After 2016 letdown, Harris revives Democratic hopes for first ‘Madam President’

Democrats are betting they can translate a changing cultural and political landscape into a break-glass-ceiling moment for women after Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in 2016.

President Joe Biden’s decision to end his campaign and endorse Vice President Kamala Harris has given a jolt to Democrats who questioned his fitness for a second term. Her candidacy has even invited comparisons to the history-making run of Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president. 

Harris has taken to calling herself an “underdog” in the early days of her campaign, and polling shows a tightening but dead-heat race for president.

But Democrats are hoping to keep her political honeymoon going through Election Day, and they see enthusiasm in the prospect that she, too, could be a first.

“She is in many ways the antithesis of who Biden is, in that she is younger, a woman, a person of color, who brings that feel of a new generation and a younger voice to the table,” said Debbie Walsh, director of Rutger University’s Center for American Woman and Politics. “I think for a lot of voters out there, it is kind of a relief. Oh, we could be excited about this. This is really different.”  

Harris would be the first black female president if elected in November and has revived the gender-focused messaging of Clinton, who ran under the slogan “I’m with her.”

Harris’s campaign hung signs that read “Madam Vice President” at a Philadelphia rally Tuesday evening debuting Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, a message Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) echoed in a speech introducing her to the stage.

“Are you ready to look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, ‘Hello, Madam President?’” he asked the crowd.

Harris benefits from changing cultural landscape

Since Trump’s rise to the presidency in 2016, the cultural landscape in the United States has transformed in ways that could benefit Harris’s bid.

The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June 2022, a landmark decision that has motivated Democratic women and even some center-right voters who want to preserve access to abortion. In the aftermath, national conversations surrounding the legality of in vitro fertilization and birth control have also put the GOP on defense.  

The 2017 Me-Too movement swept through multiple industries, exposing inappropriate sexual relationships by men exploiting power imbalances in the workplace, while women have made inroads in male-dominated industries.

In 2024, average viewership of college women’s basketball at times surpassed college men’s.

The turn of events reflect a shifting cultural moment for women, celebrated in movies such as Barbie and pop icons such as Taylor Swift, who grossed over a billion dollars with her Eras Tour in 2023.

But the moment also has political ramifications. Democrats have made abortion access the centerpiece of their election pitch while painting the Republican ticket as hostile to women. They’ve pilloried Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Trump’s running mate, for mocking single women as “childless cat ladies.” A federal jury’s finding that Trump is liable for the sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll has also been incorporated into Harris’s standard stump speech.

“I think denigrating women is a strange tactic to take, considering we’re 51% of the population,” said Ariel Hill-Davis, founder of Republican Women for Progress, who pointed to how those comments would likely put off Gen Z women to Harris’s benefit. “You don’t win those voters by kind of centering all of your campaign around the fact that you want them all to be mothers, and you don’t respect them as individuals.”

The early strength of the Harris campaign is due, in part, to Biden’s weakness as a candidate. He faced flagging support from minority communities, while his age — he would have been 86 at the end of a second term — dampened enthusiasm from younger voters wanting a new face at the top of the ticket.

Harris’s campaign represents a chance to reverse that.

In the hours after Biden ended his campaign on July 21, 44,000 black women organized a Zoom call supporting Harris and raised $1.5 million within three hours. More than 164,000 white women quickly followed their lead, raising more than $8 million. 

On their call, white women frequently spoke of the work that needs to be done for Democrats to resonate with women of color.

“I think she has energized a whole other group of people who were going to probably vote but they weren’t really excited,” Sharonda Huffman, a Baltimore County, Maryland, Democrat and DNC delegate, said of Harris’s candidacy. “You can see that by how many people have registered to vote, how many people have signed up to volunteer, how many different Zooms we’ve had, and I was on the first Zoom.” 

Can Harris expand the gender gap?

Beginning in the 1980s with former President Ronald Reagan, women began voting for Democrats at a higher rate than Republicans, a trend grassroots activists hope to build on in November.

In 2016, 54% of validated voters analyzed by the Pew Research Center voted for Clinton over Trump.

