As a matter of interest, Trump has gone from calling Harris “a radical leftist” to calling her “a communist”. I’ve seen several opinion pieces suggesting that this is a good reflection of Trump’s continuing meltdown and desperate disorganized flailing as Harris continues to gain momentum and widen her lead. It’s backfiring because Trump is an idiot and has starting making claims that, to quote one such editorial, “are simply not credible”. These sorts of attacks on Harris are, in fact, absurd. They’re desperate to find anything, and they have nothing.
And the attacks on Walz are equally absurd. Apparently you must not vote for him because he wants schoolchildren to have healthy meals and women to have autonomy over their own reproductive health. These sorts of attacks basically highlight to any thinking person the fact that this is nothing less than a battle between good and evil – an election that is practically a parable. The question of the hour is, how many American voters are “thinking people”?
After one party has controlled the White House for eight years, there is a time for a change dynamic that makes it very hard to extend the streak of elections won by that party. Hillary did well under those circumstances.
Clinton has been rehashed over and over. I think one factor that is overlooked is that few people on the left gave serious consideration to the idea that a shady real estate/TV show guy with a history of misogyny and questionable ethics could possible end up in the White House. The 2016 election had a relatively low voter turnout, so perhaps enough Dem voters just stayed home.
As for Hillary: her campaign persona was not good. She was quite personable in person (I met her), and very likeable in her book tour appearances (I was at one of them), but she just came across as very artificial on the stump.
I agree with this. I’ve seen her in interviews and other casual situations where she seems really relatable and likable. But in her campaign behind a podium she wasn’t like that at all.
I think part of the reason Clinton lost was that she is a woman. There were three other things that contributed to her loss, IMO:
Bernie Sanders and his crowd really beat up on Hillary during the primaries. And Bernie never was full-throated in supporting her. I think that primary zapped the Dems of the unity & strength they needed going into a general election against an outsider who was treated like a rock-star among his base. I don’t hate Bernie. But his refusal to give it up for many weeks/months really hurt Hillary amongst the left.
The polls consistently underestimated Trump in 2016. And I think she was totally caught off guard with Trump’s support in the Upper-Midwest. She didn’t campaign hard enough in those states, probably because the polls made it look like she had it in the bag.
When the FBI re-opened their investigation into Hillary and the email server, it gave undecideds and independents who didn’t like Trump a reason to throw up their hands, and act like she was just as corrupt as Trump…Comey’s decision to do that in 2016 might have been the final tipping point that threw the election to Trump.
I think all three of the above will not be issues this time. The base and overall Democratic party is completely united. Pollsters are aware of the previous issues with polling Trump support, so no one is taking any state for granted. And there’s no FBI investigation that’s going to derail Kamala.
I have no idea if she wins or not. But she has some fundamentals that are improved over what we were dealing with in 2016.
Your list makes a lot of sense. All are factors that reduced votes for Hillary, and none apply to Kamala (and so won’t cut into her votes).
In 2024 there are still voters who’d vote for nearly any Democratic Presidential candidate who is male, but who will have problems voting for a female. Even so (as has been pointed out in this thread), in 2016 Clinton got more votes than did Trump.
And even the ‘will vote for a woman but not THIS woman’ Democrats may well have been given pause by the real alternative–Trump, Project 2025, Trump’s plans to wreck the US economy by installing tariffs, etc. Even they will see the importance of putting aside their reservations about a female President and vote Harris.
Lastly: as many know, turnout is crucial. The ‘woman factor’ may bring out female voters who otherwise would neglect to put in the effort to vote. (And that’s true of the ‘person-of-color factor’ as well.)
All in all, I’d be surprised if the net effect of the ‘woman factor’ were negative in this particular election. I’d expect that it will turn out to be at least slightly positive.
I voted for Clinton in the general, of course, but I still don’t like her, and part of the reason is that she’s so anti-feminist. Her entire career was based on who she was married to. She became First Lady because she was married to Bill Clinton. She became a Senator because she was First Lady. She was considered a serious primary opponent to Obama because she was a Senator and First Lady. She became Secretary of State because she was a serious primary opponent and First Lady. She became the nominee after Obama because she had been Secretary of State and First Lady. A lot of folks voted for “the Clintons” because they considered the two of them to be a single two-headed entity, but I couldn’t stomach that.
