On August 18, 2020, Americans celebrated the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. women’s right to vote. Kamala Harris the next day accepted The Democratic nomination for his current role is vice president of the United States. This alignment capped an already historic candidacy: Harris was the first black woman to seek this office on a major party ticket. He acknowledged the gravity of the moment right from the start. acceptance speechThanking Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, Mary McLeod Bethune, and the many other women whose paths led to the ground she broke that evening.

Harris is now going even further and aiming for the US presidency. But her campaign’s history-making prospects were easily overlooked, in large part because of the man Harris was up against in her bid. Donald Trump, so oblivious to the past and so careless about the future, is a present-tense type of candidate. The history he brought to his fight for the second term: overturn an election; promises of exile and revenge and violence; the racism; the misogyny; incompetence, lies and fraud; attack; the boast he has caught women “by the cat”; the placement of judges usurping women’s rights has injected the 2024 contest with an undercurrent of urgency. As is often the case, his flaws became someone else’s problem.

The Democrats’ 2020 campaign is a “Battle for America’s soulThe response in 2024 is a struggle for national structure: the policies and practices that allow the country to function as a democracy. An opponent whose party is “Republican” but whose stance is “Republican”dictator”turns the conversation about making history into a luxury. Harris rarely mentions gender or race on the campaign trail. her lately adsMSNBC notedHe defined his childhood primarily in terms of class. during nomination speech Speaking at the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris briefly described her background — her South Asian mother, her Jamaican father — but focused on her career as a prosecutor. (The most notable quote about making history came from Hillary Clinton. speech It acknowledged the structural integrity of the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.”) VoxConstance Grady put it“A woman is running for president and she has a very good chance of winning. She seems to think she has a better chance of becoming the first female president as long as she never speaks about it.

Read: Kamala Harris’ ambition trap

This silence may be a good strategy. Clinton’s loss in 2016 still punishes strategists: Once bitten, twice shy by the Electoral College. The brevity of Harris’ campaign — Joe Biden’s decision to resign in July left her at the top for just over three months — required her to prioritize her messaging. “I am clearly a woman,” Harris said. said NBC News’ Hallie Jackson. He suggested it would be better to spend time telling voters things they don’t already know. “My challenge,” he said, “is to make sure I can talk to as many voters as possible, listen to them, and win their votes.”

You can read Harris’s reluctance to talk about making history as historical on his part. Campaigning to be the President, full stop, no further qualification needed. This does not mean that she is not focused on traditionally feminist priorities.reproductive freedom And policies regarding care is at the center of campaign messages. He did not make his identity an explicit part of his speech. This is a notable departure from that period. “I’m with him.” Progress can be exciting. It can also be condescending. (After Biden promised early in the 2020 campaign that he would choose a woman as his running mate, satirical website Reducer offered title It captured the emerging discourse well: “Biden Says Vice Presidential Pick Is Between Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Beautiful Lady Ostrich.”)

The candidate who most directly acknowledged the historic nature of Harris’ candidacy was her opponent. Trump started after “Sleepy Joe” stepped aside insult to audition Through the madness of a Hollywood casting agent, Harris, in turn, “turned black”; he “mentally disabled”; his “the laughter of a madman”; will be seen as “one” by world leadersplay toy”; he would trading sexual favors to hasten his rise to power. At the rally held shortly after Biden dropped out of the race, Trump made a great show of mispronouncing the name of a nationally famous politician for years and butchered “Kamala.” more than 40 times over the course of a single conversation. Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, tried to smear Harris by accusing her of being a member of the darkest gangs: “childless cat ladies.”

Americans tend to talk about the progress of history as a matter of physics: movements, momentum, progress, resistance. Language can imply that progress is inevitable, an arc that constantly moves forward as it bends towards something better. Therefore it can be misleading. Susan Faludi’s 1991 book, Reaction: The Undeclared War on American WomenIt was based on the misconception, repeatedly expressed in the American media at the time, that the struggle for feminism had been won up to that point. Clinton’s loss in 2016, and the many others that followed, served as another rebuke: Gains can be undone in an instant. Rights cannot be transferred unless they are transferred.

Space It was published a year before a record number of women ran for and won national office. Media outlets described this with anachronistic optimism as “year of the woman.” What they didn’t realize was that the “year of the woman” had already been declared (as a year). analysis inside Slate Found) 1966. And 1968, 1984 and 1990. It would be announced again to announce the election results of 2008, 2010, 2016, 2018 and 2020.

History in this way is a warning against the easy comforts of “making history.” Progress and reaction, Faludi finds, tend to collide together rather than going sequentially (one gives, the other takes). The 2016 elections failed to produce a female president and in that sense preserved the status quo, but the number of people who voted for Clinton rather than Trump increased, which was progress in itself. Polls that attempt to gauge Americans’ views on a potential female president reflect a fairly steady increase in comfort with the idea since it emerged. First testedIn the mid-1930s. But the durability of such polls—the treatment of a woman in the White House as a question to be debated, a disruption to be endured—is itself a compromise.

Read: Pop culture failed to imagine Kamala Harris

Harris had to grapple with these tensions in her campaign. He guided them by emphasizing what his presidency could do. To do rather than what it might mean. (“I’m running,” he said said CNN’s Dana Bash wrote, “because I believe I’m the best person to do this job right now for all Americans, regardless of race or gender.”) However, she also managed to handle the backlash in human form. Some of the lasting footage from the 2016 debates captured Trump approaching He gleefully and menacingly attacked Clinton, belittling her not just with his words but with his actions. He’s trying to do something even remotely similar to Harris: Invade her space. Get in his way. Leave everything to his circumstances. The moments when his campaign seemed most confused, most pessimistic, were when everyone was paying attention to him and not to him.

Trump has a unique gravitational pull; a way of bringing everything else into its orbit, no matter how strongly it resists. And he brought that raw physique into the 2024 campaign. Harris when delivered Following his “closing argument” speech in Washington on October 29, the venue chosen for the event was the same location Trump used for his speech before the January 6 insurrection. And this address didn’t just evoke Trump; discussed it. While speaking, Harris emphasized the disparities between herself and her opponent. He warned of what a second Trump presidency could do to the country. He expressed his desire.”turn the page.” He emphasized the future he wanted to prevent rather than the history he wanted to make.

This was correct speech, exciting speech, cautious speech; This was the speech Harris needed to make. But in your message, nominate defended Her claim that she is “the best person” for the presidency “regardless of race or gender” is consigned to the stereotypically feminine role: She acts, she responds. The man who was so used to getting what he wanted was robbing her of all meaning and meaning of the moment. Crises fix everything in the present. They want sacrifice for the sake of the future. A campaign official said Harris “is not worried about being the first” in her pursuit of the presidency. in question. “He’s anxious to make sure he’s not the last one.”

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