Vice President Kamala Harris, despite leading her opponent former president Donald Trump by 2% in national polls, may meet the same fate as Hillary Clinton who looked poised to claim the White House in the 2016 election but ultimately crashed and burned. Not only does Trump have an ironclad support base, but he doesn’t face the stark barriers a woman—and a person of color—does when campaigning for the commander-in-chief position, Historian and political expert Professor Robert Watson of Lynn University told The Mirror.
Watson said he believes the contest remains “50-50” at this point and is guaranteed to be a “real nail-biter.” The US has been on the cusps of electing a female president before but stopped short of making it a reality. Watson noted that women have been campaigning for the White House since 1872, but were thwarted time and time again by voters who ultimately believed it’s a man’s job.
The VP has tried to galvanize support from people of color, as any Democrat does, but they too could show bias towards a woman running for president.
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Dr. Robert Watson says Harris’ gender plays a bigger role in her campaign than some are willing to admit
“Shirley Chisholm, back in 1972, was the first African American woman to run and said her big regret was a lot of African American men were not going to vote for her, because they said the first African American to run should be a man, so Harris could be dealing with that, whereas Obama didn’t deal with it,” Watson said.
At one point, Watson interviewed Chisholm during which she said her sex was a bigger obstacle than the race. The biases is even perceivable in polls, which he said shows that men are favored to be better on security, crime and the economy. “Trump gets more credit for those issues, rightly or wrongly.”
The public believes women are better suited for issues involving healthcare, children and education, splitting policies into two groups: “pink collar issues and masculine issues.” Harris was a prosecutor and an attorney general but still doesn’t receive her due credit on crime issues, making the double standard far more apparent this time around.
Watson noted that women have been campaigning for the White House since 1872 (
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AFP via Getty Images)
The gender gap was expectedly widened by Trump who reposted an egregiously sexist photo of Harris and Clinton last month. The former president, in what Watson called a “new low” uploaded it on his social media Platform Truth Social, implying the VP rose the political ranks by offering sexual favors.
The post featured photos of the VP and Clinton reading: “Funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently…”
“So what is that, if not the age old sexist trope, which is used against any woman who gets ahead. Harris is still dealing with the tropes that a woman can’t do this and can’t do that, Watson said.” The sex barrier is palpable, but Harris has not made the same mistakes her Democratic counterpart Clinton made in 2016.
Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump by nearly six percentage points nationally but ultimately lost
Unlike the former secretary, Harris kicked off her campaign with a clean slate. Clinton was still chained to her husband’s infamous affair with Monica Lewinsky, which Trump mentioned over and over again—even making official merch reading: “Hillary sucks but not like Monica.”
The email scandal, which revealed that Clinton used a private email server for official public communications rather than State Department accounts sullied her campaign further. The public’s lack of knowledge about the VP is a pro, according to Watson. “The whole country seems to have politics fatigue. A lot of the people had Biden fatigue. A lot of the people have Trump fatigue. And back in 2016 there was widespread Clinton fatigue. So all campaigns, as you well know, they like to run as the breath of fresh air”
She now plays the role as a new and change agent. Thanks to the sudden shake up of the Democratic ticket in July, when US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race due to increasing pressure from prominent members in his party, there hasn’t been much time to dissect her political track record.
Despite Karris’ background as a prosecutor, Trump is viewed favorably when it comes to crime (
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This is especially so for the Trump campaign which, Watson said, had 32 negative campaign ads aimed at Biden’s ripe old age of 81 ready to go. “You can’t do that with Harris. So I think this truncated campaign, without a doubt, has been a positive. The fact that she’s seen as somewhat new and not well known, has been a positive, and it’s a huge contrast to Hillary.”
In other contrasts to Clinton’s campaign, Harris has urged supporters to resist attacking their MAGA counterparts. She has cast herself as a candidate that will support everyone in contrast to Trump who Harris said is “running for himself” during a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. The former secretary of state’s infamous “basket of deplorables” comment during a New York fundraiser, which was aimed at the right, sent shockwaves through the GOP and was said to create a deeper divide in an all ready polarized election.
In her 2016 memoir “What Happened,” she wrote the blunder was a “political gift” to Trump. “Generalizing about a broad group of people is almost always unwise. And I regret handing Trump a political gift with my deplorables comments,” she wrote. This was followed by Clinton’s visit to Arizona, a reliably-red state, where she was met with angry protesters.
The VP has avoided criticizing Trump supporters during her campaign (
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AFP via Getty Images)
Watson said the comment made her out to be an elite, which turned off a considerable number of voters. During her Keynote address on the last day of the DNC in August, signaled her campaign was not based in the desire to defeat Trump but too make the country better for “all Americans,” vowing to “put country above party and self.”
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Unlike Clinton, Harris hasn’t met Trump’s inflammatory remarks with the same energy, instead finding a way to answer her opponent’s insults without firing shots at his support base. Watson said the general consensus in politics is to respond to an attack within 72 hours or else the insult sticks. He said Democrats have historically ignored shots fired by their conservative opponents, giving off a “I’m not going to dignify that with a response” attitude.
Minnesota Gov Tim Walz seemingly found the sweet spot when he called Trump and his running mate Sen J.D Vance of Ohio “weird” during his debut campaign speech at a Pennsylvania rally in August. “It’s giving them a taste of their own medicine and punching back. And it seems to be working,” Watson said. “That frame is sticking.”
Watson said the polls are accurate but not completely telling of the outcome of an election (
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Getty Images for DNC)
Democrats even flung the taunt the night before the DNC when “Trump-Vance weird as hell” was shone on the surface of Trump Tower in Chicago as Harris’ motorcade filed into the city.
The historian noted how the comment seemed to tip Trump off his game. When the former president is in the public eye, he attacks and criticizes nonstop like a wild dog. But on the defensive, he seems less sure of himself as he struggles to land an attack and fumbles his words. “So by hitting him with these little zingers, it’s putting them on his heels. And you know, they always say the best defense is a good offense, right?”
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Just as Clinton did during this period in the election, Harris is leading Trump in the polls. However, the former state secretary wrote in her memoir how she wished she understood the electorate a bit more before assuming she’d win. Clinton won the popular vote but everything changed came election day when she Trump over-performed in key-battleground states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Watson said the polls are accurate but not completely telling of the outcome of an election. The US doesn’t have a national election, it has an electoral college, he says, so realistically voters shouldn’t pay attention to national polls. He compared Clinton’s campaign to Al Gore’s, who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost against George W. Bush who outperformed him in Florida.
“We need to focus on the polling in those big seven swing states, and they’re showing Harris is slightly ahead, but it’s often within a statistical margin of error with Trump up in some of those.”
There is also the factor of public opinion. In 2016, politics became even more of a hot-button issue once Trump entered the arena. His divisive, racist and xenophobic rhetoric made supporters a bit weary of admitting their support for him. The same can be said about this year’s election. It would be politically correct for a voter to welcome a woman being elected president, but their true feelings may come out in November.
“Maybe they said[they support Harris] because they didn’t want to appear that they were sexist,” Watson said. But some people may get to the polls sand say ‘can’t bring myself to vote for an African American. Can’t bring myself to vote for a woman’. You have a child of two immigrants, African American and Indian American, and a woman. How many Americans in certain parts of the country are still, you know, not where we wish the country would be, race wise, sex wise, immigration wise?”
