Eight years after Hillary Clinton’s loss, Kamala Harris will attempt a historic do-over for women
So much is the same from that night eight years ago in Philadelphia when Hillary Clinton stepped onto the stage in her pure white suit at the Democratic National Convention and basked in the cheers of an ebullient crowd.
The former secretary of state and U.S. senator stood on the precipice of becoming the first woman president in American history and was competing against first-time nominee Donald Trump, the New York developer who had insulted her throughout the campaign.
“To see Hillary Clinton be the nominee of the Democratic Party was the culmination of really many hopes and dreams,” said U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Palo Alto Democrat, who was on the floor of the convention hall that night in 2016. “We had been climbing a mountain for a long, long time, so it was exhilarating.”
When Vice President Kamala Harris, California’s former attorney general and U.S. senator, takes the stage at the convention in Chicago Thursday night to accept her party’s nomination, the exhilaration is sure to be the same. But come November, will the outcome be different? How is the country different now? Or will this be, for Democratic women and Harris’ most ardent Bay Area supporters especially, another turning point that fails to turn?
Trump, it seems, has stayed the same. Clinton said as much when she returned to the convention stage Monday, this time in a pale yellow jacket, supporting Harris in Chicago.
“He’s mocking her name and her laugh,” Clinton said of Trump, shrugging her shoulders. “Sounds familiar.”
Voters in 2008 and 2012 had elected a Black man as president in Barack Obama, but not a woman in Clinton in 2016. She won the popular vote, but through electoral tallies, lost the election. Indeed, 45% of college-educated white women cast their votes for Trump.
Now, with national polls showing an exceedingly close race between Trump and Harris, Democrats are trying to stifle a foreboding sense of deja vu. Former First Lady Michelle Obama addressed that creeping dread in a rousing speech Tuesday, telling conventioneers to “do something” to get her elected.
So what’s different now?
A lot, say Democratic loyalists, longtime politicians and political analysts.
In particular, the political evolution of women and the emerging power of young voters.
After Trump defied polls and won, millions of women shocked by the outcome took to the streets, with massive Women’s Marches across the country. The MeToo movement hit in 2017, with women who had secretly borne the humiliation of sexual abuse by powerful men started sharing their stories and demanding justice.
In 2018, voters elected the largest incoming class of women in Congress, with 36 women elected, 35 of whom were Democrats. That force that flipped the House from red to blue and was also responsible for returning U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House speaker and in 2020 helped deny Trump a second term in favor of Joe Biden.
After the U.S. Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump overturned abortion rights in the 2021 Dobbs decision, voters defied a predicted red wave in 2022 midterm elections. Although Republicans regained control of the House, they did so by a much slimmer margin than predicted. At the same time, as newly-empowered states began restricting abortion access across the country, women mobilized to fight them.
“The backlash to Donald Trump has been the activation of women,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Politics and Women at Rutgers University.
Those women, along with young people, also politically energized over abortion rights, could change the course of history, this time, analysts say.
In 2016, Clinton faced numerous headwinds, including the enduring popularity of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders among young voters and her own unpopularity after being caught up in scandals dating back to her husband’s presidency.
Elisa Camahort Page, a San Jose activist, author and co-founder of Blogher, said she learned her lesson after Clinton’s loss.
“I think most of us, for too long, subsumed our enthusiasm and tamped it down in order to be more acceptable in a media environment that was bound and determined to make it seem like everybody hated her,” she said, “and I don’t think we’re going to do that this time.”
Trump, who was ready to attack Biden as too old and feeble before he dropped out of the race in July, has had trouble finding an effective message against his new opponent, a 59-year-old Black woman. The GOP convention featured Hulk Hogan and played “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” as Trump entered the arena.
Camahort Page says it’s Trump who is suffering from an enthusiasm gap now.
“He has his stalwarts for sure, but he’s the one who has to convert more voters,” she said. “His schtick is old now … I mean, how many times is a joke about Hannibal Lecter going to be funny?”
Harris may still be enjoying a honeymoon period in her campaign after galvanizing voters and collecting record millions in donations.
But until November’s election, she will surely face GOP attacks about her largely liberal record, her shifting positions on controversial issues and her part in the Biden-Harris administration that saw record inflation — attacks that may land better than Trump’s personal insults.
“Kamala Harris will prominently feature her fellow California Democrats this week to gaslight Americans into thinking they are the shining example of how to govern,” said California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, citing the state’s high housing costs, gas prices and taxes that have helped shrink the state’s population. “For more than two decades, Kamala and her party have worked diligently to drive California into the ground.”
Pelosi, in an interview on PBS during Tuesday night’s convention, said the Democratic Party wouldn’t have put up Harris if they didn’t think she could defeat Trump.
“There are those who will never vote for a woman,” Pelosi said. “But we’re not waiting for never to happen. We’re doing this right now.”