Kamala Harris ran a historic campaign. What will her legacy be?
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Vice President Kamala Harris' historic candidacy ended in defeat last week. But for some Americans, her four-month bid for the presidency left a big mark. Just seeing that she was able to be in a position like that is really inspiring for me and other young Black women. That's Charmanda Jean-Francois. She's a senior at Howard University, Harris' alma mater. She really painted a portrait that no matter what, our voices are heard, our voices matter, and I'm

We're worthy to be in positions like that. It just is ingrained in me to keep pushing forward for things that I want to pursue in my life, in my career. For Jean-Francois, Harris's racial identity contributed to her appeal as a candidate, that and her stance on reproductive rights. It's a sentiment echoed by many women of color who cast their ballots for Harris that they felt represented by her.

Among them is Jalika Ali, a 65-year-old in New York City. I really saw myself in her because...

I am Black and Asian, South Asian. And it was time for the change. And I really thought she could be the person to get the votes, to get in, to unseat Trump. But apparently not. Ali says she gravitated toward Harris because of her identity. She also believes Harris's identity cost her the election. Sexism and racism. That's really what it comes down to. And...

I don't know that this country is ready to elect a woman president of any race.

to tell you the truth. Ali and Jean-Francois say they're disappointed by the outcome of the presidential race. And yet, looking back on the campaign, both women say they're ultimately walking away hopeful. She should hold her head up high. She was the first, and she would take the brunt of this loss. But history will serve her. History will show that...

She was the stepping stone. We will get there. I just hope that it's in my lifetime. That would be the best. Like Jimmy Carter wanted to live to be 100 to vote. I'd like to live long enough to see a woman president of any race. Consider this. Kamala Harris's candidacy was historic, but the first woman of color to lead a major party's ticket lost. What will her legacy be? ♪♪

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It's Consider This from NPR. Vice President Kamala Harris did not campaign on her identity or being a first. Still, for some Americans who voted for her, what resonated most was who she is.

The historic Harris campaign ended in defeat. So where does that leave her legacy? Here to answer that is Tressie McMillan Cottom. She's a sociologist and a New York Times opinion columnist. Hi there. Hi, pleasure to be here.

Traci, if I can, I want to start with something that you wrote in the New York Times shortly after Election Day, and I'm going to quote you here. You wrote that her ascendancy to the top of her party should have felt like the realization of my childhood dreams. Instead, for weeks, I have felt isolated in my ennui. Explain what you mean by that.

Well, I, like many people, lived through the Obama election and presidency. And that set sort of a standard for me about, you know, this sense of hopefulness, especially among Black Americans, about whether or not this nation could even nominate, much less elect, a Black president. But as a Black woman...

I expected to feel, if not that same sense of joyfulness, at this point we had lived through the first Trump presidency, and that sort of dimmed some of the hope and optimism. But I had some of the same questions about Kamala Harris that I had about Barack Obama. Is this the country I now live in?

Win or lose, it felt like a decision about the possibility for a different type of political leadership in this country. And having gotten as close as Kamala Harris got, being the presumed even candidate,

nominee of the Democratic Party felt really significant and important from an intellectual standpoint, but I really struggled with the fact that it did not have, for me, the same scale and depth of hopefulness and optimism that I had always imagined I would feel when this moment came. And I wrestled with whether or not that was about the

way that she became the candidate, if it was about the context within which she became the candidate, or if this said something about my relationship to this particular candidate. And I think I felt a sort of over-identification with a very qualified, high-profile Black female leader being called in when democracy was in crisis. So if democracy is like a business,

What we know from social science research is that women leaders are often called in to be the first woman leader when the company is in crisis. And one way to think about this election for me was that democracy was very much in crisis. I think the Harris campaign itself very often framed this election as being an election about the veracity of American democracy. And I thought, well, what?

a time for us to finally call a Black woman up for leadership, right? When democracy itself is on the ballot. And that stripped for me some of the hopefulness that it had a certain sense of desperation. You know, one of the ways I said it to a friend was that, you know, it's hard to be excited about the reward when it comes with so much risk, right?

We know that Black women have been a bedrock of the Democratic Party for decades with their organizing, their leadership, fueling victory after victory. And you wrote in your piece that they have, quote, saved democracy enough times to deserve more than cosmetic diversity. What do Black women deserve instead?

Black women are voters. We are constituents. We're not just soldiers in the battle for democracy, which I'm going to tell you, in this way, I'm probably typical. I'm a Black woman of the American South. I don't think it's any secret what probably my politics are. But I don't love this rhetoric about Black women silencing.

saving democracy or us relying on Black women to be the canaries in the coal mine. I like to remind people that the canary in that coal mine, it dies. Yes, it is a signal to the miners, but the canary itself dies. And the sacrifice that Black women have made for Democratic politics and for the Democratic Party, I think deserves more than a Hail Mary candidacy.

that is said to be, you know, this was us rewarding your loyalty. No, I think we deserve a real candidate with real institutional support who will then be held responsible for responding to Black women as voters, meaning we have more to offer this party than our identity and our commitment. We also have economic issues. We are also working class voters. We are also real Americans. We also live in rural America.

