Why Have Race & Gender Been Erased from Analysis of the Presidential Election? Part 1
by Sherrilyn Ifill
December 1, 2024
How should we analyze the meaning of the re-election of Donald Trump? What factors about this election can help us navigate the very dangerous and challenging time we face in our nation? It’s complicated of course. Many factors bear on the outcome of any election, and this one was no different. Most of us rely on the analysis provided by those whose job it is to analyze difficult political moments to make sense of what we don’t understand. We listen (sometimes incessantly) to the conclusions reached by political pundits - those who have covered national elections, run campaigns and been deeply engaged in observing and analyzing politics for years, sometimes decades. Most who are part of this cohort of political experts have very particular knowledge and expertise born of this experience.
But they also have very particular blind-spots.
That may be why we have been subjected to the most tortuous post-election analysis of the most consequential election of the modern era. Think pieces began dropping the day after Trump soundly defeated Vice President Harris, and led the Republicans to recover the House and Senate. Armed with (notoriously tricky) exit polls and vibes, we learned that Trump had won because “ Women Didn’t Let Trump Down, Men Did.” That Democrats have yet to learn how to talk to the working class. That Democratic elites had misjudged the significance of the economy. That Harris had talked too much about trans people and used the term “Latinx” (she hadn’t) That Harris, the Vice President of the United States as well as a candidate, made a fatal error in not bending her schedule to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast. That Harris didn’t distance herself enough from Biden. That the Democratic party must stop relying on “identity politics.” That Bernie Sanders would have won.
Others described the significance of the election as a Damascus Road moment for the Democratic Party, suggesting that the Party should be torn down and rebuilt. We are also learning more about the outsized role of Elon Musk - his money, his social media platform, and his advisor’s funding of false flag ads to turns voters away from Harris.
But with shockingly few exceptions, two glaringly obvious factors have been virtually ignored by writers of post-election think-pieces in the nation’s leading journals. Understanding the reason for this omission tells us as much about the significance of this election for the future of this country, as the outcome of the election itself.
For the first time in our nation’s history a Black and Indian woman was the major party candidate for President of the United States. She was the graduate of an Historically Black College. She had served as the Attorney General of the largest state in the country. She had served in the United States Senate where, in addition to serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she put on a blistering a cross-examination of Attorney General nominees Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, and SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh. She served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she had access to critical and classified documents and intel about America’s enemies and allies. She was the first Black and Indian woman Vice President. She represented the country at international conferences and meetings in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Drawing on her bona fides as a prosecutor, she famously declared Vladimir Putin “a war criminal”at a security conference in Munich. She endured a rocky first year of public appearances and interviews in the States. But Harris caught fire in rallying women after the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade. She barnstormed across the country and encouraging women to believe that “we will not go back.” And finally, with no advance notice and a runway of only 3 months until Election Day, she took up the campaign for the presidency, after President Joe Biden was pressured by his party to leave the race.
Her campaign was impressive. Tireless, upbeat, joyful, and buoyed early-on by a fundraising juggernaut that began with a grassroots Zoom fundraising campaign by Black women, and by elite donors Harris corralled in the first 24 hours after Biden’s withdrawal. Outfoxing Leader Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, and a legion of Democratic leaders who hoped for an “open primary” in August to decide on a nominee to face Trump, Harris showed grit, strategy, and that she was what Pelosi in an interview with Ezra Klein described archly as politically “astute.”
She delivered a debate knock-out performance that left Trump running from a scheduled follow-up meeting. Harris seemed to have found Trump’s Achilles’ heel, mocking his rallies, besting him on policy, confronting him with the reality of women harmed by the Dobbs decision, and reminding voters that Trump would remain focused on only one thing: himself.
Harris knew she would have to address race. She has identified as Black and Indian her entire life. In her primary campaign debate against Joe Biden in 2016, she famously floored him by describing her experience as a school girl desegregating an elementary school in Berkley California. She was almost obsessively loyal to her alma mater, Howard University – the nation’s premier historically Black college which was founded during Reconstruction to educate Black students. There were a never-ending supply of memes showing her dancing with Black marching bands, getting’ down at the 50th anniversary of Hip Hop celebration at the White House, strolling with members of her Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She was unapologetically Black and had no intention of down-playing it.
She leaned also into being a woman. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision remained her core rally cry, and many hoped that this would finally shake loose the support that a majority of white women had given Trump in 2016 and 2020.