By contrast, Harris (and Baldwin and Duckworth and Warren and a lot of other candidates I’d love to vote for) got where she is through her own efforts and accomplishments.
A lot of good thoughtful posts in this thread. I was actually a little worried about Harris as a candidate at first, in that her persona during the 2020 election was somewhat stern, or so she seemed to me at the time.
But she and Walz are portraying a stunningly warm, likable, positive image. To the extent that her gender matters, perhaps there is a bit of an advantage to the “softness” (as in approachability and kindness) that women are generally perceived to possess more than men.
Along the same lines, it helps that she is running against a very, very angry man. People tend to expect, on the whole, that men have a deeper well of anger than women do, and Trump is playing right into that stereotype.
So if people are sick of negativity and anger, and ready for approachability and kindness, then I think Harris being female is a plus for her campaign.
She doesn’t “Cackle” either. I always thought that was one of the more misogynistic attacks on her that bewilderingly stuck. After all women shouldn’t laugh in pubic it’s unseemly.
I believe that Clinton represented establishment status quo, which the people rejected in 2016. But they rejected that same status quo in ‘08 with Obama, and voting in a woman of color is the rogue idea in ‘24.
To the extent that Trump represented the idea of “we should try a totally different type of President” (in his case, a non-politician “businessman”), electing Harris follows the same path.
I think that to the extent that her gender played a role in Hillary losing, I think it was largely a second-order effect. That is, she lost because of how effectively decades of right wing attacks had been at making a significant portion of the populace dislike her… and a big part of the reason those attacks were as effective as they were was due to her gender.
So not so much “Americans aren’t ready to vote for a woman for president” but “A woman running for president will be judged by a different and generally more exacting set of standards”.
(To some extent this is clearly just a semantic distinction.)
Over the years I’ve thought of many reasons why Clinton lost, but what they all come down to is that she ran a campaign based on playing it safe. Harris isn’t doing that. If she does lose, it isn’t going to be because she played it safe. I don’t think being a woman played a role, mostly because IMHO the vast majority of people who would refuse to vote for someone because they’re a woman are almost certainly going to vote GOP anyways.
If Trump wins I expect women will be stripped of the vote and forbidden from public office as part of the process of converting the US into a fascist dictatorship. So there won’t be another female candidate.
“The people” didn’t reject Clinton - she had 3mm more votes. Comey threw a wrench at the very end of the process – hey, senators, we found more emails, but don’t tell anyone…(one week later, after the election)…Never mind, nothing new here.
At this point, I think the Harris lead might be less than Cliton’s was, in terms of straight voter preference (ignoring the electoral college, since we’re just talking about popularity). Hopefully, that lead will increase after the DNC convention.
OK, checking 538, Harris is ahead by 2.5% nationally, so if turnout were the same as 2016, that would be 3.5mm voters, roughly the same as Clinton’s performance. She really needs a boost from the convention.
I agree with others that say being a woman might be a wash – you lose voters who would never vote for a woman, but gain voters voting for her because she’s a woman.
As someone who, just upthread, said that Hillary had a “cackling” laugh, I reject this blanket assertion that apparently …
{any woman} + {any criticism} = misogyny
I also said, in the same post, that “Hillary really wasn’t very likable. Harris absolutely is. She smiles a lot and has a genuine and joyful laugh”.
The point being that there were a lot of clues in Hillary’s demeanor that suggested “not genuine” and “opportunistic”. I’m sure she would have been a decent president and immeasurably better than Trump, but there were all these off-putting vibes. Harris is just the opposite. She projects warmth, compassion, and sincerity.
Also, I love how the Harris-Walz campaign often attacks Trump with a delightful sense of humour. I don’t specifically remember Obama doing that but there’s something about it that evokes Obama’s clever wit. They’re doing everything right! Hillary’s attacks were more on the nasty side (e.g.- “the deplorables”).