Hillary Clinton couldn’t shatter the glass ceiling. Here’s why Kamala Harris just might

On election night in 2016, I stood expectantly beneath a giant glass ceiling at a convention centre in New York that Hillary Clinton was figuratively expected to shatter. The former first lady could have peered up at the heavens from the podium positioned for her victory speech – if ever she had got to deliver it.

Instead, celebrations unfolded at a Manhattan hotel a few blocks away, where Donald Trump savoured the biggest shock in US political history. Even after the notorious Access Hollywood tape emerged, in which he boasted of sexually molesting women, he managed to win. Following a campaign in which Clinton had faced a barrage of sexism, she suffered the anguish of being defeated by a foul-mouthed misogynist.

Kamala Harris could shatter the glass ceiling that remained intact for Hillary Clinton. Credit: SMH graphics/AP

The rise of Kamala Harris raises once more that hardy perennial of US politics: Is America ready for a Madam President? It also begs the question of whether Harris is better placed than Clinton to shatter the glass. The answer to both is yes.

My hunch has long been that Clinton lost the 2016 election in 1992. That was the year Bill Clinton first ran for president when she was forced to introduce herself to the American people in appalling circumstances: a 60 Minutes interview, broadcast ahead of the Super Bowl, in which the couple fielded questions about his serial philandering.

“You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” she said, a statement that drew a stinging rebuke from the country and western star and which haunted Clinton for decades. In 2016, more white women voted for Trump than Clinton. The residual effect of that interview partly explained why.

Harris’ breakthrough moment on television, by contrast, came in a propitious setting: the 2018 confirmation hearings for Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Not only was Kavanaugh accused of sexual assault during his teenage years at an elite private school, he was also thought to favour overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that enshrined the nationwide right of abortion.

Deploying her prosecutorial skills to the full, the then-California senator took Kavanaugh to task. “Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?” she asked, a question that went viral and features in her campaign ads today.

Kavanaugh ended up on the Supreme Court. Roe v Wade ended up being overturned, which Trump has bragged was his doing. But this setback for reproductive rights puts wind in Harris’ sails. Before stepping down, Joe Biden faced criticism for failing to dramatise the issue of abortion. Harris is seen by abortion rights groups as a passionate advocate, ideally placed to motivate more young women, especially, to vote. An irony here is that Clinton warned in 2016 that a Trump presidency would imperil Roe, but back then, the abortion issue was more abstract.

Not only are we in a post-Roe America, but a post-MeToo world. Trump himself, in a civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll – who claimed he raped her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s – was found liable of sexual assault. As with his conviction for paying hush money to a former porn star, Stormy Daniels, it did not prevent him from winning the Republican presidential nomination. Still, the court’s finding could influence that most vital of demographics – wavering suburban women. Already this year, tens of thousands of conservative-minded women signalled displeasure with Trump by voting for his female rival in the Republican primaries, Nikki Haley.

Since 2016, female politicians have been breaking glass ceilings across America. Congress has the highest proportion of female members in US history – a 59 per cent increase on a decade ago. A record 12 out of 50 state governorships are held by women. Only 18 states have never had a female governor, including Harris’ home state – liberal California. Even conservative bastions such as Alabama and Texas have been led by women. South Carolina elected as governor Haley – like Harris, a woman of Indian descent.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Harris does not have a Bill Clinton problem. The former president made it harder for his wife to win, partly because of Clinton fatigue, partly because the couple were seen as establishment elitists, and partly because his philandering made it harder to punish Trump’s misogyny.

In another key difference, Harris is downplaying her gender, and not drawing attention to the historic nature of her candidacy. There’s no equivalent of Clinton’s “I’m with her” slogan. For her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, Harris wore a navy blue pantsuit rather than suffragette white, as Clinton had done eight years previously.

Nor is she drawing attention to her race. In her first television interview as the presidential nominee on Thursday night, Harris was asked about Trump’s bigoted slur that she had turned black for political purposes. “Same old tired playbook,” she replied smartly and succinctly. “Next question, please.”

None of this means Harris is a shoo-in for the presidency. Far from it. She’ll face misogyny and racism – the term misogynoir conflates the two. She’s also trying to become the first California Democrat ever to win the presidency. Four out of the seven key battleground states have never had a female governor. In Pennsylvania, the must-win state for both candidates, a woman has never even been elected senator. Between 2015 and 2019, its 20-strong congressional delegation was all male.

Always, though, it is worth remembering that Hillary Clinton won 3 million more votes than Trump, and, practically speaking, was as much a victim of the vagaries of the Electoral College as she was of chauvinism. That remains an obstacle for Harris.

Even if more Americans vote for the female candidate over the male, that glass ceiling could nonetheless survive intact.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself.

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