It’s been long apparent to me that discussions of sexism and racism in public discourse are crude to the point of uselessness. When someone calls someone else a racist, the interpretation of the term is that one is being accused of “not being nice” or “being a bad person.” This is in keeping with our hyper individualistic society, where the assumption is that there are no systemic problems, just individuals making good or bad choices. Therefore, if one doesn’t consider oneself to be racist, all you have to do is “be nice.” And if you are racist because you aren’t nice every once in a while, it was just a joke, so stop complaining. In reality, racism isn’t a matter of an individual intent of “being nice,” but is the result of systems shaping implicit and explicit actions.
Sexism is a bit different, since a lot of self-proclaimed liberals will fall into sexist behavior and thought patterns simply because patriarchal thinking is the default in society (eg having women do domestic labor without consciously agreeing to such an arrangement). But once again, people tend to boil it down to individual behaviors and not societal patterns. Lots of people seem to think that just “being a gentleman” is enough to combat sexism, when gentlemanly behavior was always aimed at certain classes (and races) of “respectable women.” The idea that systemic problems can be reduced by just “being nice” seems to be given by liberals and conservatives.
In and of itself, I think that willingness to vote for a Black woman for president is meaningless. Putting women and minorities in institutions soaked in white supremacy and sexism doesn’t change the nature of those institutions, it just socializes these exceptional cases into being part of the problem. I guess it would have been great for Harris as an individual if she had become president, but it wouldn’t have done much for the rest of us. The politics of representation essentially mean that we’re supposed to get off on psychological benefits, rather than material ones.
I don't disagree with the majority of what you've written here, but in the main I was not talking about systemic racism or sexism but rather how these ideas are communicated in a political setting. I think, on that scale, those problems do end up "manifesting" on the individual level and can be discussed as a personal / behavioral problem. Mostly, though, I was expanding on the idea that racism, along with being an ideology, is something that people _recognize_, which necessitates a (largely unconscious) response.
You say: "In and of itself, I think that willingness to vote for a Black woman for president is meaningless."
Insofar as the 2024 election is concerned, I think the question is whether a person is UNwilling to vote for a Black woman. That seems to have been a significant factor (though to what degree none of us can say).
I'm not talking about tokenism (which is a conversation we can have but was not my focus here) -- I'm talking about the inability to see Harris -- and, by extension, any Black woman -- as worthy of basic respect. To the people with whom Trump had his communion, she was not a person. At the very least, they were willing to engage in these signaling games that Trump initiated so as to increase their collective self-esteem (collective narcissism, a topic into which I'll dive much further later). She was a foil for their supremacy games.
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hung up on the reaction of those Black women who see Harris’ loss as some kind of huge gut punch to themselves. Intellectually, I understand where they’re coming from, but I see such reactions as the tendency to give more credence to the psychic benefits of representation than obtaining material benefits that will help the masses. I don’t know what Harris’ next step will be, but she’ll be fine regardless. I’m not so sure about the rest of us.
Anyway, I think it will be difficult to quantify how many votes Harris may have lost because of her race and/or gender. I feel like these sort of sentiments would have been easier to track in the past, where it seems like people didn’t have any shame about saying that they wouldn’t vote for JFK because he was a Catholic (for example). But these days, I feel like responders will be much more circumspect about saying things like this to a random pollster. There are also so many other issues going on that complicate making sweeping judgments on voter motivations.
When I said that in and of itself, voting for a Black woman is meaningless, I was thinking back to the Obama era, when we were told that the fact that so many white people were willing to vote for a Black man signaled a “post-racial America” (lol). As we know, many Obama voters would later vote for Trump, one, two, or three times. I think even now some people will use the fact that they voted for Obama as a sign that they aren’t racist. Liking a handful of Black people because they’re “one of the good ones” isn’t particularly noteworthy.