Democrats believe the overturning of Roe could accelerate that trend, while they have used Project 2025, a policy blueprint by the conservative Heritage Foundation, to argue that Republicans want to roll back decades of progress for women.

Trump has distanced himself from the Heritage agenda.

“I think what, what has happened is we have reached— and especially women and I’m certain especially women of color — have reached a breaking point on this of feeling so hopeless in this environment of how do we break through it,” said Erin Loos Cutraro, founder and CEO of She Should Run. 

Meanwhile, Inez Feltscher Stepman, senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum, attributed the political gender gap to patterns of marriage over the years.

“If you actually break down that gap, you find that what the shape of sort of the political gender wars in America actually looks like, is that unmarried men, married men, and married women all lean Republican by a relatively small amount,” Feltscher Stepman said. In contrast, single women heavily vote Democratic and “you see that that trend accelerated in Gen Z.”

“When men and women are not forming families together, they tend to see their interests as more separate and more oppositional than when they are in families together,” she continued. 

Republicans say women are better under Trump

The Trump campaign dismissed concerns that Democratic women were itching to block a second Trump presidency when contacted by the Washington Examiner.

“The horrifying murder of Laken Riley at the hands of an illegal immigrant is every woman’s worst nightmare, and Kamala’s policies have turned our nightmare into reality,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, in a statement.

“Women want a president who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps hardworking families thrive – and that’s exactly what President Trump will do,” Leavitt continued. “Women know our nation will be safer and more prosperous under Donald Trump than it is today under Harris-Biden and that’s why President Trump is leading in every single battleground state poll.”

Other Republicans claimed that women were more financially prosperous under Trump’s leadership and more supported.

Kellyanne Conway, a former Trump administration official, argued at the Republican National Convention last month that Trump supported working mothers. “He saw something in me and the other working moms that we perhaps did not see in ourselves,” she said.

“In Donald Trump’s Republican Party, everyone is welcome,” Conway concluded.

A series of firsts in Washington

If Harris is elected president in November, it will be the latest inroad women have made in the world of politics. The 118th Congress saw the highest number of women serving, at 28%, with Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) becoming the first woman to be Senate president pro tempore in 2023. 

Harris, of course, became the first female vice president in 2021, but progress dates back decades further. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) won the speaker’s gavel in 2007 and continued to run the Democratic caucus in the House until she retired from leadership last year.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s own strength in Republican’s presidential primary this year suggests progress for GOP women, too, though Trump raised eyebrows with his choice of walkout song during his convention in Milwaukee.

The arena played “It’s a Man’s World,” a song Vance reprised during his rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on Wednesday as the campaign leans into macho themes to appeal to male voters.

Harris courts traditional Democratic coalition

Harris has made a point to show that her support extends to men as well. A “white dudes for Harris” Zoom call raised $4 million in roughly three hours, while black and Latino men also organized calls in support of Harris.

At the same time, her candidacy has energized the youth vote in a way not seen under Biden.

“This is truly a historic moment,” said Sunjay Muralitharan, national vice president for the College Democrats of America. “I’m 19, so I wasn’t very conscious to see the rise of Obama. But I will say, for all the elections that I have watched, I’ve never seen this amount of excitement surrounding the younger generation.” 

“It’s been very clear, just the enthusiasm behind Vice President Harris is, I think, unmatched, dare I say unprecedented,” said Christian Figueroa, a Stanford University student and DNC delegate. “Just with the young folks and just all of us mobilizing together to just be passionate supporters of the vice president. And I don’t think that will change leading up to November.” 

The historic nature of her candidacy will help in that endeavor. She would also be the first South Asian person elected president. But Nadia Ahmad, a progressive DNC delegate, cautioned that Harris cannot win merely because of her identity.

“At one time, it’s a historic nomination that you have somebody who’s half South Asian, but at the other time, you have somebody who has been a willing party to genocide that has been happening in Gaza,” Ahmad said. 

Israel has been embroiled in a casualty-heavy war in Gaza since Hamas invaded on Oct. 7, though it has denied claims of genocide. Pro-Palestinian activists have been more receptive to Harris than they were with Biden and celebrated Harris’s choice of Walz for vice president, though the issue could still hobble Harris in key battleground states due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel.