Less than two days after she in effect clinched the Democratic presidential nomination this week, Vice President Kamala Harris was introduced to a crowd of 6,000 Black women, all dressed in their sorority colors, as “America’s No. 1 lady.”
“When I was a United States senator, I would see this group of powerful leaders walk through the halls of Congress in white and blue,” Harris said at the national meeting of Zeta Phi Beta in Indianapolis. “I always knew I was looking at some of the most powerful advocates for justice in America.”
That night, former President Trump’s rally in Charlotte, N.C., was full of testosterone as he recalled “the Hulkster” and Kid Rock speaking at his party convention and the night he overcame bullets “flying” at him during this month’s assassination attempt.
“They said, ‘Sir, we have a stretcher for you,’” Trump recounted. “I said, ‘That’s not going to look very good if I get carried out on a stretcher.’”
Less than a week into a reframed general election, it is clear that the race between Trump and Harris is not just between a man and a woman, but about competing notions of gender roles.
Trump has built his image on hyper-masculinity from an era where men sought to present themselves as physically strong and might dismiss allegations of sexual assault by claiming “she’s not my type,” as he did before losing a civil case against E. Jean Carroll. Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White lauded Trump’s toughness as they introduced his convention speech last week.
Harris has achieved a number of firsts in an age when women could redefine power in feminine clothes, while adding issues such as maternal health and reproductive rights to the national agenda. She has made her mark in the Biden administration by leading the fight to restore abortion rights and continued to push that message during campaign appearances this week.
In a historical coincidence, Trump not only faced off against the first woman to lead a presidential ticket, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but is now also facing off against the second.
Clinton embraced the role of glass ceiling breaker in 2016 but ultimately lost to Trump, who had no qualms about physically blocking her out during a debate. Harris is eager to erase that history and taunted Trump on Thursday by accusing him of “backpedaling” after he declined to agree to a Sept. 10 debate commitment that had been scheduled with President Biden.
Trump sounded annoyed with the excitement around Harris as he sought to diminish her during a rally Wednesday by casting her as a lightweight liberal.
“Putin laughed at her like she was nothing,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has often praised.
“I’ve never seen a turnaround like this,” he added, blaming the media for the hype. “Three weeks ago, four weeks ago she was the worst politician in America. Now they say: ‘Isn’t it amazing? Look at her. She’s so beautiful.’”
The size of the divide between male and female voters will probably determine the election. Trump beat Clinton among men — 52% to 41% — while Clinton won the women’s vote — 54% to 39% — in 2016. Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump’s edge with blue-collar men helped him defeat Clinton by small margins in several swing states, where she was not able to make up enough ground with college-educated women.
The candidates narrowed the gender gap in 2020, with Biden winning women’s votes 55% to 44% and Trump winning men’s votes 50% to 48%, according to postelection analyses by the Pew Research Center.
A New York Times/Siena poll released Thursday shows Harris within a percentage point of Trump among likely voters, carrying women by 15 points but losing men to Trump by 16 points. The wider margins are closer, but not identical, to the 2016 election. The electorate has also changed: Women outnumbered men in the college-educated workforce for the first time in 2019, and continued to do so through the pandemic, according to Pew.
Sen. Laphonza Butler, a Democrat from Los Angeles and a longtime political ally to Harris, cautioned against comparing Harris’ campaign to Clinton’s or defining the election by gender, arguing that Harris is building a broad coalition that includes Black women, Latinas, the LGBTQ+ community, as well as men.
“We are where we are in 2024, not 2016,” said Butler, who led the women’s political group Emily’s List before being appointed to the Senate last year.
The 2022 Dobbs decision overturning abortion rights affects both men and women, as did the pandemic, Butler said.
“We have seen our children struggle to recover, which impacts mothers and fathers,” she said. “And so to make a gender story — or to try to somehow, I think, minimize the totality of what it’s going to [take to] win this election — even if it’s going to be close, is not telling the whole story.”
That hasn’t stopped Harris from leaning hard into her vision of female empowerment. Her first official campaign video launched Thursday used the Beyoncé power anthem “Freedom,” which she also plays at campaign events. In the video and speeches this week, Harris has put “freedom to make decisions about your own body” at the center of her message, along with gun violence, healthcare, child poverty and Trump’s legal problems.
“In this moment, we are in a fight for our most fundamental freedoms,” she said at an American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston on Thursday. “And to this room of leaders, I say: Bring it on.”
Harris’ message so far seems especially resonant with women, who have filled online events this week. Rochelle Allen said Harris is “our only hope right now” as she waited for her to speak in Houston.
But the 74-year-old from Detroit, who teaches at Wayne State University, is also worried and would have preferred that Biden stay in the race. She came of age when women were taught to put men first and allow them to lead, even in her church where she now serves as a pastor, she said.
“There are some people who just won’t vote for a female to be the leader. That’s backwards thinking, but it is the truth,” she said. “That’s why it’s really important that everybody else get out to vote.”