Not seeing Black women as worthy of respect is a very deep-rooted and systematic problem. Focusing specifically on Trump as a person, it wouldn’t surprise me if he sees Black women as sex objects and/or hired help. Supposedly Jeffrey Epstein looked down on Trump because for a time the latter was really into Black women as sexual partners (tbh I’m a bit surprised that Trump hasn’t proclaimed that he’s not racist because he’s had sex with lots of Black women). While everything is more grotesque with Trump, these negative attitudes about Black women are deeply ingrained in American society and wouldn’t have gone away had Harris won. To do away with them would require systemic economic and cultural restructuring that the US simply has no interest in doing. What is needed is to lift up entire communities, not skim off a few exceptional individuals who were already doing well. Harris as an individual could and would never be able to upend the racial-sexual hierarchy of the last 400 years.
A lot here to which to respond! I'll try to hit major points here.
You bring up JFK and contrast his Catholicism to Obama's race. I think these are very different axes of identity. For one, of course, religion is stable over time but can be changed or renounced altogether. Aside from that, though, I would argue that when Catholicism was ultra-important as a social marker, any opposition to it would have been explicit. A person would him- or herself be quite conscious of his or her opposition to the religion or to anyone serving as a symbol of that religion.
Race is different. Race is immutable as a social marker. Aside from skin bleaching or "passing" with very light skin, there's no way to change that status. Indeed, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was based on the idea that the person "passing" their way into the segregated train car had done so by purloining the status of white. It was seen as stealing a fur coat -- a luxury item -- but socially this coat could never be taken off. It's non-transferable.
Beyond that, racism often manifests itself inside of the racist him- or herself as an imperceptible notion, belief or urge. Implicit racism is insidious and difficult to combat. The way to raise consciousness about it is to discuss what the broader concept is, instead of pointing at someone and declaring that they are racist. They will tend to deny it, because the thought rarely if ever rises to explicit consciousness. But if someone explains the concept of implicit racism, that person might be able to recognize some of the tendencies that resides within him- or herself and may take steps at that point to address the situation (that is, if they have a further belief that racism is bad in the first place -- not all people hold that belief).
So I see a difference there. But as for using a vote for Obama as a proxy for one's lack of racism, that is -- incomplete. I would say it's an indicator that racism does not overwhelm one's thinking process. But that goes only so far. I think the way to show that one is not racist is to be anti-racist; but I'll leave that discussion for another time.
I think you would be surprised at how much of a leveling of disrespect there would have been had Harris had ascended to the presidency. To take Obama as an example (because he's the only president we've had that broke the mold): it's true that racism against Black men did not disappear. But it lessened. I don't know if you were paying attention, but I journaled about the fact that representations on television, especially in commercials, of Black people in general became more "normal." This was particularly the case in terms of images of Black families. They just became standard. This is in contrast to much of the stereotypical images that were present even into the '90s, which was a particularly tolerant decade in American history. The '90s saw the advent of gangsta rap, so there were lots of images of Black men engaging in crime, killing people with little remorse, etc. There was a clear change in perspective taking that took place in American media. (But there was backlash, too; I don't want to minimize that.)
I think it was always an uphill climb to expect America to take a category of persons that had historically been on the bottom of the social totem pole and raise them to the highest office in the land. I think Harris is a fine politician; I wish her well in her future endeavors; but I think this current environment was nearly as poisonous as the turn of the 20th century, where some women's society groups were trying to fund the erection of a Mammy statue in the heart of Washington, D.C. It was marketed as a tribute, but Black women at the time knew without having to be told that the statue would concretize her role as that which is fundamentally exploited. We're not quite at that level of contempt from our fellow Americans, but I believe we're on the road.
"...I felt that Harris should be passed over as the Democrat’s standard bearer this cycle."
It would be my sense of things that passing her over would have been perceived as a massive insult to women, to Black people, and to Black women in particular, which would have lost even more votes, core votes, and worse, turned a lot of people against the entire party and all its candidates. Further, I can't think of anyone, man or woman, who would have been a more qualified or inspiring candidate. So it seems like the D party may have simply made the best choice there was, with all the positives and negatives accompanying that choice. Tump's people apparently had an online or otherwise stealth GOTV effort going on that drew in people who had not voted in 20, 30, 40 years. (First-hand info from election volunteer friend in VA.) I can't blame.
