Kamala Harris could become the first female president in American history. Just as she is already its first vice-president. But in her campaign spots, her meetings or her short surprise speech on Monday, August 19 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago (Illinois), Kamala Harris does not emphasize her gender or her skin color. She prefers to emphasize her belonging to the middle class and her career as a prosecutor. A strategy that contrasts with that of Hillary Clinton, the first female candidate for a major party, who made her gender a rhetorical weapon in 2016, notably with the slogan: “I’m with her” (“I support her”).
The current vice president’s strategy illustrates a paradigm shift since Hillary Clinton failed against Donald Trump. The new generation of politicians faces an electorate culturally transformed by the great feminist moments of the last eight years, from the Women’s March in 2017 to the opposition to the end of abortion as a constitutional right in 2022, among others by #MeToo – the movement. In the end, only the Republican nominee hasn’t changed.
Kamala Harris can therefore leave the Clinton rhetoric in the closet. Instead, she borrows much more from Barack Obama. The 44the The president of the United States (2009-2017) very rarely spoke about his skin color, which nevertheless marked history as such, during his campaign in 2008, although he benefited from strong enthusiasm on the part of African Americans, Barack Obama strove to. expanding his base and seducing the white working-class electorate in the key states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
“Honestly, to say “I’m the first black person to do this, I’m the first woman to do this,’ that’s going nowhere.claims Carol Moseley-Braun, who herself became the country’s first black senator (Illinois) in 1992 and quoted by the specialized online media Politico. It isolates you, you are accused of “playing the skin color card”. It’s smart of Kamala Harris not to do that.” The latter’s advisers (many of them female advisers) are precisely betting that the average voter, even in a key state, is already ready to vote for a female president and is much more interested in her program than the ranking candidate will be in the history books.
The example of Barack Obama
With this approach, Kamala Harris is not her first attempt. She already brushed off questions from reporters about her identity during her local political career in California. For her, it was a distraction from the values she wants to embody. “She always joked when asked how she felt about becoming the first female Attorney General: ‘What do you want me to tell you? I’ve always been a woman, I don’t know what it’s like to be otherwise'”testifies anonymously one of his former advisors.
Nor did she have to “play the gender card” during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. And her speech at the Democratic convention on Thursday, August 22, where she will formally accept her party’s nomination, still won’t use that rhetoric. , according to the Washington Post. She will try to link her middle-class education and her legal talents to her political project.
The vice president understood that gender was no longer a campaign strategy. “She will have to attract voters who feel abandoned, those are the ones Donald Trump has seducedanalyzes Donna Brazile, former director of Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign (also a pioneer in her position). Remember, Barack Obama had their vote. He won Indiana. Today she has to find them. And just like Barack Obama did, this will happen by showing them that we are interested in them, that we see them and by talking to them about values.”
Hillary Clinton led the way
Donald Trump, on the other hand, doubles down on sexism and racism in his attacks against Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants. A bait she won’t take. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, that’s sexist!’ says his campaign: ‘Really? It’s ridiculous and weird’details Amy Klobuchar, Democratic Senator from Minnesota. She cites the example of their reaction to the insult of “cat lady without children” launched in 2021 by JD Vance, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate, and reinforced during the current campaign.
If Kamala Harris’ plan aims to avoid replicating Hillary Clinton’s losing strategy, it is also because at the time it was less a mistake than a rite of passage. Although we are still far from parity with only 28% of women elected to Congress, their visibility (including that of racist women) has increased since 2016. As of 2018, the number of female candidates for the House of Representatives has nearly doubled from 2016. And there are double as many female governors in 2024 as in 2016. Their gender can therefore no longer be a central element in their candidacies. But he was in the past.
This rhetoric that ignores – or almost – gender “wouldn’t be possible if Hillary hadn’t paved the way, [car elle] has brought us to a point where being a woman is no longer the first thing voters look at.”confirms Patti Solis Doyle, who managed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign. In short, as Kamala Harris’s mother would say, her current strategy does not fall from a coconut tree.