CHICAGO—Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president and aiming to be the first woman to hold the office, is set to deliver a nomination acceptance speech on Thursday at the Democratic National Convention.
Although some attendees at the convention voice reservations about the nation’s readiness for a female president, many still express hope that Harris will be the first to breach the glass ceiling in November.
“Yes, we’re ready for a woman president,” Kevin Freeman, a voter from New York, told The Epoch Times. “And I think that so many other countries have had women leaders, it’s time for us to get on board.”
Eight years after selecting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as their nominee, Democrats have once again seen President Joe Biden step aside in a bid to elect the first woman president of the United States. In 2016, Clinton became the first woman to be nominated for U.S. president by a major political party when she challenged candidate Donald Trump.
“What’s interesting is President Biden was instrumental in Mrs. Hillary Clinton becoming the Democratic nominee,” Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) told The Epoch Times. “He was the sitting vice president and put his dreams aside to encourage a woman to become the Democratic nominee.
“So he’s been at the heart of two women now becoming the Democratic nominee.”
Speaking on the first night of the convention, Clinton made the case for Harris, underscoring the convention’s historic nature.
“We are writing a new chapter in America’s story,” Clinton said. “Kamala has the character, experience, and vision to lead us forward.”
Several other lawmakers and convention attendants echoed Clinton’s sentiment and praised the idea of women leaders as a whole.
“We’re overly qualified,” delegate Angie Nelson Deuitch told The Epoch Times.
Deuitch is the first black mayor of Michigan City, Indiana, and only the second woman to hold that post. “We’re empathetic,“ she said. ”We look at issues head-on, we deal with the name-calling, we deal with being diminished, and I think people are starting to see that.
“We have the strength that allows us to continue to fight regardless of all those barriers. And so I think now they are seeing that we get things done.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) told The Epoch Times that women lawmakers make up almost half of the Democratic Caucus in the House of Representatives, and praised the different ways they consider solving problems.
“They’re more thoughtful,” he said. “They’re more oriented towards finding a solution that brings people together. I think it’s going to be a wonderful thing for our country.”
Harris would be the 47th president if elected, and convention participants said it has been particularly difficult to reach this point.
“It’s taken a longer time in government and higher leadership in government to push through those ceilings, and we’ve just been cracking them here and there,” Nelson Deuitch said.
“I think this younger generation is going to push us to do better,” she said, emphasizing the importance of young voters in this election.
Al Durante, a Texas delegate, believes that there is a certain percentage of the population who wouldn’t vote for Harris just because she’s a woman.
“I’ve heard people tell me that on both sides,” he said. “But I think we’re ready. I think, finally, we’ve grown as a country enough, and we’ve seen enough over the recent years to realize that everybody, anybody, deserves a chance. And there have been a lot of strong women leaders in state government and state leadership.”
Kerstin Lundgren, a Swedish Centre Party politician and member of the Swedish parliament since 2002, traveled from her country to Chicago to attend the Democratic National Convention this year, just as she did in 2016.
She said she believes that this time the United States is ready for a female president.
She told The Epoch Times, however, that the idea of a woman president is not at the forefront of the DNC this year.
It was wise that the Harris campaign didn’t underscore the historic nature of that proposition in the way Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign did, she said.
“That time, it was much more underlined, much more in the front of everything. It was also the first time ever, but now it’s more or less focusing on [Harris’] capacity, experience, integrity, and decency,” she said.
“I don’t think voters care if it’s a man or a woman,” former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe told The Epoch Times. “They just want who’s going to do a great job. They don’t care about, you know, all this identity politics.”
When it comes to policy-first voters, though, former Trump campaign adviser David Urban told The Epoch Times that former President Trump has the upper hand, especially concerning battleground states.
“I was just in Pennsylvania with the president on Saturday. There’s a huge deal of energy. We’ve got new voters in the African American community and Hispanic community who weren’t with us before, who are with us now. The base is strong.
“Kamala Harris has not campaigned from one day on any issue. She’s not responded to the press on any question of substance. In Pennsylvania, people want to hear about fracking. They want to hear about her plan to take people’s guns away. They want to hear her plan about ending health care, going to single-payer system,” he said.