I had suggested, back in that essay from July, that the Democrats should do something unusual and keep Harris on as VP. This would have been kind of mandatory, considering the circumstances, as the campaign money that had been banked under the Biden/Harris ticket was tied to her name. This move to retain a VP would have been unprecedented -- but everything about that situation was unprecedented. It could have been done. (In such a circumstance, the top of the ticket would need to have good chemistry with Harris, so she'd have a lot of say in determining the top of the ticket.)
I think this could have been pitched, both to Harris herself as well as to the grassroots of the party, of Harris "taking one for the team", "being a team player", "sacrificing for the greater good", etc. I think some people in the party would have groused about it but then would have rolled up their sleeves and have gotten to work.
In terms of whether the party took that suggestion or removed Harris from the ticket altogether, I think that the impact among Black voters would have been negligible. I say this for exactly the same weighty considerations that I myself went through, in a kind of a "dark night of the soul," where I debated whether or not I'd even vote for the party this year. Ultimately, I came to a place of understanding that too many people before me had died for the right to vote and that I shouldn't take that right so cavalierly. I think most Black voters would have a similar thought process.
I think few Black women would have crossed over to the Trump camp if the Democratic Party had passed Harris over. I simply don't think that move was in the cards. I think that was an article of faith over at the Other Site, as a way (subtle or not) to corral people into celebrating the pick. Some people felt it was vitally important that the party not fragment, and so they were ultra-invested in streamlining opinion among the grassroots so as to keep the process -- or at least the image of the process -- smooth. As for Black men, I doubt that such a move would have affected them one way or the other (I think that's borne out by the fact that so many defected from previous Black male Democratic voting patterns, with Harris as the top of the ticket!)
Would passing Harris over have offended women more broadly? I doubt it, for this reason: when Harris did not court Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to be her running mate (an idea that was fanciful from the start, IMO), women didn't abandon the party in a huff. Many understood that it was imperative that Harris "balance the ticket" with a White male. That was simply a given in the political class.
Now, it's true that White women broke for Trump -- but that's not unusual. White women usually vote Republican. (I'm not sure how Hispanic women and other POC might have voted had Harris been passed over, as I haven't studied those trends in past cycles. I simply don't know.)
So I tend to think those concerns about Black women, Black people more broadly, and women abandoning the Democrats to have been exaggerated. I admit that I could be wrong, but that's how I called it months ago, and I must say my concerns about Democratic prospects over this entire year have largely borne out.
I'd be interested to know more about what your election volunteer friend had to say. Also, did you see this article in the Washington Post about misleading micro-targeted ads supplied to various subgroups of the Democratic Party to turn voters against Harris? It's an important read, even though I don't want to talk up WaPo at the moment: "Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters" https://wapo.st/3CvPk8k (gift link)
Of course it does. Why would you pose that question?
I’m speaking in this essay specifically about the comments in some corners of the left of the widespread racism and sexism that played into Harris’s loss. As I say at the very beginning of the essay, the reasons are multiple and combinatorial.
I'll go so far as to say I'm incredibly frustrated at the people who refuse to believe that the Biden administration's policy toward Israel's assault on Gaza had anything to do with Harris's defeat. They are obstinate. If we don't learn the lessons of this loss, we're not going to be able to meet the challenges of the future.
For example, it was recently revealed that Israel plans to "give" Trump a ceasefire in Lebanon upon his re-entry into the Oval Office. This would represent one of Trump's first "wins". (This was reported in a Washington Post 'exclusive', which you can read here, jumping the paywall: https://wapo.st/4fu1lJT)
Now, Israel escalated in Lebanon all throughout September and October. Additionally, in terms of images, Israel produced some of the most harrowing and horrifying that we've seen to date, in the burning alive of patients outside of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza. I lean toward the belief that Netanyahu escalated during that time, knowing that the Biden administration would say nothing about his actions; and that the Democratic base would recoil. Netanyahu's very familiar with American politics. Add in the fact that he was in contact with Trump during that time period and you have the makings of a squeeze play.
Harris could have sidestepped all of that by just saying that she would enforce U.S. law. She knew that's what she needed to do because people in affected communities told her so. Community leaders and organizers told her, "If you say this, that would go a long way." She could have made that commitment to immediately mend bridges. But she didn't. So, yes, I do think that she reaped the consequences of her deliberate actions. She omitted something that she knew she needed to say, and she came across as just another politician. This is very unfortunate: she could have set herself apart.
