It’s Not Just the [Fill in the Issue], Stupid!

Female candidates’ electability is judged on how they present their positions and play the political game, much more than their male counterparts

- ALI VITALI

In the 2020 U.S. election, six women ran for president. The winner was a white man. In all the years of presidential elections, only one woman has made it onto the ticket for a major party presidential nominee—Hillary Clinton in 2016. But why? What are the invisible—and very present—barriers preventing the election of the first female president of the United States? In her new book, electable: why America hasn’t put a woman in the white house…yet (Dey Street Books, August), NBC News Congressional Correspondent Ali Vitali investigates the double standards and limitations that keep women politicians from being judged purely on merit. She asks what will make a candidate electable. In this excerpt from her book, Vitali discusses Kamala Harris’ attack on Joe Biden at the June 2019 Democratic presidential primary debate—how a strong showing on the stage turned into a debate of her character and motives, and ultimately became a drawback. But would the same analysis have occurred for a male candidate?

SOUTH BEND, INDIANA, MAYOR Pete Buttigieg was halfway through a well-worn, un-newsy answer to the moderator’s question on race when Senator Kamala Harris saw the makings of a moment on the first Democratic debate stage in Miami in June of 2019.

“As the only Black person on stage, I would like to speak on the issue of race,” she said. Conversations about systemic racism were not new in the Democratic primary, even at this early point. But those conversations had never put Joe Biden in the crosshairs before. “I’m gonna now direct this at Vice President Biden.”

Biden looked up, expectant, and wholly unprepared for what came next.