Election 2024: Why is the Bar so High for Kamala Harris?

It’s the sexism, stupid

This election is reminding us of a sad and exhausting reality: Women can’t just be as good as men at something — they instead must continually perform at a much higher level.

Our gender biases are so engrained that we naturally evaluate women in a way that demands a level of accountability and performance from them that is either assumed or ignored for their male counterparts. It is a circumstance that plays out every day across all sectors of society — an enduring relic of human fears, failures, prejudices, and weaknesses that emerge when the many fragile male egos among us perceive women as a threat.

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Exhibit A: Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to deliver a precise articulation of her policy initiatives to counter arguments that she is ill-informed and unfit to lead. Meanwhile, her opponent is permitted to spout a firehose of gibberish on an almost daily basis with no expectation that he will ever be pressed for details.

One side is focused on what they will do to help Americans. The other is promoting their traditional “caravan” of pre-election fear, which this year involves the consumption of cats and dogs.

One side has a plan for healthcare and a commitment to provide broader access and lower costs. The other claims to have “concepts” of a plan.

One side is committed to restoring women’s reproductive rights. The other side has taken multiple conflicting positions while attempting to scare you into believing that Democrats are regularly killing babies after they are born.

This is just a small sampling of the contrasts, of course. The larger issue is the disparity of our demands; the hoops through which Vice President Harris must jump to convince us that she is a sane, capable, and morally driven leader, despite there being no equivalent demand of her opponent.

In the absence of any coherent description of a Trump policy, and in the presence of a very detailed manifesto known as Project 2025 — a set of policies from which Trump is failing to distance himself — the playing field is clearly not level. The Republican nominee for president of the United States is unable to explain what he is going to do and how he plans to do it.

But for at least 40% of voters, he doesn’t need to. His indifference to a policy platform is the political equivalent of shooting someone on 5th Avenue, and for that reason, any attempt to earn those votes with a policy-driven case for support is a complete waste of time. “Policy” is just a fig leaf of justification for doing what they were always going to do anyway: vote for an individual who has proven to be so deeply unfit for office that it’s embarrassing even for many who are voting for him.

If you are among this group, and you really want to understand the Harris/Walz policy positions and plans, you can immediately go here and dive in (and we know you know how to use the internet).

But if you consider that a waste of time, why not just come clean? Why not just concede that you don’t care about policies, otherwise you might be a little more interested in learning more about the policies of your very own candidate, but you’re not. What you really want is a socially acceptable excuse to never vote against Trump and never vote for Harris, right?

This is when we might hear the claim against Kamala Harris that she is a socialist or a communist, raising the question, do these people know what either of those terms mean? For those assessing the candidates with clear eyes, good faith, and at least a nominal understanding of ideological terminology, they might be struck by the contrast.

Socialism and communism are predicated on extensive government control of the economy and media. The orthodox definition of socialism means government ownership of the means of production, eliminating or marginalizing competition and dictating what is produced and for whom. A full-scale implementation of either of these systems of government has never worked and it never will because nothing can match the ability of capitalist free markets to match supply with demand.

So which candidate do you think is more socialist? Donald Trump has already created an incentive structure for businesses, many of the largest among them led by oligarchs in waiting who are keenly aware that their business success and personal wealth will be dependent on how much Donald Trump likes them. As an autocratic wannabe, Trump has shown no inhibitions about his plans to pick winners in the marketplace and punish those who, among other possible “missteps”, say mean things about him. During his term as president, he established several revenue streams through his assets, implicitly mandating, for example, that foreign leaders and government operatives pay exorbitant fees for lodging at his properties.

Ultimately, the marketplace will cater to his needs rather than consumers, and other pathways to corruption — including new revenue streams leading into Trump’s pockets — will be forged. Rather than a government role defined by establishing guardrails (oversight and regulation) to maintain a thriving and sustained capitalism, Trump’s next reign will effectively place the means of production in his hands — a scenario of government intervention and control not seen since the darkest days of World War II when mobilization rose to meet an existential threat.

And then there are those who are convinced that Kamala Harris is a communist.

Communism relies on airtight control of information, meaning the complete elimination of freedom of speech. Under an actual communist leader, we should expect the revocation of all media broadcasting licenses that do not comply with the wishes of the government — something that Trump has stated he will do, likely to begin with Disney’s ABC network (they were mean to him during the recent debate). Comcast (owner of NBC and MSNBC), Paramount (owner of CBS and CNN), and other news outlets that have engaged in their First Amendment right to criticize him. They should all expect to suffer the consequences of his retribution (they have been warned!)

In the meantime, as any proficient communist country would do, we all can expect the continuation of selective book burning, ideologically defined school curricula, and perhaps even the tracking of women’s menstrual cycles to maintain compliance with government-defined reproductive “rights.”

These intrusions of government upon our lives — these socialist/communist-style initiatives — have nothing to do with Kamala Harris. They are a product of Donald Trump and his MAGA followers, and they are the start of a very slippery slope that leads to the “Mandate for Leadership”, Project 2025.

So, for those of you who are undecided, let’s get real. If you are intent on voting against Harris because she is a woman, because she is Black, because she is Indian, because you are under the illusion that she is a socialist or communist, or just because she is not part of your tribe, at least come to terms with your motivation and admit that this has nothing to do with policy or ideology.

And it never has.