Superb work. What does it mean for strategy tho? We need to see what we are running against… a McCain type, a Trump type, (gag), hope that the Rs one day pick a Black woman as their candidate so we don’t need to exclude candidates that have certain characteristics? Or is there a way to counter and win? You want to think that you pick the most qualified. Of course, there is always a certain look that helps a candidate. We are so superficial and that drives a lot of important decisions we make.
Well, I think that Black female candidates are perfectly fine and as capable as others. Obviously! However, it was this particular cycle, against this particular candidate, that should have given the Democratic Party pause and caused them to rethink this strategy.
I should say, of course, that several in the party were, of course, thinking of finding a way to select a nominee that could put distance between him- or herself and the Biden administration. But Biden himself circumvented that process by tapping Harris immediately — within 20 minutes of his stepping aside.
Chatting with someone some months ago, it appears that Democrats may have been ready to have Biden step aside and let Harris fill his place had the GOP nominated Nikki Haley. Now, this is where my cynicism comes to the fore: you’d put Harris up to go up against another female, but not Trump? Then, of course, in June fate intervened and we got just that match-up. The calendar had shrunk by then, though, so voters were not able to get to know Harris or find out much about her platform.
Again, it’s the environment that should have been the tip-off to party insiders and leaders. If the conditions on the ground are that the other camp is in a reactionary-revolutionary mood (i.e., ripe for fascism), meaning that they almost certainly are espousing a racist ideology (as fascism is powered by racism), the party shouldn’t put up someone who would remind them visually of the fundamentals of their putrid ideology. I’m sure the symbolism of Harris’s run was like a stick in the eye to many of Trump’s followers, which is why he didn’t have to take her seriously at all. He simply made fun of her, and that was sufficient.
I thought Harris was the right choice because it just didn’t make sense to say on one hand, she is the most qualified to take over in the event of death, but no she isn’t the right choice when he steps aside. Plus the time crunch. Plus I was worried about the ugliness of a typical primary where the candidates tear each other down. This was just a very crazy election. Have a good evening. 😎
i am neither sexist nor racist. I came up in California with Kamala as ag (we are the same age.) I was aware of her when she was our mayor’s mistress, and was getting paid off through political appointments. I watches as she rose in the Burton machine ranks, and as she made war on poor black women and cackled about it.
She has ALWAYS been a machine puppet, doing what she was told, “believing’ what she was told to believe. She has always been a vile social/political climber, with 0 core values - no different from Gaetz, Vance, or Taylor Green.
Had she called for a cease fire in Gaza, or said one honest word about Israel, I would have voted for her in spite of her record as just another political prostitute. She refused, because Israeli cash speaks for my former party.
So, I didn’t vote for her because I refuse to vote for a genocidaire, and her race and gender had nothing to do with it
You’re perfectly welcome to base your vote on whatever you believe. I’m not here to preach. What I’m doing here is providing analysis about race and gender roles in American culture and how those may indeed have intersected with this year’s election.
Note that I did not say that all of the people who failed to vote for Harris did so because she’s a Black female. In no way did I even come close to saying such a thing. I made several caveats make this delineation.
What this essay is meant to do is push back against those who are claiming that racism and sexism had NOTHING to do with the outcome. Of course it did. And it did in several different ways — some that are more overt and some that are more subtle. This essay is here to tease out subtleties.
As for the background that you cite about Harris, as I understand it, Willie Brown was legally separated from his wife when he had a romantic relationship with Harris. I will never hold that against her. My own parents had a 10-year-long separation in which both of them saw other people. They’re human; moreover, they’re adults. Never would I come close to judging anyone in a separation situation. Relationally speaking, they’re single. So, you mention Harris’s and Brown’s relationship very casually, as though he were dallying with her. Your summation is very close to slut shaming, honestly. The two were consenting adults in a relationship that was not an affair or adultery, as interpretable under the law.
