WASHINGTON – “Electric.” “Joyful.”
The kinetic energy powering Kamala Harris ’ whirlwind presidential campaign carries the hopeful aspirations of history and the almost quaint idea of electing the first woman to the White House. But inside it, too, is the urgent and determined refusal of many Democratic female voters to accept the alternative — again.
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“Serious.” “Unapologetic.”
Listen to the women cheering “We’re not going back!” at the Harris campaign rallies. See them singing along during the dance party roll call at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Understand the mothers and daughters and sorority sisters and, yes, the men, brothers and boys who have watched and waited and winced as the country tried eight years ago to break the glass ceiling — and failed.
“Overdue.”
This time, this year, facing Donald Trump again, a certain and influential swath of the electorate is not messing around. “It’s our time,” said Denise Delegol, 60, a retired postal worker from West Bloomfield Township, Michigan.
Harris campaign reignites Democratic party’s enthusiasm
The promise of a Harris presidency is shaking a sizable segment of the nation out of a political funk, reviving the idea of a milestone election and an alternative to repeating the Trump era. It's putting the country on the cusp of what Michelle Obama, in her convention speech to Democrats, called a “brighter day.”
Once President Joe Biden bowed out of the race and embraced his vice president at the top of the ticket, some found hope where before they had felt mostly dread.
“Overnight it went from doom-scrolling to hope-scrolling,” said Lisa Hansen of Wisconsin, who led an early Trump resistance group in 2017 as her first foray into political activism.
Lori Goldman of Michigan, who founded Fems for Dems to elect Hillary Clinton two presidents ago, said, “I’m too old to not ever have seen a president that’s female in the United States.” She's 65.
And Shannon Nash, a California attorney, co-founder of the Tech4Kamala group and, like Harris, a fellow member of the historic Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., said from the convention hall Thursday night, “The joy is coming back to politics.”
Women have been here before, in 2016, when they donned matching pantsuits, poured champagne and settled in on election night, some with friends and daughters by their side, expecting Clinton to win the White House only to be shaken by Trump’s victory.
As one woman said at the time, she threw up the next morning.
Republican women eye history, too
To be sure, some voters had a different first female president in mind. Nikki Haley lifted Republican hopes during the GOP primary, but her moment faded after rival Trump branded his former ambassador to the United Nations “birdbrain.”
Lisa Watts, a retired business owner from Hickory, North Carolina, who was attending her fifth Trump rally this week, had little interest in Harris. “I don’t think that her record proves that she is ready to run this country,” Watts said.
The thousands of women who pack Trump rallies, and tens of millions more who are expected to cast ballots for him in November, are participating on the other side of the potential history-making.
The former president, convicted in a hush-money case and still facing a pending federal indictment for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, would become the first felon to win the White House.
Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump rejected as “insulting” the idea that Americans should vote for a woman for president because it would make history.
“If you ever give me a job because ... of the fact that I’m a woman and not based on any merit or qualification, guess what? I’m turning that job down all day long," the former president's daughter-in-law said on her podcast in July.
Abortion, immigration and the war in Gaza
For those voting for Harris, this election feels more joyful, but also more necessary and urgent.
“We need to do this, be serious about it this time,” said Monique LaFonta, a mother of two twin girls, after attending a Harris rally in Milwaukee.
Trump’s creation of a conservative Supreme Court majority that overturned a woman’s right to abortion access produced outrage among many women who powered that year's midterm election — and are a potentially influential force in this one.
“We are living in just such a wildly different situation,” said Jessica Mackler, the president of Emily’s List, which works to elect pro-choice women. She said Harris is “unapologetic” when it comes to reproductive rights.
Harris herself carries this potentially history-making moment not as a campaign feature but a matter-of-fact representation of who she is and has always been, much the way Barack Obama often left his race merely implied to voters. Rather than reminding voters that the nation's 47th president could become the first in its more than two-century history to not be a man, Harris is running instead on what she would do in the job and how she would do it.
In her speech Thursday night accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention, Harris acknowledged that she's "no stranger to unlikely journeys,” but she did not specifically mention the historic nature of her candidacy.
