Harris's rise comes amid new political landscape for women

Vice President Harris is staring down the political reality that she could be the nation’s first female president, and her rapid rise is posing new challenges for Republicans and Democrats on how to approach gender-related issues when seeking to appeal to voters.

While she would not be the first woman to lead Democrats at the top of the ticket, her emergence comes against a different political backdrop, eight years after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran against former President Trump.

Since 2016, women have been in large part responsible for Democratic gains up and down the ballot, while the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion at the federal level, has played a major role in galvanizing women.

“Kamala Harris, unlike Hillary Clinton, has a little bit more of a roadmap about what it means to run for president of the United States, particularly against Donald Trump, because she watched it as we all did, in 2016,” said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. “Trump was a bit of an unknown in 2016.” 

Trump’s election led to a massive reaction from women, particularly left-leaning women voters. The day after Trump was inaugurated, millions of women took to the streets of major U.S. cities, including Washington, to protest Trump. Two years later, a wave of Democratic women was elected to Congress in the 2018 midterm elections, which were largely viewed as a referendum on Trump’s first two years in office. 

“The loss of Hillary Clinton motivated a lot of women,” Walsh said. “We saw record numbers of women running and winning for Congress. We have record numbers of women now serving in Congress. And then in 2020, we saw for the first time multiple women on a debate stage.”

Two years after Trump was ousted from office, his nominated Supreme Court justices played a pivotal role in overturning Roe v. Wave in 2022. That same year, Democrats were able to blunt a nationwide red wave in the midterm elections. In 2018, Democrats were also able to make inroads in Virginia’s off-year elections. 

Since President Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris on Sunday, her campaign has seen a groundswell in momentum from women across the board. Hours after Biden dropped out, 40,000 people joined a Win With Black Women call Sunday, when the group endorsed Harris. On Thursday, more than 100,000 people signed on to a “White Women for Kamala” call. 

“We have seen in the last seven years a real movement to build a multiracial coalition of women that are working hard to protect each other,” said Jess Jollet, executive director of Progress North Carolina, who was on the call. 

Harris is sure to face unique criticism because she’s a woman, though Republicans are warning that could be a losing strategy for them. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other GOP leaders are telling colleagues to back off attacks against her citing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Republicans have railed against DEI in recent years but also have been aggressively trying to court Black voters this cycle, outlining the balance they have to strike in attacking her.

“This election … is going to be about policies, not personalities. This isn’t personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “Her ethnicity, her gender, has nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

Longtime political watchers agree Republicans need to focus on policy this cycle and steer clear of sexism and racism.

“What I hope is that she would be evaluated the way every president should be evaluated on their character, integrity, policies and capabilities of doing the job — man or woman. I hope at this point we are moving past that,” said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to first lady Laura Bush.

“Leadership has said, don't go after gender and ethnicity. That's not the point of this campaign, and shouldn't be of any … there's so much more at stake. It's the future and direction of the policies of the country. And Kamala Harris is talking about that on her side, and the Republicans should be talking about that too,” she added.

Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, broke multiple barriers when she became vice president and would do so again if she were elected president. 

“It’s not helpful, it's not helpful,” Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said on CNN, in response to DEI comments from GOP lawmakers this week. “We’re talking about a liberal senator, who literally has not accomplished much … you don’t need to talk about what she looks like or what gender she is.”Harris has also faced criticism over her family in a way that is unique to women.

A 2021 clip of Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), calling Harris and other female politicians “childless cat ladies,” despite her role as stepmother to Emhoff’s two children, resurfaced this week. Some women have publicly taken offense to that rhetoric, most notably actor Jennifer Aniston, who knocked Vance over it.

When asked about the potential pitfalls Republicans could face with Trump and Vance at the top of the ticket, one Republican strategist pointed to what they said is Democrats’ problem with male voters. 

“The question here isn’t ‘Does Trump have to worry about scaring away women?’ That’s already baked in the cake,” the GOP strategist said. “’How many men is Kamala going to scare away?’” the strategist said. “If she was so good at cobbling together minority voters, she wouldn’t have dropped out before Iowa in 2019.”

Trump generally polls better than Harris among white, male voters, but other Republicans say there is room to win over persuadable women voters. 

“I find historically that women tend to be the toughest critics of women,” said Erin Perrine, a Republican strategist.  “We understand what it is to be a woman because we are one and they tend to be the hardest to win over. That’s why it’s such a big, persuadable voting block because female voters tend to be harsher on each other.”

“I’m not as much concerned if I was a Democrat about driving male voters away as I would be about how hard it is to win over female voters and hold them,” she added.