One of the perks of being a paid subscriber is bonus content like this. If you want to read more, you know what to do. During her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama had these words for voters worried about whether a woman of color could win the presidency: “We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected." I heard it a lot during the 2020 caucus cycle — the refrain of the cautious Democratic voter. I want to vote for her, but I don’t think she can win. It wasn’t, people reasoned, because they were sexist, but they worried that America was. Still recovering from the kick of 2016, voters were cautious. Picking not the best candidate, but the one they viewed as safe. And safety in politics has only been able to be embodied by cishet white men. Until this year. Now the white male candidate is a convicted felon. The Black and Indian American female candidate is not. This radical departure in who gets to appear respectable, and leaves the door of who can claim to be “safe” wide open. And the Harris/Walz campaign has worked hard to embody the image of “Momala” and Midwestern dad. In the 2016 and 2020 primaries, the question was whether a woman can win. Now, being a woman in politics seems to be an asset as much as a liability... Subscribe to Men Yell at Me to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Men Yell at Me to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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