For those among us who think a second White House term for Donald Trump would be, shall we say, a disaster, one recent headline was especially alarming. It read, “Debate Night Barely Moved Needle in the Polls.” It was concerning not because most presidential debates do move the needle but because Kamala Harris won by so decisive a margin. In the immediate wake of the debate 67% of likely US voters said she did well in comparison with only 40% who said the same about him. So, Harris not only beat Trump in the debate she walloped him.
American voters are still relatively unfamiliar with her. Safe to say then that had Harris performed poorly on the debate stage her numbers would have suffered. Still, given her strong showing yielded no advantage, and given who is her opponent, one has to wonder, what’s going on here? Why isn’t Kamala Harris doing better than she is? In the wake of the Democratic Convention was exhilaration. Joe Biden was out of the picture, she looked good and sounded good, and Democrats were all fired up for what they hoped would be a great campaign. But a few weeks later, the presidential race looks more like a slog than a sprint.
Harris plays down her identity. But could be that it’s more important than she’s willing to admit, even to herself. She does not usually self-identify as a Black American (her father), or an Indian American (her mother), or a female American. But each of these identities matter, if not to her than to the American electorate. Consciously or unconsciously, it matters to voters that she would be, for example, the first American president who is a woman.
In my last post, “Male Leaders,” I wrote about the glaring difference between male leaders and female leaders as it relates to levels of aggression. “Male leaders and their followers are much more often and much more overtly aggressive than their female counterparts.” This certainly pertains to candidate Trump who almost invariably appears angry and combative, and whose followers skew more male than female. In a recent national poll women favored Harris over Trump by 21 points. If this figure stays approximately the same, on Election Day the gender gap will break all previous records.
However, this gap cuts both ways. Harris is more popular than Trump with women, but she is less popular than he is with men. Which raises the question, can Harris reel in more men? I would argue that she must try. That she must try to be less agreeable and more assertive. That she must try to be less feminine and more masculine. That she must try to be less general and more specific. That she must try to speak less about abortion and more about inflation. That she must try to smile less, to speak in a forceful cadence, and to appear stronger and even fiercer. She shouldn’t dump “the politics of joy” – it comes naturally to her. But instead of relentlessly playing joy up she should begin to play joy down.
Harris is in battle. Her opponent is prone to violence. It will not suffice for her to be, or to seem to be too ladylike, too female. She must be more androgynous, better at threading the needle between being a woman and being a man. We are, after all, in the land of the great apes, in which overwhelmingly it has been and still is males who rule the roost. This has implications for Harris – and for the American electorate.