Transcript: Brutal New Ad Nukes Trump—with His Own Ugly Words on Women
Sargent: You’re getting at a really interesting tension of sorts. On the one hand, as you said, she’s not centering the historic nature of her candidacy, but on the other, she’s speaking directly to women about women’s issues and is actually speaking a cultural language that is really very much about this being a moment for women. That’s just fascinating. I think you really nailed it. Also Hillary, unfortunately, probably was the wrong icon to do that, and Harris just might be the right one. What’s the difference there? Why? Harris is incredibly shrewd culturally, isn’t she? She’s really tuned into what’s going on under the surface.
Mercieca: She’s running an amazing campaign. Hillary Clinton is a very smart person, so is Kamala Harris, not to take anything away from either of them. The difference is in persuadability. When you run a presidential campaign, you want to be able to tell your story and introduce yourself to the nation. You want them to be open to learning about who you are, and you want to be able to tell that story in a way that resonates with people. Hillary Clinton did not have that opportunity. Everyone thought they knew who Hillary Clinton was. They had their mind made up, whether it was good or bad. And she did not have the opportunity to tell her story as a presidential candidate in 2016. That story was already told. She was already defined.
Kamala Harris, even as vice president, people were like, Who? I don’t really know her. I don’t know two facts about Kamala Harris. So she has really had the opportunity to tell her story. And the way that she has chosen to tell her story is that she is someone who wants to protect others, that she has spent her career speaking up for people who don’t already have a voice, that she’s done it in a nonpartisan way, and that, as an elected official, she has continued to work to solve problems, help people, defend people that need to be defended and protect people that need to be protected. In a way, she’s using a lot of very masculine tropes, like I will be a protector for you, I will help you, but she’s doing it in a way that folds in all of those women’s concerns, like I see you, I see that you’re struggling to raise your family and take care of your parents, I know how impossible that is. So she’s been able to connect who she is, and who she wants us to see, who she wants to present with her story, in a way that Hillary Clinton was just not able to do. In that way, I’ve always thought that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate in 2016 just because she couldn’t define herself.
