Senator Kamala Harris has secured her place in history already as the first woman of color to be on a major party’s national ticket and last week, in the first and only vice-presidential debate, she became only the third woman ever to engage in a nationally televised debate.
Senator Harris, in that 90 minutes, represented and spoke up for every smart, accomplished woman who has been talked over, talked down to, or interrupted, and let’s not forget lied to as well.
She didn’t raise her voice or go silent — she spoke clearly and calmly and claimed her space and her right to be heard.
When it comes to the poise with which Harris responded to the interruptions, especially in this circumstance of the second most highly viewed VP debate in history, her accomplishment was something that many women intuitively appreciate. She faced a familiar hurdle for many women — whether they are making a point in a corporate board room or management meeting or campaigning or debating on national television.
Women must strike a delicate balance between appearing strong, but not too strong; sensitive, but not too sensitive; appropriately outraged (especially given our current situation), but not angry. As Maiysha Kai points out at The Root, Harris was also "burdened with the restraint of not being too brilliant or dynamic, so as not to upstage the man she was there to represent and support."
Noting “the mental & emotional gymnastic[s] required of Black women in these situations,” my friend Kerry Washington tweeted, “[There’s] not a chance in the world [Harris] wasn’t thinking about this. We don’t ever NOT think about it. Her superpower?! Making it look easy.”
Senator Harris "showed her skills as a prosecutor and how she could translate those skills to the debate stage in arguing a case against a Trump-Pence administration,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. “At the same time, she did balance that with empathy and direct engagement with voters while repeatedly showing her competence. It was clear that she came prepared, knowing how her behavior would be monitored and evaluated in a different way than Mike Pence’s and she navigated that with a smile.”
I was pleased to see questions about abortion rights, health care and climate change featured prominently. Remember, in all the debates in 2016, a question about climate change didn't come up once! I'm so glad our climate crisis is being prioritized this time around, with some revealing answers (or non-answers) from the candidates.
Overall, as Maiysha Kai observes in her excellent critique in The Root, "were our democracy not hanging in the balance," this debate was an "almost hysterically teachable moment":
“[T]he dynamic of the three individuals on that stage was a microcosm of American politics (and by extension, society) itself: the white man emboldened by his presumption of place; the woman of color dutifully if begrudgingly playing by the prescribed rules to fight the good fight against tyranny; and the 53 percent of white women too cowed by their proximity to white male power to do the right and rational thing in respect for the greater good.”
I just hope women remember the pain and suffering this president has caused due to his lack of transparency, truth, and true leadership in a crisis when they vote. White women helped him get elected before; I’m counting on us this time to vote our conscience, vote for our own best interests and vote as if our rights and freedoms depended on it because they do. I'm counting on women to #WomanUP for a woman to be the second most powerful political leader in the US.
There was another narrative that emerged in the debate and that was the question about succession and the ages of Biden and Trump. Pence didn’t answer the question, and it’s a delicate one for Harris to be sure. Just for historical perspective, a vice president has ascended to the presidency only nine times: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson, because the president died, and one, Gerald Ford, through a president's resignation.
Senator and hopefully Vice President Kamala Harris is certainly prepared for such a succession should such circumstances occur, and she is, in my opinion, well qualified to become the first woman president.
As Kamala Harris herself has said, “Our democracy is our strength and our diversity is our power.” So let's #WomanUP and lift up Senator Harris, and assert our power as the Supermajority we are on November 3rd.
Onward!
— Pat
