kamala
It’s official:
The United States has elected the first woman—a Black woman—to the Vice Presidency. Kamala Harris has broken the second-highest, second-hardest glass ceiling in politics.
We know that for so many reasons, this moment feels bittersweet, from dreams squashed in 2016, to this year’s stunning losses in the US Senate and House.
But it would be a disservice to the Vice President-elect (!) and everyone across decades who have worked for this moment if we didn’t mark it with the attention it deserves. Be joyful, Meghan, because this is a turning point for women in politics.
We are at this point because of women—women voters, women donors and women candidates.
We would not be here if Shirley Chisholm had not blazed a trail in 1972. We would not be here if Hillary Clinton had not put millions of cracks in the political glass ceiling in 2008 and 2016. We would not be here if women had not flooded Congress in 1992 and 2018, to take power from a system that had elevated sexist men. We would not be here if a record number of women had not run for the presidency this cycle.
And this year, we would not be here without a historic gender gap between men and women voters. We would not be here if women donors had not carried the Biden-Harris ticket. In fact, the day that Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate was his best day of fundraising, up to that point.
Of course, the losses really hurt. None of our Democratic women candidates will sit in the Senate next year, and our House delegation has shrunk—many of those seats held by women who led 2018’s historic gains.
But no victory of this magnitude ever comes without hard losses.
WomenCount will be leading the fight to win back these lost House and Senate seats in 2022, and give Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden the governing majority we need to keep restoring our democracy.
Thanks for everything you have done this cycle. Please, take a moment or two to be truly happy about this historic victory.