 | | Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, and Senator Kamala Harris, his newly announced running mate, hold their first news event together at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Del.Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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“My hope is that he knows that he’s not going to get somebody who is just going to say ‘Yes, Mr. President.’” |
— Teresa Younger, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Ms. Foundation for Women |
In 1984, days after Geraldine Ferraro accepted the nomination for vice president at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, Walter Mondale and his campaign team called a planning meeting. There were flip charts and calendars and detailed itineraries. |
As Mr. Mondale tells it in his book, “The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics,” Ms. Ferraro was concerned. Her first reaction was: “Why is all this written in ink? Don’t I get any say in this?” |
Before her nomination — one that made her the first woman representing a major U.S. political party — Ms. Ferraro had already carved out a successful career, starting out as an assistant district attorney in New York and then being elected to the House, one of just two dozen women in Congress at the time. As vice president, she wanted to be consulted, not play the submissive, powerless second fiddle, Mr. Mondale wrote. Her thinking was that if the presentation was in ink, not pencil, there was no room for her input. |
Now, after the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden named Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate on Tuesday — the first woman of color to be nominated for that position and the fourth woman on the presidential ticket for a major U.S. party — the key question hanging over the campaign is: Will she be given notes in ink, or pencil? |
“Putting a woman on the ticket is the least that Biden can do,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “I think there will be scrutiny over the amount of power he gives her.” |
Ms. Harris, who ran her own presidential campaign until dropping out in December, has been regarded as a rising political force, first as a prosecutor in California and then, in 2017, as the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate. She is ambitious (which, just as a reminder, is not a negative), outspoken and sharply criticized Mr. Biden during the Democratic primaries. |
“He’ll need to create a real role for the brilliance that Senator Harris brings to the table, he will have to listen to her,” said Teresa Younger, president and chief executive of the nonprofit Ms. Foundation for Women. “My hope is that he knows that he’s not going to get somebody who is just going to say ‘Yes, Mr. President.’” |
 | | Geraldine Ferraro smiled as she left a restaurant in her Queens congressional district in 1984.Associated Press |
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Historically, the vice president has little power, designated to either break a tie in Congress or take over if the president is incapacitated (former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller once derided the person holding the role as “standby equipment”). |
But the office has grown in stature since Mr. Mondale was vice president in President Jimmy Carter’s administration in the late 1970s, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. In the years that followed, Dick Cheney, Al Gore and Mr. Biden himself all became key players in the White House when they held the position, with specific portfolios overseeing things like the environment or aspects of foreign policy, and a seat at the president’s daily briefings. |
In Mr. Biden’s case, who at 77 is one of the oldest presidential candidates, giving Ms. Harris as much, if not more, of a prominent position becomes a more urgent matter, Ms. Dittmar said. |
“He’s alluded to the fact that there’s a potential he’s a one-term president,” she noted. “And so making sure that the vice president is ready to be president tomorrow entails giving that person an agenda and a role that helps to position them for that possibility sooner rather than later.” |
The two other times in history that a woman was added to the bottom of the ticket of a major U.S. political party — in 1984 and then again in 2008, when Senator John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate — they were seen as potential saviors who, it was hoped, would re-energize campaigns that were widely viewed as failing and appeal to female voters. |
Though the equation is flipped this time and Mr. Biden currently surpasses President Trump in almost every national poll, it is still hoped by Democrats and Biden campaign strategists that Ms. Harris’s presence on the ticket will generate enthusiasm among Black women and suburban women. |
“With all the issues around systemic racism, it’s really important symbolically to have a Black woman on the ticket,” Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist and a top adviser on Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, said in an interview with The Times. “It’s about understanding the moment that we’re in.” |
But, as Donna Zaccaro, Ms. Ferraro’s daughter, succinctly put it in a recent phone interview: “Women don’t vote as a bloc.” |
And the assumption that Ms. Harris will somehow represent all of women’s issues is a notion that she herself dismissed on the podcast “Pod Save America,” explaining that so-called women’s issues aren’t something that can be separated from other issues and neatly placed on her desk to deal with. |
“People will say, ‘Talk to us about women’s issues,’ to which I will respond: ‘You know, I am so glad you want to talk about the economy,’” she told Jon Favreau, the podcast host and former President Barack Obama’s onetime speechwriter. “Women’s issues should be everyone’s issues.” |
Ms. Harris said that long before the coronavirus outbreak, not knowing then how relevant her words would be now — in the midst of a pandemic that has brought into focus how much of the economy hinges on things often dismissed as women’s issues, including child care and parental leave. |
To properly address those concerns, Mr. Biden should be looking beyond the bottom of his ticket, suggested Ms. Dittmar, by committing to a gender-equal cabinet, perhaps, or giving women from different backgrounds and industries a chance to shape policies. |
“He should be thinking about bringing the full diversity of women — and I mean that not only in terms of race but also generationally — to decision-making tables in his administration,” Ms. Dittmar said. |
That Ms. Harris might end up being not just the first female vice president for a major political party in years but one with real influence is an idea that has the potential to transform what leadership looks like for future generations, both Ms. Dittmar and Ms. Younger noted. |
One study that Ms. Dittmar cited found that when Ms. Ferraro was on the Democratic ticket, there was a spike among adolescent girls expressing interest in political activities (though they didn’t find the same increase when Ms. Palin was the nominee). |
“I’m excited about the idea that little girls and little boys will see a kind of leader they have not seen before,” Ms. Younger said. |
Still, for Ms. Harris, the road ahead will be tough and strewn with sexism and racism (already President Trump has called her “nasty”), and she is likely to face lines of questioning and criticism from the news media and the public — about her appearance, her personal relationships, her ability to do the job, her ambition and her likability — that a male candidate wouldn’t. In fact, concerns around that kind of coverage prompted a dozen influential women to pre-emptively write a memo to newsrooms around the country, urging them to carefully assess the language they use in the run up to Election Day. |
“We believe it is your job to, not just pay attention to these stereotypes, but to actively work to be anti-racist and anti-sexist in your coverage,” states the memo, which was signed by the likes of Valerie Jarrett, the former senior adviser to former President Obama; Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood; and Tina Tchen, the Time’s Up chief executive. |
It was published before Mr. Biden named his running mate and titled “We Have Her Back.” |
Here are three articles from The Times you may have missed. |
 | | Kamala Harris with her mother, Shyamala, at a Chinese New Year parade in 2007.Kamala Harris campaign, via Associated Press |
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- “There was no path laid out for her.” Kamala Harris grew up around Berkeley, Calif., activists but came to believe working from inside the system had greater power to effect change. [Read the story]
- “It’s really important symbolically to have a Black woman on the ticket.” The days when presidential candidates would choose running mates based on geography are now long gone. [Read the story]
- “It shows that Biden didn’t buy into this criticism of Harris being too ambitious.” Though Kamala Harris’s selection was conventional by some political standards, it is still historic and especially sweet for many Black women. [Read the story]
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In Her Words is written by Alisha Haridasani Gupta and edited by Francesca Donner. Our art director is Catherine Gilmore-Barnes, and our photo editor is Sandra Stevenson. |
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