Will US ever overcome its prejudices and elect a woman?

Mary Dejevsky, The Independent

US elections in the media age have bequeathed a host of iconic images, from the JFK-Nixon debate to that red-tinted Barack Obama “hope” poster, through Bill Clinton’s choice of Al Gore rather than a grizzled sage as his running mate and the notorious “hanging chads” of the “tied” 2000 election. The picture of Donald Trump, his fist defiantly raised in the air after narrowly surviving an attempt on his life, has to be the early favourite for 2024. There is one, no less graphic, image, however, that should have taken its place alongside these, but didn’t. Hillary Clinton was to have celebrated her victory in the 2016 presidential election at the all-glass Jacob Javits Convention Centre in Manhattan. Described as the “ultimate power move”, the party instead became a wake — and this massive glass edifice came to represent not the smashing of the last US glass ceiling, but its durability.

Against this cataclysmic disappointment for the Clinton campaign and all it stood for, Kamala Harris’s election as the first female vice-president a mere four years later offered paltry consolation. This was especially so, given the calibre of women who had lost out to then 77-year-old Joe Biden in the primaries. After Biden and Trump had both secured their nominations for this year’s election in almost record time, the chance of a woman reaching the White House seemed as remote as ever. With Biden’s reluctant decision to endorse his veep for the Democratic nomination, however, 2024 suddenly became the year that could just open the US top job to a woman, albeit not any of the half dozen or so whose names had hitherto been in the frame. Chance, it seems, may foster social progress at least as effectively as intent. Barring accidents, or an unlikely last-minute challenge, Kamala Harris will now be Donald Trump’s chief rival for the presidency.

She raised a record amount in campaign funds in the 48 hours after Biden’s endorsement and benefits from a Democratic Party desperate to keep Trump at bay. And while she has been chosen largely by virtue of her position as veep, it is already apparent — both from her own early campaign pitches and from Trump’s highly personalised response – that her gender will play a role, perhaps a decisive role, in this election. But will it tip the balance in her favour, or against?

This fundamental question cannot be ignored. In the UK, as in many countries of the world, female national leaders are now barely remarked upon. For all that feminism and equal rights have become the norm in the United States, attitudes, especially in the “heartland”, remain a bit different. The children-church-kitchen culture remains an ideal in some quarters and social conformity is a greater force than it is in much of Europe. At least some of Hillary Clinton’s defeat can be accounted for by voters, both men and women, who just could not support the idea of a woman in the White House controlling the nuclear switch.

I would suggest attitudes have changed over eight years, but have they changed enough? In at least one practical way, they have. It was said before 2016 that only Hillary Clinton would have patrons with the fundraising power to reach the White House. With more super-rich women, especially in the tech sector, there may be less of a disparity now – even if at least some potential patrons have come by their fortunes via very old-fashioned routes, such as marriage.

Perhaps a bigger reason than social attitudes for Clinton’s defeat, however, was the baggage that was perceived to come with her. Some of that stemmed from the Clinton name, the contested legacy of her husband in office, his bad behaviour with Monica Lewinsky (and others) and a distaste for dynasty. Clinton also took a rap from some feminists for not leaving her husband and former president, despite his dalliances. Then there were missteps from her time in office, including her use of her own personal internet server (rather than the secure system she was supposed to use as secretary of state), and indiscretions revealed in emails published by WikiLeaks.

The former, for which she could have been liable to prosecution, precipitated Donald Trump’s famed campaign chant “Lock Her Up”, although no charges were ever brought. To say that Kamala Harris comes baggage-free would be wrong. She has enemies from her days as attorney general in California, when her liberal credentials were contested. She also faces the jibe — now being revived — that as a Black (in fact, mixed-race), American, she owes her rise and current position less to her abilities than to the policy of affirmative action.

These are nasty jibes, but ones that she will have to parry through her campaign. At the same time, she lacks the sympathetic backstory of, say, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama – or Trump’s running mate, JD Vance. Both her parents, while not well off, were academics and her childhood was stable. She also enjoys some advantages over Hillary Clinton in taking on Donald Trump. The first is that she is a very different candidate from the one he had prepared for. Had he known that he would be facing a woman with an ethnic minority background and a career in the judiciary, he might have pitched his campaign rather differently and chosen a running mate other than the Catholic populist, JD Vance.