Kamala Harris doesn’t wish to be governor of California, which has a complete lot of contenders (and a few voters) doing a contented dance this week.
However together with her announcement Wednesday that she is bowing out of a race she by no means formally entered, Harris has ignited a flurry of hypothesis that she’s warming up for an additional run on the White Home in 2028.
Whether or not you want Harris or not, a potential run by the XX chromosome former vice chairman raises a perennial conundrum: Can a lady win the presidency?
“This query is authentic,” Nadia E. Brown advised me.
She’s a professor of presidency and director of the Ladies’s and Gender Research Program at Georgetown College. She factors out that post-election, Democrats can’t work out who they’re or what they stand for. In that disarray, it could appear straightforward and secure in 2028 to journey the well-worn route of “a straight, previous white man who fills the established order.”
That could be very true within the Trump period, when an more and more vocal and empowered slice of America appears to imagine that girls do, in actual fact, belong within the kitchen making sanwhiches, far-off from any resolution past turkey or ham.
Brown factors out that even Democrats who flaunt their progressive values, together with how a lot they’d like to vote for a feminine president, might harbor secret sexism that comes out within the privateness of the voting sales space.
Publish-2024, Harris’ defeat — and deciphering what it means — has prompted quite a lot of “morning-after nervousness and agita,” she stated. “We’re all doing analysis, we’re all within the discipline making an attempt to determine this out.”
Whereas confused Democrats diddle in non-public with their emotions, Republicans have made race and gender the middle of their platform, even when they cloak it below financial discuss. The occasion’s place on race has grow to be painfully clear with its stance that each one undocumented immigrants are criminals and deserving of horrific detention in locations akin to “Alligator Alcatraz” and even international prisons identified for torture.
The Republican place on ladies is barely extra cloaked, however no much less retrograde. Whether or not it’s the refusal to inform the general public how Trump is included within the Epstein recordsdata, the swift and brutal erosion of reproductive rights, or claims, such because the one by far-right podcaster Charlie Kirk, that the one motive for girls to attend school needs to be to get a “Mrs.” diploma, Republicans have made little secret of the truth that equality isn’t a part of their package deal.
Though Trump’s approval scores have tanked over immigration, he did win simply over half of the favored vote final fall. In order that’s quite a lot of Individuals who both agree with him, or at the least aren’t bothered by these pre-civil rights concepts on race and gender.
Add to that actuality the keen pack of good, secure Democratic white guys who’re lining up for their very own likelihood on the Oval Workplace — our present California governor included — and it does beg the query for the left: Is a lady well worth the threat?
“I’ve positively seen and heard consultants and, you recognize, even anxious ladies donors say, ‘Possibly this implies we are able to’t run a lady.’ And I believe it’s utterly regular for sure parts of the occasion to be concerned about gender,” stated Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, a grassroots advocacy group.
She too thinks the gender query is “logical” because it has been blamed — although not by her — as “the rationale we misplaced to Donald Trump twice in a row, proper? Whereas Biden was in a position to beat him.”
Whereas Timmaraju is evident that these losses can’t — and shouldn’t — be tied to gender alone, gender can also’t be ignored when the margins are skinny.
Joseph Geevarghese, government director of the progressive political organizing group Our Revolution, which backed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, stated that gender and race are at all times an element, however he believes the larger query for any candidate in 2028 will probably be their platform.
Harris, he stated, “misplaced not as a result of she was a lady. She misplaced as a result of she didn’t embrace an financial populist message. And I believe the voters is indignant about their way of life declining, and so they’re indignant concerning the elites controlling D.C. and enriching themselves.”
Greevarghese advised me he sees an reverse momentum constructing inside the occasion and the voters — a need to not play it secure.
“Whoever it’s — male, feminine, homosexual, straight, Black, white, Asian — the candidate’s bought to have a critique of this second, and it will probably’t be a normie Dem.”
Brown, the professor, provides, rightfully, that wanting on the query of a feminine candidate’s possibilities by way of the lens of simply Harris is simply too slim. There are many ladies prone to leap into the race. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are simply two names already within the combine. Brown provides that an outdoor contender akin to a lady from a political dynasty (assume Obama) or a celeb alongside the traces of Trump may additionally make headway.
The criticisms of Harris, together with her baggage of shedding the election and critiques of how she dealt with the marketing campaign and the media, might not canine one other feminine candidate, particularly with voters.
“Whether or not Kamala runs once more or not, I’m optimistic that the American folks will vote for a feminine president,” Vanessa Cardenas advised me. She is the chief director of America’s Voice, an advocacy group for immigrants’ rights.
Cardenas factors out that Hillary Clinton obtained greater than 65 million votes (successful the favored vote), and Harris topped 75 million. If simply Latinos had gone for Harris, as an alternative of breaking in an ongoing rightward shift, she would have gained. Cardenas thinks Latino votes may shift once more in 2028.
“After the chaos, cruelty and incompetence of the Trump presidency, Latino voters, like most Individuals, will reward candidates who can communicate most authentically and appear most able to battle for an alternate imaginative and prescient of America,” she stated. “I imagine ladies, and ladies of colour, can credibility and forcibly communicate to the necessity for change rooted within the lived experiences of their communities.”
Timmaraju stated that no matter what Harris decides, Democrats will in all probability have one of the vital sturdy primaries in latest occasions — which might solely be good for the occasion and for voters.
And quite than asking, “Can a lady win?” the higher query could be, “Do we actually need a system that gained’t allow them to attempt?”