It’s been long apparent to me that discussions of sexism and racism in public discourse are crude to the point of uselessness. When someone calls someone else a racist, the interpretation of the term is that one is being accused of “not being nice” or “being a bad person.” This is in keeping with our hyper individualistic society, where the assumption is that there are no systemic problems, just individuals making good or bad choices. Therefore, if one doesn’t consider oneself to be racist, all you have to do is “be nice.” And if you are racist because you aren’t nice every once in a while, it was just a joke, so stop complaining. In reality, racism isn’t a matter of an individual intent of “being nice,” but is the result of systems shaping implicit and explicit actions.
Sexism is a bit different, since a lot of self-proclaimed liberals will fall into sexist behavior and thought patterns simply because patriarchal thinking is the default in society (eg having women do domestic labor without consciously agreeing to such an arrangement). But once again, people tend to boil it down to individual behaviors and not societal patterns. Lots of people seem to think that just “being a gentleman” is enough to combat sexism, when gentlemanly behavior was always aimed at certain classes (and races) of “respectable women.” The idea that systemic problems can be reduced by just “being nice” seems to be given by liberals and conservatives.
In and of itself, I think that willingness to vote for a Black woman for president is meaningless. Putting women and minorities in institutions soaked in white supremacy and sexism doesn’t change the nature of those institutions, it just socializes these exceptional cases into being part of the problem. I guess it would have been great for Harris as an individual if she had become president, but it wouldn’t have done much for the rest of us. The politics of representation essentially mean that we’re supposed to get off on psychological benefits, rather than material ones.
I don't disagree with the majority of what you've written here, but in the main I was not talking about systemic racism or sexism but rather how these ideas are communicated in a political setting. I think, on that scale, those problems do end up "manifesting" on the individual level and can be discussed as a personal / behavioral problem. Mostly, though, I was expanding on the idea that racism, along with being an ideology, is something that people _recognize_, which necessitates a (largely unconscious) response.
You say: "In and of itself, I think that willingness to vote for a Black woman for president is meaningless."
Insofar as the 2024 election is concerned, I think the question is whether a person is UNwilling to vote for a Black woman. That seems to have been a significant factor (though to what degree none of us can say).
I'm not talking about tokenism (which is a conversation we can have but was not my focus here) -- I'm talking about the inability to see Harris -- and, by extension, any Black woman -- as worthy of basic respect. To the people with whom Trump had his communion, she was not a person. At the very least, they were willing to engage in these signaling games that Trump initiated so as to increase their collective self-esteem (collective narcissism, a topic into which I'll dive much further later). She was a foil for their supremacy games.
Thank you for your reply. I guess I was hung up on the reaction of those Black women who see Harris’ loss as some kind of huge gut punch to themselves. Intellectually, I understand where they’re coming from, but I see such reactions as the tendency to give more credence to the psychic benefits of representation than obtaining material benefits that will help the masses. I don’t know what Harris’ next step will be, but she’ll be fine regardless. I’m not so sure about the rest of us.
Anyway, I think it will be difficult to quantify how many votes Harris may have lost because of her race and/or gender. I feel like these sort of sentiments would have been easier to track in the past, where it seems like people didn’t have any shame about saying that they wouldn’t vote for JFK because he was a Catholic (for example). But these days, I feel like responders will be much more circumspect about saying things like this to a random pollster. There are also so many other issues going on that complicate making sweeping judgments on voter motivations.
When I said that in and of itself, voting for a Black woman is meaningless, I was thinking back to the Obama era, when we were told that the fact that so many white people were willing to vote for a Black man signaled a “post-racial America” (lol). As we know, many Obama voters would later vote for Trump, one, two, or three times. I think even now some people will use the fact that they voted for Obama as a sign that they aren’t racist. Liking a handful of Black people because they’re “one of the good ones” isn’t particularly noteworthy.
Not seeing Black women as worthy of respect is a very deep-rooted and systematic problem. Focusing specifically on Trump as a person, it wouldn’t surprise me if he sees Black women as sex objects and/or hired help. Supposedly Jeffrey Epstein looked down on Trump because for a time the latter was really into Black women as sexual partners (tbh I’m a bit surprised that Trump hasn’t proclaimed that he’s not racist because he’s had sex with lots of Black women). While everything is more grotesque with Trump, these negative attitudes about Black women are deeply ingrained in American society and wouldn’t have gone away had Harris won. To do away with them would require systemic economic and cultural restructuring that the US simply has no interest in doing. What is needed is to lift up entire communities, not skim off a few exceptional individuals who were already doing well. Harris as an individual could and would never be able to upend the racial-sexual hierarchy of the last 400 years.
