Kamala, Joe and the Glass Elevator
As it turns out, breaking the glass ceiling had been the wrong strategy all along.
It is dizzying in 2020 to return to the topic of breaking the ultimate glass ceiling by putting a woman in the US White House, in light of the events of the last four years. The last time feminists engaged the topic with vigor, US politics was stable, the office of the presidency having been occupied by three consecutive centrist two-term presidents, the exception being George W. Bush, who was elected as the sitting VP for centrist Ronald Regan. The candidate, Hilary Clinton, a decades-long fixture of the Democratic establishment, had served as Secretary of State and First Lady. Her opponent, Donald Trump, had gone on the record earlier in his career calling Republican voters stupid and celebrating unspeakable chauvinism.
He won. She lost.
Like all feminists, I was heartbroken on the eve of the 2016 elections. To have Hilary Clinton lose to a “pussy-grabber in chief” was more than I could bear. Yet, witnessing the flood of racist and sexist hate unleashed by Trump these last four years, I have to admit, I don’t think that Hilary had the interpersonal savvy to integrate the seismic shifts caused by an Obama presidency. The first black president poked the beast of the racist United States, and those racists hated Clinton with terrifying vitriol. The last four years have shown us, had Hilary won, it would have gotten very ugly.
I’ve come to think of Trump as the cosmic pimple of US politics, drawing into his sick vortex the puss generated by the racist underbelly of the United States. Just now, either that pimple is going to become cancerous and mark the end of democracy in the US, or we’ll succeed in popping it. Red and swollen, hopefully enduring his stupidity at the expense of 170,000 lives and counting, will let drain some of the pus of that infection, moving us ever so slowly, towards healing.
I pray we make it there.
Humans, as a species, do not react well to drastic change. Obama was drastic change, and Trump is the result. Even though the work to break the ultimate glass ceiling began 100 years with Suffrage, Hilary, it would seem, was also too drastic for the country to bear.
With Kamala, I think we just might get there.
I wish the world were not this way. I wish that like New Zealand and Germany, America was just ready to allow the best person to hold the title of Commander-in-Chief, without respect to gender. But, alas, America is the nation founded on land stolen from native peoples, for land-owning white men. America is the prodigal son of patriarchy.
Still, 2020 is the year of women’s leadership, with 100% of the nations who successfully navigated the COVID-19 pandemic lead by women, and I have faith that Kamala is our gal. It’s not the crazed certainty women my mom’s age had about Hilary; it’s a quiet faith that things are going to, at long last, turn out better this time.
What feminists have been telling white men for some time now is that the very best way for them to make the world a more equal place and to right the wrongs of the past is for them to sit down and listen. Just that. Not to announce just why they’re sitting, or to lead the meeting where men are told to sit. Just to sit. And listen.
As the 2020 election draws near, I am choosing to believe that Joe Biden, far from perfect both on his record for women and in general, is choosing to do just this. Joe Biden, a career senator and former VP, has served his country well and has a political record he is no doubt proud of. And still, in this moment of chaos and unraveling, he is making two crucial choices.
First, Biden has made the wise calculation that the best way to beat Trump is to simply not be crazy, a feat he failed to accomplish in his first presidential bid in 2008. Biden is the good ol’ boy who is not crazy. And, in 2020, that’s not half bad.
Second, in selecting Ms. Harris, former DA of San Francisco and the second African American woman ever to serve in the Senate, he is offering women an elevator right past the highest glass ceiling in the land. In a less reactive political climate, Kamala would be electable in her own right. But, ours is far from a non-reactive political climate. Rather than selecting a running mate from a swing state, Biden has chosen a centrist, sharp Black woman to serve as his running mate. As his VP, Kamala will have four years to establish herself as the bold and pragmatic leader Californians know her to be. She, having taken the elevator, is just the type of incremental change America can digest.