The first time Kamala Harris ran for president, in 2019, one question dogged her and the handful of others running to be the first female president: Can a woman win?
Just three years earlier, Hillary Clinton had lost to Donald J. Trump after a campaign she and her defenders believed was dripping with misogyny and sexism. The question of whether Democrats wanted to try to break the gender barrier again was a running and fraught debate for months.
Those doubts have mostly been banished this time.
Riding a high of strong polling and heady optimism, Democrats today widely view Ms. Harris’s identity as a woman of color as a major asset. Interviews with prominent Democratic women reveal a striking confidence that the climate, tactics and voters’ perceptions about leadership have all moved in women’s favor since Mrs. Clinton’s loss.
“People are in a place where they can actually imagine a woman as president,” said Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota who ran alongside Ms. Harris in 2019. “They can actually look at Kamala Harris and say she looks the part.”
There are data points behind the bullishness: The Women’s March the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration mobilized a whole universe of organizations that support female candidates, which then helped lead to a historic wave of women elected to Congress in 2018. Ms. Harris has already broken a barrier as the first female vice president.
The conditions are in place, Michelle Obama, the former first lady, told the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday, suggesting there was no room for excuses this time.
“We cannot get a Goldilocks complex over everything being just right,” she said. “And, we cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected.”
Yet some women acknowledged this optimism had shades of denial. Ms. Harris has already faced sexist critiques on her looks, her laugh and her family. Even amid a burst of enthusiasm over her sudden candidacy, polling shows the race is close. For some Democrats, the worry this time is not whether a woman can win, but what happens if Ms. Harris does not.
“This is a thing that really scares me personally — is that if she loses, even if there is no basis in reality, even if there is not a single ounce of data, it will be said it is because she is a woman, a Black woman, a woman of color,” said Amanda Litman, the co-founder of Run for Something, a group that helps women run for office. “That will make it so much harder the next time.”
Lessons from Clinton
Representative Ayanna Pressley, a Boston Democrat first elected in 2018, said there was no doubt Ms. Harris is benefiting from Mrs. Clinton’s defeat.
“There’s a ground that has been softened with lessons that we’ve learned from Hillary,” she said. Female politicians have learned not to shy away from sharing aspects of their personal lives and struggles. Authenticity and vulnerability seem to be helping women in modern politics, not hurting them, she said.
“There isn’t a singular narrative of what leadership looks like and what it means,” Ms. Pressley said of Ms. Harris. “So it is a bonus to have a mother, this woman of color, this joyful warrior, who’s a hell of a cook.”
Mrs. Clinton, 76, and Ms. Harris, 59, represent different eras of feminism, noted Ms. Litman. The vice president has adopted a more relaxed, personally candid approach that would have felt to risky to Mrs. Clinton as she came up in politics. Now, talking about lipstick colors, tattoos or sneakers is not only acceptable for female politicians but tactically smart: a way to appear relatable.
Talking about being a historic “first,” however, seems somewhat dated. When Mrs. Clinton made her gender central to her campaign message, there were “I’m With Her” stickers and temporary tattoos, and a devoted “Pantsuit Nation” Facebook group named for her sartorial choices. Ms. Harris has largely let surrogates and supporters, including Mrs. Clinton, point out the obvious for her.
“She does not have to talk about being the first, because it is baked into all of the messaging,” Ms. Litman said. “It is implicit in the conversation of not going back. She doesn’t have to do more than that.”
A crowded kitchen table
Beyond style, several Democratic women see the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and the loss of federal abortion rights as a major inflection point. It forced many voters to take more seriously a set of policies once considered “women’s issues,” said Representative Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat who worked as a Clinton campaign adviser.
Issues involving reproductive health care and education are more accepted as “kitchen table issues” important to die-hard Democrats, but also to moderates, she said.
“In 2016 and 2018 and even 2020, when we were telling people they’re coming after Roe, they’re trying to take it, there were many, many people who told us we were being hysterical,” Ms. Jacobs said. “Now, I think everyone sees very clearly that we were not.”
The upheaval of the pandemic has also drawn more attention to issues like education, child care and mental health.
“Now people feel entitled to joy. It is something that people are seeking,” she said. “They’re desperately seeking more than that. There is room to talk about more.”
New weapons against sexism
Barbara Boxer, 83, said that there was no doubt the level of sexism in politics had receded since she first entered politics in the 1970s — but that improvement has been slow. Ms. Boxer, a former senator from California, noted that Mr. Trump has frequently commented on Ms. Harris’s appearance, once describing a photo of her as “beautiful” and suggesting she looked “very much” like his wife, Melania.
“What is he trying to say? He’s trying to say, ‘I’m not afraid of you,’” Ms. Boxer said. “‘You’re just like my wife.’ These are the subtle things. We have a man who thinks that women are inferior. They’re his plaything.”
Ms. Jacobs, 35, said that both male and female voters routinely comment on her appearance — one woman suggesting she wear a bikini to attract more votes from men. When focus groups repeatedly criticized her voice as too high, her campaign decided to minimize her speaking in television advertisements.
“There was a lot of commentary on that, on my up-talk,” Ms. Jacobs said. “What can I say? I’m a millennial.”
Ms. Harris and her allies have been aggressive in fighting back against comments they consider sexist, often with biting humor. To that end, they created cat lady memes and Momala jokes and endless video clips about coconuts, all aimed at flipping the script.
“They literally turned it upside-down and leaned into it and said, ‘That’s what we’re about,’” Ms. Klobuchar said. “They steeled themselves for that this time and have a plan.”
When Representative Lauren Underwood, 37, won her suburban Chicago district in 2018, she was the first Democrat, the youngest candidate in the district’s history and the first person of color, but nothing came up as often as being the first woman, she said.
Still, she sees undeniable progress. She and other women have figured out something male politicians have long understood, she said: Politics involves appearances, sometimes superficial impressions and stereotypes.
“We have had a long line of presidents who were very attractive, so having Kamala Harris is not an outlier,” she said. “As a fellow beautiful woman, did I spend time talking about that in my campaign? No.”
But when Ms. Underwood wants to use her looks to her advantage, she does. “Yes. With the big smile, we lean in,” she said.
The effusive confidence about gender was on display this week when eight Democratic female governors gathered on the sidelines at the Democratic convention, where Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the actress, played host and cheerleader.
“Is there any advantage to being a woman governor?” she asked.
“Yes,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan said, pausing as if she had nothing more to say, before adding: “It is a huge advantage to be underestimated in any debate, in any way.”
Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas jumped in: “That underestimation is going to fade away as time goes by.”
“With President Harris, you’re right,” Ms. Whitmer replied.