A lot here to which to respond! I'll try to hit major points here.
You bring up JFK and contrast his Catholicism to Obama's race. I think these are very different axes of identity. For one, of course, religion is stable over time but can be changed or renounced altogether. Aside from that, though, I would argue that when Catholicism was ultra-important as a social marker, any opposition to it would have been explicit. A person would him- or herself be quite conscious of his or her opposition to the religion or to anyone serving as a symbol of that religion.
Race is different. Race is immutable as a social marker. Aside from skin bleaching or "passing" with very light skin, there's no way to change that status. Indeed, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision was based on the idea that the person "passing" their way into the segregated train car had done so by purloining the status of white. It was seen as stealing a fur coat -- a luxury item -- but socially this coat could never be taken off. It's non-transferable.
Beyond that, racism often manifests itself inside of the racist him- or herself as an imperceptible notion, belief or urge. Implicit racism is insidious and difficult to combat. The way to raise consciousness about it is to discuss what the broader concept is, instead of pointing at someone and declaring that they are racist. They will tend to deny it, because the thought rarely if ever rises to explicit consciousness. But if someone explains the concept of implicit racism, that person might be able to recognize some of the tendencies that resides within him- or herself and may take steps at that point to address the situation (that is, if they have a further belief that racism is bad in the first place -- not all people hold that belief).
So I see a difference there. But as for using a vote for Obama as a proxy for one's lack of racism, that is -- incomplete. I would say it's an indicator that racism does not overwhelm one's thinking process. But that goes only so far. I think the way to show that one is not racist is to be anti-racist; but I'll leave that discussion for another time.
I think you would be surprised at how much of a leveling of disrespect there would have been had Harris had ascended to the presidency. To take Obama as an example (because he's the only president we've had that broke the mold): it's true that racism against Black men did not disappear. But it lessened. I don't know if you were paying attention, but I journaled about the fact that representations on television, especially in commercials, of Black people in general became more "normal." This was particularly the case in terms of images of Black families. They just became standard. This is in contrast to much of the stereotypical images that were present even into the '90s, which was a particularly tolerant decade in American history. The '90s saw the advent of gangsta rap, so there were lots of images of Black men engaging in crime, killing people with little remorse, etc. There was a clear change in perspective taking that took place in American media. (But there was backlash, too; I don't want to minimize that.)
I think it was always an uphill climb to expect America to take a category of persons that had historically been on the bottom of the social totem pole and raise them to the highest office in the land. I think Harris is a fine politician; I wish her well in her future endeavors; but I think this current environment was nearly as poisonous as the turn of the 20th century, where some women's society groups were trying to fund the erection of a Mammy statue in the heart of Washington, D.C. It was marketed as a tribute, but Black women at the time knew without having to be told that the statue would concretize her role as that which is fundamentally exploited. We're not quite at that level of contempt from our fellow Americans, but I believe we're on the road.
This is so true. Representation is not liberation. There is so much work to be done and systemic changes that have to be made.
This is brilliant.
Thank you! I appreciate that you gave it a read.
There is this one thing:
"...I felt that Harris should be passed over as the Democrat’s standard bearer this cycle."
It would be my sense of things that passing her over would have been perceived as a massive insult to women, to Black people, and to Black women in particular, which would have lost even more votes, core votes, and worse, turned a lot of people against the entire party and all its candidates. Further, I can't think of anyone, man or woman, who would have been a more qualified or inspiring candidate. So it seems like the D party may have simply made the best choice there was, with all the positives and negatives accompanying that choice. Tump's people apparently had an online or otherwise stealth GOTV effort going on that drew in people who had not voted in 20, 30, 40 years. (First-hand info from election volunteer friend in VA.) I can't blame.
I had suggested, back in that essay from July, that the Democrats should do something unusual and keep Harris on as VP. This would have been kind of mandatory, considering the circumstances, as the campaign money that had been banked under the Biden/Harris ticket was tied to her name. This move to retain a VP would have been unprecedented -- but everything about that situation was unprecedented. It could have been done. (In such a circumstance, the top of the ticket would need to have good chemistry with Harris, so she'd have a lot of say in determining the top of the ticket.)
