Let's talk about delicious ironies. In 2016, Donald Trump came to power in part because of a racial and cultural backlash to the election of the first black president, as numerous analysis have notedBut eight years later, he was able to help elect the second black president and the first woman, thanks to a backlash against his manifest misogyny and racism.
That prospect, amid enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris who has remodeled The presidential race in favor of the Democrats, turned This week's Democratic convention, from a possible wake to an impromptu party, culminates in celebration Thursday night with her speech accepting the nomination to take on Trump.
Beneath all the hype, however, lies a lot of anxiety about November.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Democrats are self-confessed bedwetters, wary of irrational exuberance. And rightly so. They are scarred by the result of 2016, when they went to bed confident that Hillary Clinton would become the first woman elected president and woke up to a nightmare. Now Democrats are asking Americans to elect a woman who is also black and Native American. Not for nothing were they relieved that she chose a white man as her running mate.
For the pessimists, the question of whether voters would elect a woman as commander in chief, let alone a woman of color, was settled for our time with Clinton's defeat. They are wrong.
Clinton’s experience was an imperfect test of whether the country could ultimately join other developed nations, and some less developed ones, in choosing to be led by a woman. (It’s been 45 years, for heaven’s sake, since Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s prime minister. But Britain, like some other nations that have had women leaders, is a parliamentary democracy: Thatcher was elevated by her majority in the Conservative Party, not by voters across the country.)
Yes, misogyny was a factor against Clinton, even among white women, 52% of whom voted for Trump, according to exit pollsBut Clinton was a singularly polarizing politician. By 2016, she had been in national politics for a quarter-century, and Republicans had vilified her for all that time. For her part, Clinton did not display the humor for which she was known in private. Barack Obama, during their rivalry in 2008, condemned her with faint praise: “You're quite nice, Hillary.”
As exit poll data indicate, Clinton’s groundbreaking candidacy was notable for not galvanizing women voters as much as it should have. She reflected ruefully in her 2017 speech: memory that as she watched the massive Women's March on Washington protesting Trump's inauguration, “I couldn't help but wonder where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.”
Time has apparently reconciled Clinton with her fate. At her convention ADDRESS On Monday night, the poised elder stateswoman basked in the adulation of her party and implicitly took credit for helping make Harris’s candidacy plausible: “Together,” she told her appreciative audience, “we have put many cracks in the highest and hardest glass ceiling.”
“Nearly 66 million Americans voted for a future where there are no limits to our dreams,” Clinton continued, without adding that her total was nearly 3 million more than Trump’s. “We kept our eyes on the future,” she said. “Well, my friends, the future is already here.”
Don’t expect Harris to similarly emphasize her gender or race in her speech. She hasn’t done so on the campaign trail, as evidenced by her record of not focusing on her “firsts” in her California campaigns. Her attitude seems to be: let the obvious speak for itself and then let others, like Clinton, hammer home the point about history. In that approach, she’s more like Obama. “People can see through it,” said former Obama strategist David Axelrod. said The Washington Post. Some voters “may feel excluded by such an emphasis.”
TO number of pre-convention center They provide reason for Democrats to be hopeful, showing Harris taking the lead over Trump nationally, albeit within the margin of error, and in most cases battlefield statesSignificantly more voters view her favorably now that she is in the spotlight, not in the shadows, and more favorably than Trump, according to An AP/NORC Center pollTrump continues to be seen among more voters as more capable of handling the economy and immigration, while Harris is favored to deal with abortion policy, health care and preserving democracy.
Crucially, she has drawn more support than Biden from groups within the Democratic base: women, young people, and minority voters, especially black and college-educated women. She is demonstrably better able than Biden to stir up support among pro-abortion rights voters in this first presidential election since the Trump-infused Supreme Court overturned Roe. But a Pew Research report survey showed that she had also halved Trump's lead among men.
Polls, which are snapshots in time, could change again. But Trump, being Trump, is inadvertently doing his part to help Harris. is He focuses on her racial and gender identity in an unpleasant way, even going so far as to childish displays of disrespect, such as calling her by her first name and mispronouncing it on purpose. He regularly says she is “dumb” and suggests she would be a “toy” for foreign leaders. And her allies have dismissed her as “a DEI hire,” including former White House aide Seb Gorka, who saying that for Democrats, her winning qualities were “having a vagina and the right skin color.” Subtle.
Some other Republican allies and Trump's own campaign advisers wish he would stop with the sexism and inciting racism. “Donald Trump, the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham. saying on NBC's “Meet the Press” on Sunday. On CNN On Sunday, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu warned that women would vote “in much greater numbers” against Trump with Harris now in the race.
Let's hope so. And so do the men who are Trump-phobic. We already know we can count on Trump to ignore his wisest advisors and stick to his rhetoric. Degrading women, especially black women, is what he does. Bring on the backlash!
@jackiekcalmes
