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Commentary
'Viability' is a dangerous euphemism
Joe Biden is out. Kamala Harris is in. And we’re about to discover if the American political media has finally learned how to fairly cover a woman ambitious enough to seek the highest elected office in the land.
Political journalism has long treated women candidates differently than their male counterparts. Men tend to receive more (and more serious) media attention. Coverage of women, meanwhile, often ignores their policy positions and instead perseverates on their physical appearances, their domestic lives and their novelty.
The narratives that coalesce around female candidates are laced with something else, too: questions about the “viability” of their campaigns. This vague term is often code for a lingering — and likely inaccurate — perception that women are somehow less electable than men.
The viability question comes packaged with observations about a candidate’s “likability,” “broad appeal” and “strength.” Can she win over moderate suburban voters? Does she look presidential? Is she authentic? These factors do matter, especially when the narrow path to victory winds through a few swing states — think back to 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the election — but they also carry a specific type of misogyny, one that’s cloaked as pragmatism and deeply internalized across the political spectrum.
The viability question comes packaged with observations about a candidate’s “likability,” “broad appeal” and “strength.” Can she win over moderate suburban voters? Does she look presidential? Is she authentic?
This chaotic election cycle now holds an unexpected opportunity for journalists and pundits to do better while covering Harris’ sudden ascension to likely Democratic nominee. It’s time to replace sound bites about viability with specific details of the unique challenges a Harris campaign will face in the months ahead. In short, name the problems — racism and sexism — and treat them not as disqualifiers, but as challenges the campaign must overcome.
Harris, the child of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, has broken barriers as a mixed-race woman in spaces long dominated by white men. She is the first woman and only the second person of color to hold the vice presidency (Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover’s vice president, was of Native American descent), and one of the few women and people of color to run for president.
It would be wrongheaded to ignore Harris’s identities or to cover her exactly the same as the scores of white men who have sought the presidency before her. Sexism and racism run deep in American culture — crucial for political journalists (and the electorate) to face that reality head on.
We know what’s likely in store should Harris top the Democratic ticket: a barrage of racist, sexist rhetoric. We saw this in 2020 when, as my co-authors and I documented in this paper, far-right coverage of Harris was rife with factually inaccurate stories that sought to sexualize or vilify her. In one striking example, a cluster of stories called her “Kamala the mattress” and cited her past relationship with California politician Willie Brown as evidence she had “slept her way to the top.” (This claim has been widely debunked.) Other coverage compared her to the Wicked Witch of the West and attempted to link her to Hillary Clinton by describing both women’s laughs as “cackles.”
There’s little that can be done to stop such attacks, but it’s important for mainstream political journalists to acknowledge and contextualize them. This won’t be easy, especially as resource-strapped newsrooms scramble to document this wildly unpredictable and historic election cycle, but it’s vital to providing voters with an accurate, comprehensive picture of this year’s presidential race.
Coverage of the first 48 hours of the Harris campaign has been promising, with national political reporters tackling the impact of Harris’s gender and race head-on. “A Black woman running against two white men brings a different dynamic than another older white man,” wrote NPR's Dominico Montanaro. The Morning newsletter on Monday, from the New York Times, reminded readers of the gender-based attacks Trump lobbed at Hillary Clinton in 2016. And Reuters dropped this thoughtful take on how racism and sexism might influence Harris’s campaign strategy.
Harris is also receiving plenty of serious coverage about her debate style, her fundraising capabilities, her policy positions and her possible vice presidential picks, as well as retrospectives on her failed 2020 presidential campaign and deep dives into her many years in California state politics. These veins of reporting are appropriate and in many ways align with the largely un-gendered coverage Nikki Haley received during the Republican primary, illustrating how political journalists have become more adept at covering women candidates.
Let’s hope that trend continues. Should Harris top the Democratic ticket, she will be the second woman and second person of color to do so in less than 15 years. That’s remarkable considering our nation’s long history of racism and sexism. Harris’ path to the White House will be different — and likely more difficult — than those of the men who came before her. Her victory in November is far from certain, but she is a qualified contender. And that must be reflected in the news coverage she receives.