Many receive her style as a brand of American optimism rooted in the generations who came before her, a Black and South Asian woman, the daughter of immigrants — a Jamaican father and Indian mother — who dared to dream in this country. She is blaring Beyonce’s “Freedom” as her campaign theme song along the way.
And yet among demonstrators calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war outside the Democrats' convention in Chicago, pharmacist Fedaa Ballouta said that while having the first female president would mean a lot, she expects more. “I wish that that woman was pro-life when it matters regarding Palestinians.”
Clinton’s defeat paved the way for this moment
So much has changed in the American political landscape since Trump entered that scene almost a decade ago with his braggadocio and electoral momentum.
“Such a nasty woman,” he called his 2016 Democratic rival Clinton, a former U.S. senator and secretary of state. “Horseface,” he labeled a Republican primary rival, a woman. “Fat pig,” he bullied a famous female comedian. He once bragged that as a celebrity he could “grab” women by their private parts — and get away with it.
More than 1 million people in the United States and around the world filled city streets in protest the day after Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Many wore pink “pussy” hats. “The Resistance,” they called it.
Trump himself has stayed the course, deriding Harris as “Laffin’ Kamala,” mocking her laugh or mispronouncing her name, which means “lotus flower” in Sanskrit.
In many ways, Clinton’s defeat eight years ago set the stage for this moment. It was a crushing setback that dashed women’s hopes for bringing the U.S. into alignment with leading democracies around the world that have had a female in charge.
Angie Gialloreto of Pittsburgh was disappointed then. But the 95-year-old, attending her 13th presidential convention, is still at it, ready and waiting for the country to try again. “It's time,” she said.
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Many of the women interviewed by The Associated Press this week are eager for what's next. Listen to what they have to say.
MONIQUE LAFONTA, 41, Milwaukee, health care consultant and mother of twin daughters:
“Why can’t a woman be president? Why has it taken us so long to get to this point?” LaFonta wondered the day after a Harris rally in Milwaukee. “Are we going to make the same mistake again?” LaFonta remembers celebrating election night 2016 at a birthday party with friends when Clinton lost to Trump. “It was unintentionally the worst birthday party I ever went to — everyone was crying at the end of the night,” she said. As a mother now, she said what’s happened with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the threats posed by the Project 2025 agenda are “scary.” “I have two 6-year-old daughters who have less rights than I did,” she said.
Originally from Louisiana, she recalls her parents living through the Jim Crow era in the South. “I never even thought we would see a Black president in my lifetime,” she said. “To have another glass ceiling like that in my lifetime, it’s really so special.” At the Harris rally in Milwaukee this week, it was “so electric, so contagious,” she said. “Just joy.”
ASHBEY BEASLEY, 48, Highland Park, Illinois, stay-home mother
“We’re overdue,” Beasley said. She remembers watching one state after another fall to Trump on election night eight years ago. “I just started crying,” she said. “We turned the TV off.” The difference between then and now? “We’ve had a Trump presidency. We’ve seen the kind of chaos." The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was a “turning point” she said. “The MAGA culture came out of the closet,” and a lot of people “were like, I’m not OK with this.”
Having survived a 2022 mass shooting in her city with her son, she has become a gun safety advocate and worries Trump is too close to gun rights groups. “What I want people to know whatever you see out in the world — whatever horrific terrible tragedy — that can be you,” she said from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “Just because you don’t need an abortion right now, doesn’t mean you won’t.”
LORI GOLDMAN, Michigan, founded Fems for Dems in 2016 to elect Hillary Clinton
At 65, she said, “I’m too old to not ever have seen a president that’s female in the United States.” On Election Day 2016, Goldman had about 30 people to her house and they canvassed until the afternoon, all the while thinking it unnecessary. She said she’s less naïve now.
For Goldman and chair of Fems for Dems Marcie Paul, the difference between organizing in 2016 and now is knowing the impacts of a Trump administration. Both are mothers, and they cited their daughters’ futures as a reason to vote Harris, both for her policy on reproductive rights and for her potential to be the first female president. Paul said it’s the most important election of a lifetime. “But really — this time it is.”
