Before last night’s debate, I got a text from a friend who summed up Kamala Harris’s predicament: She has to appear feminine but not dainty. She has to be firm but not nasty. She has to call out Donald Trump’s lies but not be naggy. She has to dress presidentially but not be blah.
Evidently, women candidates face challenges that men don’t—voters question their toughness and are often ambivalent about how they should discuss identity. But at the debate, Harris showed that these hurdles aren’t insurmountable.
“I think she was the clear winner. She was more presidential,” Faith, a Pennsylvania swing voter (one who supported Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020), said after the debate.
I conduct focus groups with voters every week, and I’ve heard one theme come up again and again: They often worry about Harris’s ability to stand up to dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
“Some countries do not respect women,” Nicole, a swing voter from Arizona, said during a group in July. “And so, to have a female running the United States—I’m all for females, just not as a president. Sorry, ladies.”
Voters don’t have this concern about Trump, a physically large man who insults his enemies in the most hostile terms possible.
Susan, a two-time Trump voter from Florida, described Trump’s style this way last month: “He’s just a big bully. The biggest bully on the playground. And if you don’t do it his way, you’re going to pay for it.”
Last night, Trump was, in a certain sense, a stand-in for strongmen like Putin and Xi, and the voters I spoke with right after the debate said that Harris held her own. They appreciated her ability to bait Trump, counter his lies, and look calm while doing it. Her decision to point out how easily foreign despots use flattery to influence Trump also did her a lot of good.
“I was actually pleasantly surprised at Harris,” said Jennifer, a swing voter from Georgia. “She addressed most of the issues pretty well, and she gave Donald Trump what other candidates couldn’t. She was a little bit sarcastic, talking back with him, which I appreciated.”
Jay, a swing voter from Arizona, said of the debate: “Her objective of getting under his skin to unveil what’s really behind the curtain—I think she did a really good job.”
Trump’s team has done itself few favors with women during this campaign. Comments by the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, about childless cat ladies, giving more votes to people with children, and the role of “postmenopausal females” aren’t just off-putting; they accentuate the ticket’s core vulnerabilities on abortion and women’s rights.
“I have a really hard time getting past the ‘cat ladies’ and how, if you’re childless, you don’t have as much of a stake in the future of America,” Faith, the Pennsylvania voter, said after the debate. “He is too conservative for my liking. He is too fundamentalist for my liking.”
It turns out that this kind of outright misogyny concerns people. And it isn’t just women who feel this way.
Chris, a swing voter from Minnesota, said last month that Vance’s “cat lady” comment implied that there’s only one way to be a family: “a mom and dad, married, and two kids.”
“To me, that’s my dream, and I’m super happy and loving it,” he went on, “but it’s not everyone’s dream, and I want to be open and respectful to that.”
Jay, the Arizonan, said of Vance: “From what I’ve seen and heard, he’s just an extension of Trump. He’s not bringing anything interesting to the table.”
On the debate stage, Trump tried and failed to bait Harris on identity issues. Instead of taking offense when he said that she isn’t Black, she echoed her line that it’s just the “same old tired playbook.” This is reflective of Harris’s broader approach to gender and other identity issues.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign trumpeted her status as the first female major candidate. “I’m with her” was her campaign slogan. She consciously invoked gender throughout the campaign.
In contrast, Harris’s slogan,“For the people,” puts voters—not the candidate’s identity—at the center of things. And when pressed on the debate stage, instead of raising the salience of race and gender, she said, “We don’t want this kind of approach that is just constantly trying to divide us.”
Voters seem to appreciate this attitude. After all, they are aware that Harris would be the first woman president. What they want to know is what she stands for.
Carol, a Pennsylvania swing voter, put it this way in July: “I’m fine that she’s Black. I’m fine that she’s a woman. But is she the best person for this job?”
The nine-person focus group my team spoke with this morning weighed in on Carol’s question. We asked these voters how they would describe Harris’s performance. The most common response: “presidential.”