Madame President: How Kamala Harris Can Upend Republican Effort to Actualize the Handmaid’s Tale

Four years ago I published an article in the iconic American feminist magazine, Ms. Magazine on the symbolic value of the then Senator Kamala Harris as the VP nominee for the Democratic Party. Now I have been invited to write on her current position as the potential Democratic nominee for U.S. President. Let me start by stating that Harris is neither as Leftist as the Conservatives paint her, nor is she as right-wing as some Progressives allege. She is merely a centrist moderate Democrat in a party that is very much a centrist party. But she holds one trump card if you will pardon the pun.

She is a woman, and a woman of color, in a nation that has never elected a woman as head of state due to the rampant sexism and racism across much of the country. Cultural theorist Ibram X. Kendi has described her position aptly. “The Democrats now have a Presidential ticket that reflects the American people better than the GOP ticket….. It’s not the crushing of racism and sexism. It’s not the freeing of Black womanhood. But it is the start.”

The start of what, some may wonder. It is the beginning of a new epoch in U.S. history which makes the lines between the two political parties be drawn even more clearly in the sand. On the one hand, we have the GOP led by two wealthy white men openly stating that they support a Christian nation with its mindset firmly positioned in a medieval era where women are relegated to the role of wives and child bearers. And that too, child bearers in a mode closer to that represented in Margaret Atwood‘s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

Threat of Christian Nationalism

The Christian nationalist perspective as outlined under Project 2025 is clear on their stance as supporting only “the traditional family,” which would entail the marginalization of all other families — interracial, intercultural, queer, et al. At such a time, it is key for the DNC to make its position clear even in their choice of the flag bearer of their party. So, a woman who belongs to two racial minorities, namely African American and South Asian, who is a well-educated professional from a family of erudite academics and scientists, makes an important symbolic point. 

Harris’s mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan was an internationally renowned scientist with a doctorate in endocrinology who hailed originally from Chennai (Madras) in Tamil Nadu in Southern India, while her father, Dr. Donald J. Harris was from Jamaica and is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Stanford University. The couple had met as students at the University of California in Berkeley in the 1960s and had participated actively in the Civil Rights Movement. Harris stated in a speech in 2020 that her parents had fallen in love in the typical American way while marching together for justice in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As such, it is not surprising that their daughter would attempt to follow in their footsteps and take on cases that involved the rights of minorities. It is also not surprising that such a mixed-race female candidate who is also the first VP in an inter-racial marriage (her husband Doug Emhoff is a Jewish American) would be seen as a threat to conservatives.

Harris herself has an impressive trajectory to the presidency. She is just the second Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate in 2017, the first being Sen. Carol Moseley Brown in 1992. After law school, Harris became an attorney and later the Attorney General of California in 2011, before becoming a Senator in 2017. In her previous role, she protected California’s climate change law against federal suits, secured marriage equality, and defended the Affordable Care Act. Yet, despite all these accomplishments, she has been called “an unqualified candidate” by opponents who support a candidate who does not possess half these qualities. Donald Trump himself has openly described her as a monster,” reducing her to a white nationalist trope, while others of his ilk have lambasted even her laughter as “a cackle.”

But Harris may well have the last laugh. If anything, the unusually high level of insults and derogatory comments flung her way on social media may well infuriate more liberal voters to hand her the election. After all, just 4 years ago, an article on the BBC website had queried, “Electability, it appears, is code for male. In the U.S., it is code for old, straight white males. When will that change?” November 2024 may well prove to be that historic moment.

On the Shoulders of Historic Women

Female candidates are not new to U.S. politics. Contrary to what many believe, former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton was not the first woman to run for President, although she was the first to get the nomination of a major political party, in 2016. The first woman to run for President did so before women in her country even had the vote. That was Virginia Woodhull, back in 1872, nominated by the Equal Rights Party. She had infuriated the system further by inviting a former slave, the renowned African American journalist and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass to be her VP candidate. 

But the first female candidate of color to run for President was Charlene Mitchell in 1968, as the nominee for the Communist Party. This is not surprising as other parties have picked women to be their nominee for President, such as Dr. Jill Stein by the Green Party. However, the first Black woman to run for the Democratic nomination was Shirley Chisholm, in 1972. But it was only in the 21^st century that a veteran female politician, Hillary Clinton, would actually win the nomination in 2016 as well as the popular vote and yet lose the election to a Republican candidate with no political experience whatsoever.

 In Harris’s case, during her candidacy for VP, women, and especially Black women voters had rallied to her support, starting with her fellow Alpha Kappa Alpa sorority sisters who organized getting the vote out in swing states. Moreover, she has name recognition across the country and is already on the Democratic ticket. She has fared better in the polls in 2 key battleground states as of now, namely Pennsylvania and Virginia. She may well energize the campaign further, especially with Black women and young voters, who are furious about the repeal of Roe v. Wade, given that Harris has been especially outspoken regarding women’s reproductive rights and the need for gun control laws. However, for many Democrats, the actual candidate is not as important as voting Blue under any circumstance. 

All-women Ticket

However, I support the thesis that symbolic value is key to a successful campaign. And what could be a more powerful symbol of resistance to the status quo than a Black woman standing to be President in what many still consider the most powerful nation in the world? As to who could be her VP candidate, why not go the whole hog and have another female candidate there as well?! Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota qualify as potential nominees for that position.

Be that as it may, November 2024 will soon be upon us and this is a timely moment for the nation to ponder its role in history. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who had campaigned to be the Presidential nominee for the Democratic party in the last elections of 2020, had remarked wryly as she stepped down, “If American girls are waiting for a role model in the Oval Office, they will have to wait for another 4 years.”  That moment may well be upon us in 2025.

(Top photo, Kamala Harris / Facebook)

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Dr. Shoba Sharad Rajgopal received her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. She moved to the East Coast to take up a position as the Director of the then Women’s Studies Program at Westfield State University and is currently in charge of the Women & Gender Studies Minor in the Department of Ethnic & Gender Studies, where she teaches courses that focus on gender issues and religious extremism in South Asia. She has worked with colleagues across campus and helped develop an Asian Studies Minor at the university. Dr. Rajgopal traveled widely across Asia and Europe in her previous avatar as a broadcast journalist and reported for the Indian Television networks and CNN International from various international locations.