ANNE HATHAWAY, Indiana, the state's Republican National Committeewoman
She dismissed the potential history-making milestone as been there, done that. “We had Hillary Clinton as a candidate in 2016 so this is not a new phenomenon,” said Hathaway, who was in charge of the arrangements committee at the Republican convention. She said she is focused on the candidates’ visions, not their genders. “This is a race between two presidential candidates who have very different opinions and views and where they think this country should go.”
HOLLY SARGENT, York, Maine
She had spent the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election campaigning for Hillary Clinton in her quiet Maine beach town, watching the rise of Trump “with horror.” But she said the despair she felt at that year’s election defeat was healed with Clinton’s speech to the Democratic convention this week. Sargent teared up as she sat with Maine delegates thinking of all that has transpired, and could yet. “We’re going to do it this time. And when we do it, we do it for Hillary and for Shirley Chisholm and for Geraldine Ferraro and for all of the extraordinary women who have gone before.”
JENNIFER RICHARDSON, 44, Albany, New York, attorney
She said as a Black woman, and an attorney, having Harris atop the party’s ticket resonates so much. “I see myself in her,” she said from the Democratic convention. “I see all my friends in her.” Added Richardson, “For her to win, it’s like we all won.”
DENISE DELEGOL, 60, West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, retired postal worker
Delegol was decked out in pearls, a purple Harris “When We Fight We Win” T-shirt and purple high-tops decorated with the word “WIN” on the toes, and curious to check out the protests at a park near the convention hall. “It’s a beautiful thing that she can lead a country that was predominantly led by old white men who think they know what’s best for all, all people, including women and our bodies,” she said. Harris, she said, “is going to change all that.”
She wants her fellow Americans to understand how important the election is, and that “this is just a time for all Americans to come together because we have more in common than not in common.” Her conversations with family and friends are all about what’s happening. “Now it’s our time,” she said. “And I don’t think nothing can stop us now, as far as women breaking the glass ceiling.”
FEDAA BALLOUTA, Chicago pharmacist, attending a demonstration against the Israel-Hamas war outside the Democratic convention
She said it means a lot to have a female nominee for president, and as a pharmacist who finds it heartbreaking to see people struggle to afford medication she is eager for what Harris could do to help lower the costs of prescription drugs. “I really want to support our candidate of the same gender category,” she said. But what she really wants to see from Harris is a cease-fire in the war. “Pro-Life doesn’t just refer to abortion and pregnancy,” she said. “What about the killing of innocent civilians? That’s also pro-life.”
She believes this election will be meaningful for the country. “I was just in New York City, and I’m looking at the Statue of Liberty, and I’m thinking, ‘Are we a nation that provides liberty or takes it away from others?’”
LIZ SHULER, president, AFL-CIO union
Schuler recalls breaking out the champagne and popcorn with friends on election night 2016, before “people left, of course, heartbroken.” This time around, she said, “we are protecting our hearts.”
“I think every woman you talked to probably feels the same way. But I think we, as union women, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and just keep up the fight.”
ANGIE GIALLORETO, 95, Pittsburgh, attending her 13th presidential nominating convention
Gialloreto said she was disappointed by Clinton’s loss eight years ago, but she’s excited with Harris in place to try again. “It’s time,” she said from the convention hall. Gialloreto has attended every Democratic convention since Jimmy Carter was nominated for president in 1976. She said it’s an exciting time, “not for me, I’ve lived my life — for the short time I have, I’m going to celebrate — but it’s the young ones.
“Reality is here.”
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Associated Press writers Isabella Volmert in Michigan, Mike Householder and Farnoush Amiri in Chicago, Michelle Price in North Carolina, Ali Swenson and Aaron Morrison in New York, video journalists Martha Irvine, Serkan Gurbuz and Teresa Crawford in Chicago and photojournalist Jacquelyn Martin in Milwaukee and Chicago contributed to this report.