That is to say, we have political interests that I think the Democratic Party owes us some attention to because we have been, as you point out, a bedrock of the Democratic Party's base.

You mentioned this idea of real institutional support being deserved. And I want to stay with that for a second because I'm a former political correspondent. And over the years, I've talked to so many Black women who have either worked on campaigns or Black women who have run themselves who have reflected on the fact that they don't believe the Democratic Party specifically has adequately invested and supported in their campaigns. And we've talked about the fact that Vice President Harris became her party's nominee in an atypical way. Yeah.

How much of that do you think was a factor? They raised record amounts of money. She drew these massive crowds. Mm-hmm.

I think that she was a good institutional player for an institution that has not been as good to the base that they needed to show up and support Kamala Harris. That is to say, she did her job. She raised money, as you point out, and raised a lot of money, by the way. This was a person who understood the job and I think did it at a phenomenal level of success when you look beyond whether or not she got elected, which has a lot of moving parts.

I'm not sure, however, that the Democratic Party has repaid that favor, to your point, especially to Black women running down ballot races. And here's the thing about infrastructure. If you want a Black woman leader, if you want a woman leader, you have to have a base of support for her, right? You don't just put her at the top and then wait for the base to find her.

that person needs an infrastructure beneath her. That means down ballot races. That means an infrastructure of Democratic operatives who have bought in to the campaign and to that candidate as the future of the party. And so in some ways, having that sort of anemic Black woman institutional support in the Democratic Party

weakened candidate Harris's ability to mobilize the party when it became necessary to do so for her campaign. And that isn't something that's done overnight. That's not a four-month campaign problem. That is a long institutional historical problem with the party.

While Harris did lose in some races further down the ballot, there were signs of some political momentum and victories for Black women, including the fact that come January, the Senate will see two Black women serving in the chamber together for the first time. And it made me wonder...

What do you think that future Black women candidates should borrow from Vice President Harris's playbook, and what things should they leave behind? Oh, I'm thinking about this so much. So much of how I watch this campaign unfold for me was about saying, this is our first opportunity to build exactly that, a playbook. Right.

Right. We've there is nothing I you know, I've been talking to historians and political scientists for the last few days and they want to draw these conclusions about black women presidential candidates. And I'm like, based on what this is the only one we've had.

And so her campaign really was an indicator of sorts about what the voters were willing to do, what the infrastructure made possible to be done. And I think there are a couple of things. I, again, understand the constraints on her ability to do so. But I continue to think that there was opportunity there to lean into the historic nature of this campaign.

Yes, there was some potential downside during a conservative backlash of leaning into quote unquote identity. But I think one of the things we learned from the Obama coalition is that there is a broad base of coalition support to be built that makes people feel good about doing the right thing.

about finally voting for the woman candidate, about voting for a Black woman candidate. And I'm not sure that subsuming the narrative about the historic nature of her race and gender helped in that regard. I think there were a lot more voters we could have brought to the table about making them feel good about supporting this candidacy, even if it was just on a diversity basis. I think it's unfortunate that diversity...

got such a negative reputation, uh, due to the culture wars that the right has very successfully waged, that it was so tied to the idea of being the quote unquote DEI candidate that I think this campaign ran a little too far from that. And there was some potential there. Um, I think one of the things that we may get from this playbook for people who are not necessarily running for president, but for down ballot races for black women is that you can raise money. I think there is a narrative out there that we only, uh,

rely on or can only be relied on to do small donor donations. There is obviously, I think, some appetite there for competitive candidates and for raising money, especially, again, when they have the institutional support to do so. And so I would hope that becomes part of our playbook because it really does counter some of the common sense wisdom about Black women political candidates.

And then finally, I do think that there was something about how well Harris embodied presidential power during her campaign that I think can be part of the political playbook moving forward. You know, there have always been questions about whether or not, you know, women can be –

seen as powerful if they're wearing high heels or if they talk about foreign policy, if they'll be taken seriously? Can they talk about the economy that has really infiltrated down ballot races where women are often constrained to talking about politics through the quote unquote kitchen table analogies, right? Or talking about politics that are assumed to be more associated with gender education policy and that kind of thing.

But Harris, in many ways, ran as an aggressive foreign policy hawk, sort of center right and talk, I think, most eloquently, actually, even about foreign policy in some ways than she did about domestic policy. And I actually like that opening for Black women who I just happen to think have as much to offer to politics beyond, you know, the kitchen table and the quote unquote identity issues at the local level than we are often given credit for.

That is Traci McMillan Cottom, a sociologist and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Catherine Fink. It was edited by Courtney Dorney. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers. This is Ira Glass of This American Life. Each week on our show, we choose a theme, tell different stories on that theme, and

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