I think this could have been pitched, both to Harris herself as well as to the grassroots of the party, of Harris "taking one for the team", "being a team player", "sacrificing for the greater good", etc. I think some people in the party would have groused about it but then would have rolled up their sleeves and have gotten to work.
In terms of whether the party took that suggestion or removed Harris from the ticket altogether, I think that the impact among Black voters would have been negligible. I say this for exactly the same weighty considerations that I myself went through, in a kind of a "dark night of the soul," where I debated whether or not I'd even vote for the party this year. Ultimately, I came to a place of understanding that too many people before me had died for the right to vote and that I shouldn't take that right so cavalierly. I think most Black voters would have a similar thought process.
I think few Black women would have crossed over to the Trump camp if the Democratic Party had passed Harris over. I simply don't think that move was in the cards. I think that was an article of faith over at the Other Site, as a way (subtle or not) to corral people into celebrating the pick. Some people felt it was vitally important that the party not fragment, and so they were ultra-invested in streamlining opinion among the grassroots so as to keep the process -- or at least the image of the process -- smooth. As for Black men, I doubt that such a move would have affected them one way or the other (I think that's borne out by the fact that so many defected from previous Black male Democratic voting patterns, with Harris as the top of the ticket!)
Would passing Harris over have offended women more broadly? I doubt it, for this reason: when Harris did not court Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan to be her running mate (an idea that was fanciful from the start, IMO), women didn't abandon the party in a huff. Many understood that it was imperative that Harris "balance the ticket" with a White male. That was simply a given in the political class.
Now, it's true that White women broke for Trump -- but that's not unusual. White women usually vote Republican. (I'm not sure how Hispanic women and other POC might have voted had Harris been passed over, as I haven't studied those trends in past cycles. I simply don't know.)
So I tend to think those concerns about Black women, Black people more broadly, and women abandoning the Democrats to have been exaggerated. I admit that I could be wrong, but that's how I called it months ago, and I must say my concerns about Democratic prospects over this entire year have largely borne out.
I'd be interested to know more about what your election volunteer friend had to say. Also, did you see this article in the Washington Post about misleading micro-targeted ads supplied to various subgroups of the Democratic Party to turn voters against Harris? It's an important read, even though I don't want to talk up WaPo at the moment: "Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters" https://wapo.st/3CvPk8k (gift link)
Gaza and support for genocide had NOTHING to do with her loss. Right?
Of course it does. Why would you pose that question?
I’m speaking in this essay specifically about the comments in some corners of the left of the widespread racism and sexism that played into Harris’s loss. As I say at the very beginning of the essay, the reasons are multiple and combinatorial.
I'll go so far as to say I'm incredibly frustrated at the people who refuse to believe that the Biden administration's policy toward Israel's assault on Gaza had anything to do with Harris's defeat. They are obstinate. If we don't learn the lessons of this loss, we're not going to be able to meet the challenges of the future.
For example, it was recently revealed that Israel plans to "give" Trump a ceasefire in Lebanon upon his re-entry into the Oval Office. This would represent one of Trump's first "wins". (This was reported in a Washington Post 'exclusive', which you can read here, jumping the paywall: https://wapo.st/4fu1lJT)
Now, Israel escalated in Lebanon all throughout September and October. Additionally, in terms of images, Israel produced some of the most harrowing and horrifying that we've seen to date, in the burning alive of patients outside of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Gaza. I lean toward the belief that Netanyahu escalated during that time, knowing that the Biden administration would say nothing about his actions; and that the Democratic base would recoil. Netanyahu's very familiar with American politics. Add in the fact that he was in contact with Trump during that time period and you have the makings of a squeeze play.
Harris could have sidestepped all of that by just saying that she would enforce U.S. law. She knew that's what she needed to do because people in affected communities told her so. Community leaders and organizers told her, "If you say this, that would go a long way." She could have made that commitment to immediately mend bridges. But she didn't. So, yes, I do think that she reaped the consequences of her deliberate actions. She omitted something that she knew she needed to say, and she came across as just another politician. This is very unfortunate: she could have set herself apart.