But she knew in this era of anti-affirmative action and anti-DEI zeal, she would need to reassure the white electorate that she was not running solely on her dual identities as a woman of color. She was asked often about it. And she was firm in repeatedly saying that she was not asking voters to support her because of her race and gender. She insisted instead that she would have to “make the case” to voters in seeking their support.
She didn’t lead with race, but it was always there. We could no more ignore that Harris is a Black and Indian woman, than we could ignore her beauty (which raised its own issues). As art historian and Harvard Professor Sarah Lewis powerfully explores in her new book The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, Americans can’t “not see” race precisely because we have been trained to see race almost everywhere.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/09/unseen-truth-shows-the-real-picture-behind-caucasian-ideals/
Moreover, Harris’ opponent, former President Trump, wanted you to see her race. He questioned her racial identity – suggesting, during an interview at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists - that she had only recently identified as Black (all evidence to the contrary). He insulted her with the particular insults he has long used to denigrate Black women - “low i.q.,” “dumb as a rock,” “lazy as hell,”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/trump-kamala-harris-attacks-00170601 - and asked the crowd at one rally in North Carolina “does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
Moreover, Harris’ opponent, former President Trump, wanted you to see her race. He questioned her racial identity – suggesting, during an interview at the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists - that she had only recently identified as Black (all evidence to the contrary). He insulted her with the particular insults he has long used to denigrate Black women - “low i.q.,” “dumb as a rock,” “lazy as hell,”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/23/trump-kamala-harris-attacks-00170601 - and asked the crowd at one rally in North Carolina “does she drink? Is she on drugs?”
He insisted that Harris had “played the race card on a level you rarely see” in the 2020 primaries.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republican-attacks-kamala-harris-center-race-gender-dumb-dei-candidate-rcna162570
Trump posted a photo of Harris with her mother’s family, dressed in Indian attire to his Truth Social account.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-posts-photo-kamala-harris-174900438.html
guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF5kCIkq1u0pUCgWgXGMj57TEx5XVmeRI9W2r45szwCndy30l7ZmOcrLugcf85ar-9_DGrxQUdjT0KruC68PtWwK6yc3EI3YSUdc9kiyr3MQ_JudyZlDxTRNHoeIaPphoI2BV80Gv-0My7CxtAnNk4DP8HTBkTb8DhqlpFDcYjcA
His inclination to use curse words was often unleashed when speaking about Harris, calling her at one point late in the campaign “a shit Vice President.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/republican-attacks-kamala-harris-center-race-gender-dumb-dei-candidate-rcna162570
Trump posted a photo of Harris with her mother’s family, dressed in Indian attire to his Truth Social account.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-posts-photo-kamala-harris-174900438.html
guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF5kCIkq1u0pUCgWgXGMj57TEx5XVmeRI9W2r45szwCndy30l7ZmOcrLugcf85ar-9_DGrxQUdjT0KruC68PtWwK6yc3EI3YSUdc9kiyr3MQ_JudyZlDxTRNHoeIaPphoI2BV80Gv-0My7CxtAnNk4DP8HTBkTb8DhqlpFDcYjcA
His inclination to use curse words was often unleashed when speaking about Harris, calling her at one point late in the campaign “a shit Vice President.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-unleashes-torrent-personal-attacks-harris-calling-worst-lazy-hel-rcna176599 .
When an attendee at one his rallies shouted out that Harris was, in essence, a prostitute, Trump laughed and said, “this place is amazing.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/03/trump-insult-worked-corner-rally-harris/
He shared a tweet grotesquely suggesting that Harris committed sex acts to advance her career (rather than by attending law school, passing the bar, and winning a citywide election for District Attorney, and a statewide election, twice to serve as Attorney General and U.S. Senator, before becoming Vice President). https://www.yahoo.com/news/crude-sexist-misogynistic-trump-shares-143322052.html
Trump’s supporters also wanted voters to see Harris’ race. Multiple Republican members of Congress called Harris “a DEI Vice President.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-attack-kamala-harris-dei-hire/
Right wing influencer Charlie Kirk, who manages the Turning Point juggernaut of organizations that mobilize young Republicans across college campuses, and who is largely credited with securing Trump’s win, called her a “DEI pick.” Sebastian Gorka, the right wing figure recently nominated by Trump to serve as a counter terrorism expert in the National Security Administration called Harris a “DEI hire.” In an appearance on CNN he made it even more plain, calling Harris “a disaster whose only qualifications are having a vagina and the right skin color. She’s a DEI hire, right?” “She’s a woman! She’s colored! Therefore, she’s got to be good.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/02/trump-attacks-harris-race-gender/
And despite all of this, race and gender have figured almost nowhere in the major stories in national news outlets where the outcome of the election has been dissected.
