Much continues to be the identical because it was that evening eight years ago in Philadelphia, when Hillary Clinton stepped onto the stage on the Democratic Party Convention in her snow-white suit and basked within the cheers of the exuberant crowd.
The former Secretary of State and U.S. Senator was about to turn out to be the primary female president in American history, competing with first-time nominee Donald Trump, the New York real estate developer who had insulted her throughout the campaign.
“Seeing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee was the culmination of many hopes and dreams,” said U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, a Democrat from Palo Alto, sitting on the ground of the congressional chamber that night in 2016. “We had been climbing a mountain for a long, long time, so it was exciting.”
When Vice President Kamala Harris, California's former attorney general and U.S. senator, takes the stage on the convention in Chicago on Thursday night to just accept her party's nomination, the joy will certainly be the identical. But will the consequence be different in November? How is the country different now? Or will this be one other turning point that can not be turned back for Democratic women, and particularly Harris' most ardent supporters within the Bay Area?
Trump, it seems, has remained the identical. Clinton said so when she returned to the convention stage on Monday, this time in a pale yellow jacket, to support Harris in Chicago.
“He's making fun of her name and her laugh,” Clinton said of Trump, shrugging. “That sounds familiar.”
Voters elected a black man, Barack Obama, as president in 2008 and 2012, but not a girl, Clinton, in 2016. Although she won nearly all of the votes, she lost the election on account of the vote count. In fact, 45 percent of white women with college degrees voted for Trump.
Now, with national polls showing an especially close race between Trump and Harris, Democrats try to quell a sinking sense of déjà vu. Former first lady Michelle Obama addressed that creeping fear in a stirring speech Tuesday, urging convention attendees to “do something” to place her in office.
So what’s different now?
Quite so much, say loyal Democratic supporters, longtime politicians and political analysts.
In particular, the political development of girls and the growing power of young voters.
After Trump challenged the polls and won, tens of millions of girls shocked by the consequence took to the streets and huge women's marches broke out across the country. The MeToo movement struck in 2017, with Women who had secretly endured the humiliation of sexual abuse by the hands of powerful men began to inform their stories and demand justice.
In 2018, voters elected the biggest number of girls to Congress: 36 women were elected, 35 of whom were Democrats. This force shifted the House of Representatives from red to blue and was also answerable for the re-election of US Representative Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. In 2020, she prevented Trump's second term in favor of Joe Biden.
After Trump-appointed U.S. Supreme Court justices struck down abortion rights within the 2021 Dobbs ruling, voters defied a predicted red wave within the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives, but by a much smaller margin than predicted. At the identical time, newly empowered states began restricting abortion access across the country, and girls mobilized to fight back.
“The backlash against Donald Trump has activated women,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Politics and Women at Rutgers University.
These women and young people, who’re also politically committed to abortion rights, could change the course of history this time, analysts say.
In 2016, Clinton faced quite a few problems, including the continued popularity of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders amongst young voters and her own unpopularity after being embroiled in scandals dating back to her husband's presidency.
Elisa Camahort Page, a San Jose activist, creator and co-founder of Blogher, said she learned a lesson from Clinton's defeat.
“I think most of us have suppressed and muted our enthusiasm for too long in an attempt to be more acceptable in a media landscape that was so desperate to make it seem like everyone hated us,” she said, “and I don't think we're going to succeed this time.”
Trump, who desired to attack Biden as too old and weak before dropping out of the race in July, had trouble finding an efficient message against his latest opponent, a 59-year-old black woman. Hulk Hogan was a guest on the Republican convention and when Trump entered the sector he played “It's a Man's Man's Man's World.”
According to Camahort Page, it’s Trump who’s currently affected by an absence of enthusiasm.
“He certainly has his loyal supporters, but he's the one who has to convince more voters,” she said. “His act is old now… I mean, how often is a Hannibal Lecter joke funny?”
After mobilizing votes and raising record tens of millions in donations, Harris should be within the honeymoon phase of her campaign.
But between now and the November election, she is bound to face attacks from Republicans over her largely liberal policies, her shifting stances on controversial issues and her role within the Biden-Harris administration, which experienced record inflation – attacks that could be more well received than Trump's personal insults.
“Kamala Harris will put her fellow California Democrats on the front burner this week to manipulate Americans into believing they are the shining example of how to govern,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party, pointing to the state's high housing costs, gas prices and taxes which have contributed to the state's declining population. “For more than two decades, Kamala and her party have worked tirelessly to bankrupt California.”
In an interview with PBS throughout the party's convention on Tuesday night, Pelosi said the Democratic Party wouldn’t have nominated Harris if it had not believed she could defeat Trump.
“There are people who would never elect a woman,” Pelosi said. “But we're not waiting for that to never happen. We're doing it now.”
Originally published:
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