Will a Woman Ever Be President?
Originally published by Katie Rogers for The New York Times
On the arduous climb toward the “highest, hardest glass ceiling,” female presidential candidates persisted and resisted. They promised they were unbought and unbossed. Most of all, they believed the nation was ready for them. And, one by one, they were proven wrong.
The United States has been led by men for all of its 248 years, and that will continue for at least four more. On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris became the latest woman to fail to break the gender barrier to the presidency, and the second to be defeated by Donald J. Trump.
Across the country, on text chains, during their commutes, in offices, with friends and family, women were processing the sting of another loss. Mothers consoled their daughters. Others tried to figure out how to explain what it meant, to their loved ones and to themselves, that Ms. Harris had been defeated by a man like Mr. Trump — who had bragged about stripping away the rights of women, about grabbing them by their genitals, and who had been held liable for sexual abuse.
“I’m terrified by him, to be honest,” said Nicole Saylor, an independent voter in Hendersonville, N.C., who has voted Democratic in the past few elections. “And I’m terrified that I live in a country where 51 percent of the people voted for someone who is bigoted and misogynistic. I’m terrified that half of the country thinks it’s OK.”
Ms. Harris’s loss brought many women a wave of sadness and pain, to be sure. But this time, there was another emotion at play. When Hillary Clinton lost to Mr. Trump in 2016, the anger and shock had been so palpable that it sparked a pink-hatted protest movement. Now, faced with the reality that Mr. Trump had been swept back into office with a broader electoral mandate than before, women across the country expressed grim resignation that their country was more welcoming to a second Trump term than to the idea of a woman leader.
“It’s just nothingness in my head. I can’t look ahead,” said Abby Clark, 42, who does environmental advocacy work in Detroit. “I don’t know how to plan. I can’t picture the world we’ll be in and what it will really be like. I just know that it will be difficult and hard.”
Delivering her concession speech at Howard University, Ms. Harris did not speak about her loss in terms of gender or race. There was no talk of a glass ceiling. Instead, Ms. Harris spoke directly to the young voters who had gathered to see her.
“Don’t ever stop trying to make the world a better place, you have power,” Ms. Harris said. “You have power. And don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before.”
Throughout her 15-week campaign, Ms. Harris, a Black and South Asian woman, had tried to pivot away from questions about the historical significance of her candidacy to her desire to serve as a president for “all Americans” — a strategy that freed her to challenge Mr. Trump on matters of policy and character. By the time Election Day arrived, she had taken her gender and her opponent’s name out of her closing argument altogether, casting her fight as one about embracing a more united future.