Democrats are cautiously optimistic that they will finally have the first female president

WASHINGTON – In Vice President Kamala Harris’ rapid, if unorthodox, rise to the top of the Democratic ticket, elected officials, activists and operatives see in her a new chance to win donald trump and make history all at once.

Eight years after Trump’s defeat Hillary ClintonHarris could also be the first female president and the first black woman to hold the country’s highest office.

Democrats are somewhat optimistic, now in a scenario they didn’t have in 2016: a messenger in Harris who is uniquely positioned to energize voters after the election. Supreme Court decision to nullify national abortion rightsfurther proof at the polls that women can win in battleground areas and the knowledge that Trump himself can be defeated – although still politically dangerous.

“The lessons that still apply [from 2016] are that people need to take Trump and his supporters seriously,” Shaunna Thomas, who co-founded and runs the pro-women group Ultraviolet, told NBC News. “That’s an even more important message than whether or not a woman can win the presidency.”

In 2016, Clinton’s mammoth campaign and sense of inevitability left some Democrats disengaged and resting on their laurels. “I don’t think we’re going to leave anything on the field this time,” Thomas said.

Now, many of the operatives and party groups who pushed for Clinton to be the first female president are working, to borrow a phrase, President Joe Bidento “finish the job”.

“’Let’s Get the Job Done’ is for us too, starting in 2016,” said Mini Timmaraju, who leads the pro-abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All and was women’s suffrage director for Clinton’s 2016 campaign. we ran and lost against Donald Trump and suffered an incredible, horrible loss across the country, overturning Roe and doing so much damage to our country that this is kind of a final counterattack for us.”

A Harris victory in November would mean finishing the work that many of these operatives began with Clinton, work that dates back to Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first black woman in Congress, who ran her historic long-shot presidential bid in 1972.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who once worked to elect Chisholm and now supports Harris, told NBC News.

Harris herself has pointed to Chisholm as an inspiration, even though she used colors in her 2020 campaign logo similar to those Chisholm used in her presidential run.

The influx of female lawmakers into Congress in 2018, as well as women who rose to the top in key swing states, such as Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, also serve as a counterpoint to the “electability” argument that has been used against female candidates. before, especially in the Democratic primaries.

“What’s fundamentally different from 2016 and 2020: The first is Dobbs, and that’s huge. It just changes the dynamics everywhere,” said Christina Reynolds, senior vice president at EMILY’s List, who also worked on Clinton’s 2016 campaign. “But I also think we’re not in the primaries. And that’s where “electability” matters so much. …So it’s not a question of “who compares best to Trump?” Let’s just pit her against Trump. And I like that contrast.”

Harris urged voters and skeptics alike to “relieve themselves of what happened” and believe that women leaders can win as long as voters support them.

After all, it’s been eight years since a woman led the Democratic ticket and broke the glass ceiling to become a major party candidate, but an even more durable ceiling still stands above, surrounding the presidency itself. The fallout from Clinton’s surprising defeat in 2016 influenced the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, which depended heavily on the idea of ​​“electability” and whether any woman could beat Trump after a woman struggled to win by the Electoral College metric that mattered. Harris was one of five women who ran and lost in that primary campaign.

“There’s a woman nominated for president who loses and everyone says, ‘Oh, I don’t know, can a woman win?’” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who is running for governor. “How many men have run for president and lost and no one says that?”

Timmaraju made it clear that even amid the optimism, “we are not naive,” referring to the sexism and racism that still exists for non-white and non-male candidates. “We have our eyes wide open.”

This has already led to some questions about who Harris should choose as her running mate: appeal to history with a choice that highlights her story – whether as a woman or as a person of color – or go with what many in the party still consider to be the choice.” safer” a white man?

In 2016, Clinton and her team briefly considered doubling down with two women on the ticket: Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Ultimately, Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. – even he described himself as “boring”.

“I thought of everything,” Clinton said in a 2022 interview for the book “Eligible: Why America hasn’t put a woman in the White House yet… recognizing, as some of his advisors also did, that there was an impulse to delve deeper into the history of the moment.

“It was a turnaround,” Clinton concluded then. “I mean, you would be asking a lot for the electorate to elect two women. That would be a big step. On the other hand, it would be a story and let’s roll the dice. But that’s not why I made the decision to choose Tim Kaine. I was looking for someone who – and I think this should be the main consideration – could be president immediately. And he had the attributes that I thought really allowed me to imagine him, along with the country, assuming the presidency.”

This time, there is similar enthusiasm around the possibility of supporting a female choice, as well as hesitations about asking too much of the electorate.

“People always demand balance,” Reynolds said, recalling President Barack Obama’s selection of Biden as running mate.

The choice was intended to assuage concerns about Obama’s youth and relative inexperience, as well as bring a certain familiarity and comfort level to the ticket. But Biden was also a white man running against what would be the first black president. Biden would not “be burdened with the burden of racism that Obama carried,” the thinking was, a person close to Obama said in an interview with “Electable.”

Even now, the list of Democrats were considered potential Harris running mates is overwhelmingly white and male, with just two black men and a single woman among the publicly released names. Harris could very well pick a surprise candidate, and she hasn’t said anything publicly about who she has her eye on, but once again the conventional wisdom seems to be that the likely female presidential nominee needs a politically moderate white man on the ticket to potentially assuage voters. nervous.

“This shows where we are in America,” said Rep. Jazmine Crockett, D-Texas. “But anyway.”

“When we look, traditionally, at who ends up inventing these tickets, it’s not like there’s a big pool of people of color,” Crockett said, pointing out that the U.S. has yet to elect a black female governor and that Maryland’s Wes Moore continues to be the only black man serving as governor.

“I think this is also a problem that we need to solve. We need to start making sure that our caucuses are representative of who we are in this country and that it’s not about the only people being elevated to the highest positions in the country are white men,” Crockett said.

Setting aside the demographic makeup of the caucus, Harris’ supporters were pleased to see so many Democrats — from Biden to the Democratic leadership in Congress and some progressive rebels — all quickly line up behind her in recent days. It was a kind of coronation that even her supporters say they could not have imagined at the beginning of her tenure in administration – a period marked by criticism, both fair and unfair, of the work she was doing. When Biden promised to choose a running mate in 2020, Women’s groups took action immediately, organizing “We Have Her Back” in anticipation of the sexism and racism that any number of possible choices could have faced. Now, many of the groups that were part of this effort don’t feel the same pressure to organize — although they are prepared if any of these attacks occur.

“She has all of us now,” Thomas said, referring to Harris’s total acceptance across the Democratic Party.

For now, Democrats are focused on bringing down Trump — and perhaps the glass ceiling along with him.

“I’m very confident that she will win,” Spanberger said of Harris. “But if she doesn’t, it’s not because she’s a woman. Just like when Donald Trump loses, it’s not because he’s a man. It’s because he’s a terrible candidate who has terrible policies.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with