The stupefying choice of a majority of white voters to support Trump again – despite his 34 felony convictions, his liability for sexual assault, his attempt to intimidate the judge in his New York defamation trial, his attacks on the Judge’s clerk, the televised revelations by election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman about how Trump targeted and endangered them, the publicly released recording of Trump demanding 11,000 votes from the Georgia Secretary of State in 2020, and the refusal of 44 members of Trump’s former senior White House team including his Vice President to endorse him, is the story of American democracy at a crossroads. It is the story of this election.
Frankly, Trump’s performance during the final three weeks of the campaign alone was disqualifying. Clearly out of gas, he took to “time outs” during his rallies – asking his aides to play music from his personal playlist, while he swayed to the music for more than 30 minutes. As his performances grew even more embarrassing, and his rallies smaller, Trump became even more vicious. He called former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “sick and crazy.” He mouthed calling Pelosi the “b-word,” to the howling delight of his supporters, and insisted that Pelosi could “go to jail” for ripping up the copy of his address at the end of the 2019 State of the Union address. He said that people could be jailed for criticizing the Supreme Court. He insisted that members of the media should be jailed for their unflattering coverage of him. Trump insisted that his opponents, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and “radical left lunatics” are the “enemy within,” who should be “handled by the National Guard or even the military.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/20/politics/trump-enemy-from-within-schiff-pelosi/index.html
Of the January 6th rally and attack on the Capitol, Trump said, it was a “day of love,” adding, “there was a beauty and love to it that I’ve never seen before.”
In what should have been a nail-in-the-coffin set of collective revelations, Bob Woodward’s latest book revived interest in earlier interviews in which Trump’s senior defense team deemed him unfit to serve. Gen. Mattis, Trump’s former chair of the Joint Chiefs described Trump as “the most dangerous man he’d ever met.” His former Chief of Staff General John Kelly confirmed that Trump spoke admiringly of Hitler and “fit the definition” of a fascist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-trump-fitness-character.html
His former Defense Secretary Mike Esper said that Trump was “unfit” to serve, and “a threat to democracy.”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-former-pentagon-chief-calls-threat-democracy-rcna133014
And yet still, despite these historic and unprecedented warnings, a majority of white voters – men and women – chose Trump to lead this country and to be the leader of the free world. The sheer recklessness of the decision speaks volumes about the priorities of a majority of the white electorate in our country.
This is the 2024 election story. And it is one we had best understand if we ever hope to recover this country from its dangerous embrace of authoritarian leadership. Why have a majority of white voters turned their backs on democracy? Is it because of the cost of bacon and eggs or Bounty paper towels, as former NBC anchor Brian Williams recently insisted in a rant on late night television? Is this what history will recall about the fall of American democracy? This is not 2008 when Americans were losing their homes, or even 2020 when COVID and COVID closures were so powerfully affecting every American family. And weren’t Black voters also paying more for bacon and eggs?
Why were Black voters, a majority of whom are working class, and in whose favor our democracy often does not work, willing to place democracy ahead of economic concerns? Why were Latina voters not led by the price of Bounty? Why did a majority of Jewish voters cast their ballots for democracy, even in the face of Trump’s muscular statements of support for Israel? And why for the last three successive elections have a majority of white voters put their electoral power behind a man so manifestly unqualified in character and experience, and who has openly expressed such anti-democratic intentions for our country?
Why haven’t these questions been the focus of post-election analysis?
Stay tuned for Part 2 (available to paid subscribers only).
