Will US get its first female president?

Kai Carter, a 19-year-old who stood in queue behind the White House as Kamala Harris prepared to enter the stage, remarked, "This is monumental" at the prospect of Harris being the first Black female president of the United States.

Carter attended the ceremony with a group of Howard University students, a historically Black college in Washington, DC that also serves as the vice president's alma mater.

Harris, the first female vice-president, was born in the United States to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She might become the first Asian American president and the country's first female president. However, she is not making a big issue about it.

In her final argument in Washington, DC, before one of the most important elections in the country's history, Harris made no mention of her gender, race, or the possibility of smashing a glass barrier. It is not something she discusses frequently on the campaign trail, preferring to focus on her middle-class origins and her desire to be president for "all Americans".

Her central message that night was about Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. “This election is more than a choice between two parties and two different candidates. It is a choice about whether we have a country rooted in freedom for every American. Or one ruled by chaos and division.”

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who made gender a prominent theme of her 2016 presidential campaign, Harris chose to focus on themes of identity during a period of historic polarisation. That is also how she chose to run her unusually short 13-week campaign after an elderly Biden handed her the mantle on July 21.

Laurie Pohutsky, a Democratic state lawmaker from Michigan, chose to run in 2018 after seeing Donald Trump's misogynistic campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Since then, she has introduced two significant pieces of state legislation that remove abortion restrictions. In a phone interview from the swing state led by Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, she said, "You know, we weren't elected because we were women. And I believe that when we phrase things that way, we do ourselves a disservice.

She agreed with Harris' decision not to emphasise on gender: "While it's historic, it's not what would make her a good president."

"We're long overdue for a female president," she told reporters. "But that isn't why I believe people are voting for her. They're voting for her based on her record, the work she's done, and her beliefs, as opposed to what we know Donald Trump believes."

Source: Guardian