Harris loss causes some to question what it will take to elect a woman president

For the second time in eight years, a woman lost the race for the presidency. Despite strong support among women of color, Vice President Kamala Harris lost ground with nearly every other demographic group compared to Joe Biden in 2020. Harris’ loss is causing some to question whether America is ready for a woman in the White House. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Erinn Haines and Kelly Dittmar.
Amna Nawaz:
For the second time in eight years, a woman ran for president and lost to the same man.
Despite strong support among women of color, Vice President Kamala Harris lost ground with nearly every other demographic group compared to Joe Biden in 2020. A number of factors separate Hillary Clinton’s run from Harris’, and a number of factors went into Donald Trump’s win.
But, once again, the question is being asked, is America ready for a woman in the White House?
Errin Haines editor-at-large for The 19th News, and Kelly Dittmar is with the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Welcome to you both.
And, Errin, I will start with you. There’s a number of factors at play, we know, the economy, a truncated campaign, frustration with the incumbent. But what do you take away from what we saw with voters in terms of how much gender played a role, that there was a woman at the top of the Democratic ticket?
Errin Haines, Editor at Large, The 19th News: Well, I wrote about how this election, how elections are not just about either the candidate, but really about who we are as a country.
And, again, what do we know about who we are as a country this year? That America is still not yet ready to elect a woman to lead our country. The issue of gender, not necessarily something that Vice President Kamala Harris was emphasizing, but it was absolutely looming over this race.
And when you think about American voters really prioritizing the economy, immigration, maybe not seeing a woman as the person that embodied the characteristics of strength or power around those issues, I think that this was absolutely an election that was gendered.
We definitely saw former President Trump coming back into the White House on a message of his particular brand of masculinity. I think that we cannot have a conversation about this election without having a conversation about the role — the ongoing role of gender in our politics and continuing to ask the question, what is it going to take for a woman — for this country to ever elect a woman president?
Amna Nawaz:
Kelly, pick up on that point that Errin made about Trump’s campaign, which was clearly geared to appeal towards men. And he did very well with them. He won some 54 percent of the male vote.
But it was one group in particular, white women, which is the single largest voting bloc at some 40 percent of the electorate, who did help propel him to victory, some 53 percent of white women voting for him. What did you see in that? What fueled that vote?
Kelly Dittmar, Center for American Women and Politics, Rutgers University: We need to kind of shift away from the question of, is America ready for a woman? I mean, the majority of women voted — or majority of voters voted for a woman in 2016.
But to really understand both white women’s voting behavior and voting behavior across the board is to look at, what are the racism and sexism in our electorate that is allowing us to continually vote for somebody who’s proven that he is misogynist in both his own personal behavior, but also in his policy priorities, has tapped into racial resentment within our communities, and that these things aren’t disqualifying?
And for white women, in particular, we have seen time and again, it’s not disqualifying enough in part because they have a racial privilege that is being protected by this brand of politics. And we’re going to have to grapple with that, I think, continually to get to the point not only where we can elect a woman, but where we can elect candidates who are trying to move us forward when it comes to racial and ethnic inclusion, gender progress and gender equity.
Amna Nawaz:
And, Errin, I know you have reported on this and written on this extensively. This is the second time there’s been a woman at the top of the ticket, but the only first time that there’s been a Black woman at the top of the ticket.
What role did you see that both racism and sexism that we know are still very real animating forces in America played in this election?
Errin Haines:
I think they definitely played a role.
But I do want to talk about, I mean, the 92 percent of Black women that showed up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, how excited and energized they were about her unprecedented campaign, how hard that they worked to try to get her elected. I mean, Black women have long been regarded as the backbone of the Democratic Party.
And so to see somebody who shared their lived experience at the top of the ticket felt for a lot of the Black women that I talked to, a lot of the voters, a lot of the organizers, a lot of the longtime kind of political folks that have been around in the Democratic Party, to see that, for them really represented kind of a return on their investment, I mean, their investment being their voting loyalty over so many years to the Democratic Party.
And so circling back with a lot of those same Black women, where they are right now is that they are feeling abandoned by a party that they have supported so heavily and so loyally for so long, and really wondering what it is about Black women that other groups somehow are not necessarily able to stand with, and white women, in particular.
Because I think that we saw, when Vice President Harris became the candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were some white women who were publicly reckoning with 2016. White women did not in the majority support Hillary Clinton then, somebody who shared their lived experience, and wondering if they were going to make a different choice this time around and stand with Black women and other Democrats in voting for Kamala Harris.
But that did not end up being the case. And you have to ask, how much of that — I mean, we know the history of white women and what they have chosen to do with suffrage since they got it, they first got it in 1920, and, frankly, at the expense of so many Black women suffragists who also stood shoulder to shoulder with them, but were then thrown under the bus when the 19th Amendment was passed more than a century ago.
I think that that history absolutely looms over this election for so many Black women. When it came down to white women choosing between their race and their gender, I think we see how that played out.
Amna Nawaz:
Kelly, it is worth taking a look at the last 50 years in the U.S.
Yes, gender equity has made a lot of progress, right? But facts are still facts. Women are still paid some 84 cents on the dollar compared to men. Women make up less than 12 percent of C-suite roles. Women are half the U.S. population. They only make up less than a third of Congress.
Is it reluctance that you see or an inability, largely, among the general population to see women as leaders?
Kelly Dittmar:
Yes, I think, as you know, we have made progress. I think it’s a little bit of both, but it’s also some backlash.
Susan Faludi wrote a book called “Backlash” that we can tap into again and look at in this election and in how Donald Trump waged his campaign, which was in fact taking that progress that you have pointed to and reminding a subset of voters that this is somehow threatening, right?
And that’s true along lines of race as well. Since the day Donald Trump began campaigning, he tapped into white male grievance politics, saying, for example society is becoming too soft and feminine. That’s something his supporters are more likely to believe, based on Public Religion Research Institute data, or men are being punished just for being men, gender is a binary, and we shouldn’t move beyond that.
So we saw that in the anti-trans rhetoric throughout the campaign for Donald Trump and other Republicans down the ballot. And so, while we see these gains, we have to remember that progress is not inevitable. It takes the effort and momentum from everybody, including groups like white women, to push back against those who are saying that this progress is somehow bad and threatening to their own communities.
Amna Nawaz:
That is Kelly Dittmar of Rutgers University, Errin Haines from The 19th News.
Thank you to you both. Good to speak with you.
Kelly Dittmar:
Thank you.