On Women In Power

A friend of mine told me a story once. It was 2008, and she was a college kid working at a small Christian bookstore in Virginia as Hillary Clinton vied with Barack Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. One of the other workers remarked to her that he could never, never ever vote for her because (and this is the punch) “rule by women is a sign of the judgment of God.”

Now, I’m not saying that that is a particularly widespread opinion, but I’ve been thinking about it on and off since the election was called. President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate was a conscious decision about who would become the leader of the party after him. In other words, the president-elect was entrusting the future of America’s progressive movement—and potentially the future of the entire country—to a woman.