Critics of Kamala Harris pivot to well-worn historical playbook of attacks

LAWRENCE — Gender politics researchers and authors Mary Banwart and Teri Finneman weren’t surprised the old misogynist playbook for campaigning against women was dusted off when Vice President Kamala Harris stepped forward as the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee for president.

The ability of men and women to undermine legitimacy of female candidates has been a central feature of U.S. politics for more than a century, but cracks in that gender-based foundation emerged with the nominations of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Sarah Palin.

When President Joe Biden removed himself from the 2024 campaign, GOP officeholders and activists quickly labeled the first Black woman and first Asian-American woman locked onto a major party nomination as a “DEI hire.” Former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee for the third time, encouraged supporters to embrace the idea Harris wasn’t qualified.

“It feeds Trump’s core supporters because that’s the message they want to hear,” said Banwart, author of “Gender and Politics: Changing the Face of Civic Life” and a professor at University of Kansas. “It implicitly suggests she’s not deserving. In some way, her credentials aren’t appropriate. It was a gift. She didn’t earn it. She doesn’t have what it takes, right? Which is all false, just to clarify, and a lie.”

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the nation “may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president.” Likewise, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, a Wyoming Republican, attacked Harris by categorizing the former California attorney general and U.S. senator as a “DEI hire.”

Finneman, a KU associate professor of journalism and author of “Press Portrayals of Women Politicians: 1870s to 2000s,” said on the Kansas Reflector podcast the country’s political sensibilities evolved slowly during the past 150 years.

In 1872, suffragist Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress. In 1964, Republican Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to actively seek the presidential nomination of a major political party. In 1972, Shirley Chisholm was the first Black woman to seek the presidency.

Palin was the 2008 GOP nominee for vice president. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Harris is on the precipice of doing the same.

“It’s been a long, long road,” Finneman said. “To go centuries with very little progress and then all of a sudden in the last decade we have Hillary Clinton. Now we have Kamala Harris. The progression of history is just amazing.”

Finneman said the GOP narrative of Harris as a political beneficiary of diversity, equity and inclusion programs common in the workplace would register with some women but alienate others. Women shouldn’t be viewed as a monolithic block, she said, but the disparaging references to DEI could be costly to Trump.

“When you think about the anti-suffrage organizations that existed — groups that were against women getting the right to vote — they were run by women,” Finneman said. “It’s really hard to peg women as a group, but I would say … you have to be concerned about younger voters because its younger voters who have been energized on social media” by Harris’ candidacy.

‘Cut the crap’

U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican chosen by Trump to be his running mate, ignited a firestorm of criticism when video of a 2021 interview on Fox News surfaced. In that segment, Vance asserted Harris and other prominent Democrats “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future because they were “people without children.” Vance also referred to Democrats as “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made.”

“It’s a way for them to say she’s not an appropriate woman,” Banwart said.

Finneman said the comment was the result of Vance attempting to form a sound bite without an understanding of American political history or basic facts. Harris has two stepchildren.

“Does he also think that George Washington shouldn’t have been president? He didn’t have his own children,” Finneman said. “This is just pure like sexist whistleblowing.”

Finneman said it was significant U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson convened a closed-door meeting with Republican members of Congress and urged them to avoid race and gender critiques of Harris. He said the presidential race ought to be “about policies, not personalities.”

“Telling its members to cut the crap here with the racist and sexist commentary, that was fascinating to me for two reasons,” Finneman said. “One, the fact that that was the immediate response. Number two, that you actually had pushback on that.”

Banwart said the directive from GOP House leadership might color edges of campaign rhetoric, but the Trump campaign would stick with gender and racial attack lines.

“What’s scary is the way in which that translates to those who attend his rallies. The type of merchandise that’s created. The violent imagery that goes along with it,” Banwart said. “It’s a misogynist playbook of: Lie about credibility. Lie about what they bring to the table. And, then, objectify them. By objectifying them, they really tie it all together and they remove their humanness at the end of the day.”

The PEW study

The PEW Research Center released a national survey in 2023 that sought to identify reasons there were more men than women in high political office.

More than half of respondents said women were required to do more to prove themselves on the campaign trail when competing against men. There were differences of opinion between men and women as well as wide gaps between Republicans and Democrats, but 47% said the disparity was tied to gender discrimination.

In addition, 47% said women received less support from party leaders. Forty-six percent were convinced American voters weren’t ready to elect a woman to higher office.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all when you look at the media coverage during campaigns, when you look at some of the advertising during campaigns, when you look at party structures,” Banwart said.

In the PEW study, Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to say women were less interested in holding office.

Democratic women were the most likely to identify with reasons for gender disparities, while Republican men were the least likely to agree with factors standing in the way of women. Sixty-five percent of participants in the poll said they believed U.S. voters were more likely to vote for a white male candidate.

“It is so engrained, these attitudes, in American culture and every woman who steps up trying to make a dent in the glass ceiling has taken the brunt of this and felt it,” Finneman said.