Seeking a historic win, Harris faces a familiar foe: Sexism

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Seeking a historic win, Harris faces a familiar foe: Sexism

Is America ready for its first woman president? Polling and interviews with many voters suggest the answer is yes — but with a lot of caveat

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Vice President Kamala Harris prepares to speak at a campaign event in Wayne, Mich., on Aug. 8. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Maeve Reston and Ashley Parker
October 19, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

LAS VEGAS — Standing in the searing Nevada heat at her job as a construction flagger shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris entered the presidential race in July, 38-year-old Sarah White was skeptical: “I don’t think I would ever vote for a woman to be president,” she said bluntly. “Women are kinda all over the place.”

White, an independent, voted for Donald Trump in 2020 but misses the era when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was president because “there was none of this chaos and scariness and people rioting.” She believes Trump, running again this year, is “brave” and would “fight to keep us safe” at a time when she is unnerved by the number of non-English-speaking immigrants entering the country. … But she cannot stomach Trump’s divisiveness, his felonies and legal dramas, and feels “embarrassed for our country” when she hears him speak.

A woman working in a male-dominated industry, she nonetheless found herself struggling in a recent follow-up interview to envision how Harris would fare as the first female commander in chief. “She seems pretty tough. I don’t know, though, if she’s breakable,” White said. “Women — we have emotions, we have compassion and we have all these other feelings that men don’t have. You know?”

Around the world, many other democratic countries, from those in Europe to South America to Asia, have elected women as leaders for decades. Yet 40 years after Geraldine Ferraro became the first female vice-presidential nominee of a major party and eight years after Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential nominee of a major party, White and thousands of voters like her are grappling with the question that still bedevils the nearly 250-year-old nation: Is America ready and willing to elect a female president?

{snip}

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By Maeve Reston
Maeve Reston is a national political reporter for The Washington Post covering the 2024 presidential race and the politics of the West. She joined The Post in 2023 after covering politics and five presidential campaigns at CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Austin American-Statesman. follow on X @MaeveReston

By Ashley Parker
Ashley Parker is Senior National Political Correspondent for The Washington Post. She has been part of three Post teams that won Pulitzer Prizes — two for National Reporting (in 2018 and 2024) and one for Public Service (in 2022). She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times. She is also an on-air contributor to NBC News/MSNBC.follow on X @ashleyrparker

[snowybirdie]

1. Why oh why

Do reporters keep talking to the stupidest of us? She loved the Clinton years and misses them.......honey, remember Monica? She voted for rtump....And,does she remember covid? Doesn't know if Kamala is strong enough.....and rtump is? Please!!!??? This woman is an idiot

[displacedvermoter]

3. How come they didn't speak to a woman running

a library book sale or a woman at the cash register at a hip coffee shop?

Stupid gets their intended point across I am convinced!

[usonian]

2. WAPO, like others, racing to the bottom.

Reporting on people's fears instead of facts.

Californians know Kamala as a bad-ass who cut down creeps of every descripton, as long as they were law-breakers. She was D.A., Attorney General and Senator, as opposed to one job, grifter.

Oh, and kissing ass of murderous dictators, which a weak person does.

One rule of life is that a strong person lifts up and protects others, while a weak person tries to cut others, especially those who are "different" or less fortunate, down to their own size.

One is a leader. The other is a panderer.