But eight years after Hillary Clinton became the first woman to lead a major party's presidential ticket, Democrats are sending American women a more sober and urgent message even as they try to elect another barrier-breaking candidate. Republican policies, they argue, have had disastrous and once-unthinkable consequences for the health and autonomy of women and their families since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
A second term for former President Donald Trump, they warn, would be even more dangerous. "Simply put," Vice President Harris said this past week from the stage of her party's convention, "they are out of their minds." From the women who described harrowing pregnancies and their difficulties receiving medical care to Harris' finale Thursday night, the tone and emphasis were a radical departure from the optimistic feminism and chants of "I'm with her" that dominated Clinton's 2016 campaign.
"This is a time where the rights of women are fundamentally under attack as it relates to abortion, IVF, when and how to have a family," said Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., a close Harris ally.
"It's not about minimizing the importance of race or gender. It is about appreciating that in this moment in the history of our country, this election is bigger than anybody's race or gender." Much of what has transpired in the last eight years was unfathomable to the Democrats caught up in their excitement about Clinton's campaign.
The idea that Trump — a man who had bragged about sexual assault — would win, and that his Supreme Court nominees would help erase the constitutional right to abortion, seemed remote. "In 2016, people felt they had the luxury of equality in the law and reproductive freedom in the law, and I think many people didn't see risk ahead of them," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.
Y. The Supreme Court's decision to wipe out Roe two years ago unleashed a cascade of far-reaching abortion bans in many states across the country. Democrats quickly harnessed shock and fury over the decision into political momentum in key races that year and since.
At the convention this past week, Democrats offered their clearest signs yet of just how central the issue will be to their fall campaign. "The abrogation of our rights has been so severe and so aggressive in red states across the country that the wake-up call has been received," Gillibrand said. The senator, who ran for president in the 2020 campaign on a message anchored in issues of women's equality, said that the moment required a "fighter," and added of Harris: "It doesn't matter that she's a woman, to be honest.
It matters that she's a fighter. And it's just great that she also happens to be a woman." In ways overt and subtle, plenty of speakers also highlighted the history-making potential of Harris, who is already the first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to accept a major party's nomination.
If elected, she would be the first female president in American history. Clinton cast Harris' bid as a continuation of her efforts to shatter what she has called the "highest and hardest glass ceiling." "On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th president of the United States," Clinton told the cheering crowd Monday.
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