on Election Night, many Democrats won’t so much be celebrating the fact that America now has a woman president as they would be the fact that Trump won’t be president.
IMO pushing the fact Harris is non-white and female only hurts her chances of election. It’s a very effective wedge issue in our mostly benighted “swing states”. Better the media downplay it until the win is in the bag.
Not to continue the hijack, but yeah I’d like some of whatever the OP is smoking. As outlined in the other 3000+ post thread this election is very, very, very far from a done deal for the Ds. Would that it were so.
Turning merely to the bland question of whether the first-mover glass-ceiling-breaker thunder has been stolen … AND assuming Harris both wins and is seated without significant history-making controversy that would detract / distract from this aspect of her election being front and center.
I think the answer is yeah, some. But far short of entirely.
Fast forward 20 years from now and Hillary Clinton’s failed attempt to be elected prez in 2016 will be a footnote right next to Geraldine Ferraro’s failed VP candidacy. Quick question for everyone reading: Without looking it up, can you name Ferraro’s running mate or the slate from the other party or the year that election took place? I can’t.
If Harris wins, it will be historic. And will be treated as such. But not necessarily in the breathless coverage of the moment. As with Obama, it’ll be the slowly growing reality that a) she did it, b) we did it, and c) yanno, not everything changed. The job can be done just fine by a non-white and/or non-man and it’s just presidential business as usual.
Of course to the extent there is even a single R congress-critter (and there’ll be a lot more than just one) their goal, as with Obama, will be to say “no” to absolutely everything using every rule in the book and ignoring any rule that obstructs their goal. Making her absolutely hamstrung from start to finish is ideal for them; it feeds the narrative that only white men can get things done; anyone else is ineffectual. Yes, it’s a tautology. But it’s effective rhetoric when delivered to a suitably preconditioned racist sexist audience.
I am GLAD it’s not being hyped. She needs to be elected because of her skill and what she can do, not what she IS.
Am I excited at the (50/50) chance of having a non-white woman leading this country? Yes, of course! It is a real and important milestone, but it takes second place to the fact that she has the actual skills for the job.
I long for a day when we can look at people as people - not their gender, not how they present, not their color or background, not who they love. I want all that to be as interesting as eye color. The essential inner person is important, and should come second to the rest of the outer trappings.
I think there is a deliberate choice by the Harris campaign to downplay her identity. They see that with Clinton, when she focused on being the first woman, it tended to turn off more men than it excited women.
But you are correct that the attention on Trump is overwhelming the positive message of the Harris campaign. Trump and MAGA are such a consequential outcome that it has to be a major part of the discussion.
If Harris were running in a pre-2016 environment, the opponent would be a traditional Republican, and there wouldn’t be such drama over the outcome.
Hell, and this is just a gut feeling, if we could shift time and make this Harris the 2016 candidate, I bet she would easily have won, even as “the first woman”. I think Hillary Hate was a real factor in the 2016 outcome by demotivating Dem turnout, and Harris doesn’t carry that baggage.
Yep. Make it happen, and then claim it’s inevitable.
It might be better that a woman president is not getting much play. Those who support this know that already, and those who oppose the idea of such a thing is not being triggered by it.
Almost every other major country had a female national leader first. If this happenned n 1970, sure, her gender would be remarkable. Now it is a commonplace.
Electing a person of color was remarkable because peer countries never did it before. We beat the UK to it.
I don’t give a toss that she’ll be a woman president. A lot of Western countries had their first female leader decades ago (I’m sure it won’t stop some commentators saying America is “showing the world the glass ceiling is broken” or whatever). Of course the focus should be on what she’ll do.
It’s hard to argue with the simple observation here, but I don’t know how useful it really is.
I’m glad that Obama turned out to be an exceptionally good President. IMO that wasn’t very clear during his Presidential run because of how much his racial category sucked all the oxygen out of the conversation, obscuring his actual strengths as a leader and politician. It gave ammo to his opponents who were saying his popularity was due to him being a DEI candidate.
Similarly with Hillary I think it was harmful that people were jumping for joy over the first woman President, overlooking some of her glaring weaknesses, easily providing fodder for accusations that people are only voting for her because she’s a woman.
So I think it’s good that some of the air has been deflated from that balloon, honestly. Sure some people are only voting for her because of demographics, and that’s OK, but the national conversation is about Kamala coming correct as a candidate in her own right, opposing a national horrorshow.
I think the true underlying meaning of her election will emerge gradually after the fact. It will be clear that when America faced its most critical moment of defeating fascism, we realized it couldn’t be met by running the same white men and women that we’ve always run. We decided to listen to Black women for once, and it worked.
Without looking it up or seeing if there are any other replies, Geraldine Ferraro was the running mate of Walter Mondale in 1984, running against Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Reagan was the incumbent and easily swept to victory. I think the Democratic ticket only won one or two states in the Electoral College. As for me, I was 16 years old.
I agree with the OP (after the first half-sentence) – they state well what I had been thinking. If Harris is elected, indeed the momentousness of electing a woman president will be overshadowed by the relief that we didn’t elect Trump; and, indeed, the joy specifically about breaking the presidential gender barrier peaked in 2016.
It’s not all bad, though. If Harris is elected, we will have skipped the “overjoyed at breaking a social barrier” stage, and gone right to the “it’s no big deal…people are people, and a woman being president should be normal, not special” stage – which I would argue is where we want to be, really.
Still, I agree it’s a bit of a bummer that we’d be skipping that long-overdue celebration. I think there would be some kind of planned event to mark the occasion (after we’ve dealt with the more pressing matters like jailing or executing the January 2025 fascist coup-attempt traitors) – something that includes a bunch of girls and women of all ages, something bigger than just a White House brunch, but not as big as that Grant Park party for Obama (remember – with Jesse Jackson in tears?).