When an attendee at one his rallies shouted out that Harris was, in essence, a prostitute, Trump laughed and said, “this place is amazing.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/03/trump-insult-worked-corner-rally-harris/
He shared a tweet grotesquely suggesting that Harris committed sex acts to advance her career (rather than by attending law school, passing the bar, and winning a citywide election for District Attorney, and a statewide election, twice to serve as Attorney General and U.S. Senator, before becoming Vice President). https://www.yahoo.com/news/crude-sexist-misogynistic-trump-shares-143322052.html
Trump’s supporters also wanted voters to see Harris’ race. Multiple Republican members of Congress called Harris “a DEI Vice President.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republicans-attack-kamala-harris-dei-hire/
Right wing influencer Charlie Kirk, who manages the Turning Point juggernaut of organizations that mobilize young Republicans across college campuses, and who is largely credited with securing Trump’s win, called her a “DEI pick.” Sebastian Gorka, the right wing figure recently nominated by Trump to serve as a counter terrorism expert in the National Security Administration called Harris a “DEI hire.” In an appearance on CNN he made it even more plain, calling Harris “a disaster whose only qualifications are having a vagina and the right skin color. She’s a DEI hire, right?” “She’s a woman! She’s colored! Therefore, she’s got to be good.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/02/trump-attacks-harris-race-gender/
And despite all of this, race and gender have figured almost nowhere in the major stories in national news outlets where the outcome of the election has been dissected.
The stupefying choice of a majority of white voters to support Trump again – despite his 34 felony convictions, his liability for sexual assault, his attempt to intimidate the judge in his New York defamation trial, his attacks on the Judge’s clerk, the televised revelations by election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman about how Trump targeted and endangered them, the publicly released recording of Trump demanding 11,000 votes from the Georgia Secretary of State in 2020, and the refusal of 44 members of Trump’s former senior White House team including his Vice President to endorse him, is the story of American democracy at a crossroads. It is the story of this election.
Frankly, Trump’s performance during the final three weeks of the campaign alone was disqualifying. Clearly out of gas, he took to “time outs” during his rallies – asking his aides to play music from his personal playlist, while he swayed to the music for more than 30 minutes. As his performances grew even more embarrassing, and his rallies smaller, Trump became even more vicious. He called former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “sick and crazy.” He mouthed calling Pelosi the “b-word,” to the howling delight of his supporters, and insisted that Pelosi could “go to jail” for ripping up the copy of his address at the end of the 2019 State of the Union address. He said that people could be jailed for criticizing the Supreme Court. He insisted that members of the media should be jailed for their unflattering coverage of him. Trump insisted that his opponents, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and “radical left lunatics” are the “enemy within,” who should be “handled by the National Guard or even the military.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/20/politics/trump-enemy-from-within-schiff-pelosi/index.html
Of the January 6th rally and attack on the Capitol, Trump said, it was a “day of love,” adding, “there was a beauty and love to it that I’ve never seen before.”
In what should have been a nail-in-the-coffin set of collective revelations, Bob Woodward’s latest book revived interest in earlier interviews in which Trump’s senior defense team deemed him unfit to serve. Gen. Mattis, Trump’s former chair of the Joint Chiefs described Trump as “the most dangerous man he’d ever met.” His former Chief of Staff General John Kelly confirmed that Trump spoke admiringly of Hitler and “fit the definition” of a fascist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-trump-fitness-character.html
His former Defense Secretary Mike Esper said that Trump was “unfit” to serve, and “a threat to democracy.”
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trumps-former-pentagon-chief-calls-threat-democracy-rcna133014
And yet still, despite these historic and unprecedented warnings, a majority of white voters – men and women – chose Trump to lead this country and to be the leader of the free world. The sheer recklessness of the decision speaks volumes about the priorities of a majority of the white electorate in our country.
This is the 2024 election story. And it is one we had best understand if we ever hope to recover this country from its dangerous embrace of authoritarian leadership. Why have a majority of white voters turned their backs on democracy? Is it because of the cost of bacon and eggs or Bounty paper towels, as former NBC anchor Brian Williams recently insisted in a rant on late night television? Is this what history will recall about the fall of American democracy? This is not 2008 when Americans were losing their homes, or even 2020 when COVID and COVID closures were so powerfully affecting every American family. And weren’t Black voters also paying more for bacon and eggs?
Why were Black voters, a majority of whom are working class, and in whose favor our democracy often does not work, willing to place democracy ahead of economic concerns? Why were Latina voters not led by the price of Bounty? Why did a majority of Jewish voters cast their ballots for democracy, even in the face of Trump’s muscular statements of support for Israel? And why for the last three successive elections have a majority of white voters put their electoral power behind a man so manifestly unqualified in character and experience, and who has openly expressed such anti-democratic intentions for our country?
Why haven’t these questions been the focus of post-election analysis?
Stay tuned for Part 2 (available to paid subscribers only).