Superb work. What does it mean for strategy tho? We need to see what we are running against… a McCain type, a Trump type, (gag), hope that the Rs one day pick a Black woman as their candidate so we don’t need to exclude candidates that have certain characteristics? Or is there a way to counter and win? You want to think that you pick the most qualified. Of course, there is always a certain look that helps a candidate. We are so superficial and that drives a lot of important decisions we make.
Thanks for sharing your work with us.
Thanks for reading and responding, FC.
Well, I think that Black female candidates are perfectly fine and as capable as others. Obviously! However, it was this particular cycle, against this particular candidate, that should have given the Democratic Party pause and caused them to rethink this strategy.
I should say, of course, that several in the party were, of course, thinking of finding a way to select a nominee that could put distance between him- or herself and the Biden administration. But Biden himself circumvented that process by tapping Harris immediately — within 20 minutes of his stepping aside.
Chatting with someone some months ago, it appears that Democrats may have been ready to have Biden step aside and let Harris fill his place had the GOP nominated Nikki Haley. Now, this is where my cynicism comes to the fore: you’d put Harris up to go up against another female, but not Trump? Then, of course, in June fate intervened and we got just that match-up. The calendar had shrunk by then, though, so voters were not able to get to know Harris or find out much about her platform.
Again, it’s the environment that should have been the tip-off to party insiders and leaders. If the conditions on the ground are that the other camp is in a reactionary-revolutionary mood (i.e., ripe for fascism), meaning that they almost certainly are espousing a racist ideology (as fascism is powered by racism), the party shouldn’t put up someone who would remind them visually of the fundamentals of their putrid ideology. I’m sure the symbolism of Harris’s run was like a stick in the eye to many of Trump’s followers, which is why he didn’t have to take her seriously at all. He simply made fun of her, and that was sufficient.
I thought Harris was the right choice because it just didn’t make sense to say on one hand, she is the most qualified to take over in the event of death, but no she isn’t the right choice when he steps aside. Plus the time crunch. Plus I was worried about the ugliness of a typical primary where the candidates tear each other down. This was just a very crazy election. Have a good evening. 😎
One for the ages, without a doubt.
Scary! A lot of work on self awareness desperately needed by all groups in the USA.
No doubt! I’m not sure when and how that will happen, though — many people are invested in their denial.
i am neither sexist nor racist. I came up in California with Kamala as ag (we are the same age.) I was aware of her when she was our mayor’s mistress, and was getting paid off through political appointments. I watches as she rose in the Burton machine ranks, and as she made war on poor black women and cackled about it.
She has ALWAYS been a machine puppet, doing what she was told, “believing’ what she was told to believe. She has always been a vile social/political climber, with 0 core values - no different from Gaetz, Vance, or Taylor Green.
Had she called for a cease fire in Gaza, or said one honest word about Israel, I would have voted for her in spite of her record as just another political prostitute. She refused, because Israeli cash speaks for my former party.
So, I didn’t vote for her because I refuse to vote for a genocidaire, and her race and gender had nothing to do with it
You’re perfectly welcome to base your vote on whatever you believe. I’m not here to preach. What I’m doing here is providing analysis about race and gender roles in American culture and how those may indeed have intersected with this year’s election.
Note that I did not say that all of the people who failed to vote for Harris did so because she’s a Black female. In no way did I even come close to saying such a thing. I made several caveats make this delineation.
What this essay is meant to do is push back against those who are claiming that racism and sexism had NOTHING to do with the outcome. Of course it did. And it did in several different ways — some that are more overt and some that are more subtle. This essay is here to tease out subtleties.
As for the background that you cite about Harris, as I understand it, Willie Brown was legally separated from his wife when he had a romantic relationship with Harris. I will never hold that against her. My own parents had a 10-year-long separation in which both of them saw other people. They’re human; moreover, they’re adults. Never would I come close to judging anyone in a separation situation. Relationally speaking, they’re single. So, you mention Harris’s and Brown’s relationship very casually, as though he were dallying with her. Your summation is very close to slut shaming, honestly. The two were consenting adults in a relationship that was not an affair or adultery, as interpretable under the law.