This is a column I never expected to write. I expected to write a story about how Pennsylvania and the city I love, Philadelphia, brought it home for Kamala Harris. I thought this, finally, was our time. America would have this smart, savvy, elegant, compassionate and policy-driven candidate as our first female president.
It was a shimmering mirage that vibrated before me with every rally I covered, every interview I dissected, every new enticing ad trumpeting a new day that I saw on TV or YouTube or Twitter/X.
Yet here I am writing the same column I wrote in November 2016 for a national magazine: “Misogyny and racism win.”
I have written close to 2,000 news stories and columns about Donald Trump since he glided down the golden elevator and delivered his message of hate and division in 2015 as he announced he was running for president the first time.
Trump began his candidacy breaking rules and he’s never stopped. He’s a convicted criminal. An adjudicated rapist. He purloined classified documents and stored them in the bathroom at Mar-a-Lago for anyone to peruse. And oh yes — he led an insurrection against the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A day that for some of us still lives in infamy, to quote FDR, although Trump says now it was a day of “peace and love.”
Internalized misogyny is real
As Harris campaigned, I had moments of thinking maybe some of the criticism of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was right: maybe she was too abrasive. Maybe she was too wonky and nerdy and driven by facts. Maybe people who hadn’t met her were right that she wasn’t likable.
Then the GOP started in on Harris’s laugh and I remembered how they hated Hillary’s laugh. Trump never laughs, so we don’t have a counter. He’s an angry, rage-filled man who’s self-absorbed and joyless. Harris was having fun as she campaigned. It was hard not to get caught up in that as I covered her myriad events. Who doesn’t need a little joy?
I also soon checked myself about revisionist history over Hillary. As we know now and forever, it was never about her emails or Wisconsin or her laugh. It was about her gender.
I had written about how American media undermined Harris back in 2021 for Dame magazine. How did I forget?
Structural misogyny
But I did. And most of all, I forgot for a moment how much men hate us and how many women have been acculturated to hate themselves. I was pulled into the finely spun web of Kamala Harris’s self-confidence and energy and I was stuck there, thinking she had broken the code and would soon break the glass ceiling Hillary cracked and so many other countries have broken, but not ours.
I was so wrong. I forgot how much men hate us. Deeply, intrinsically, to the core of their being, they hate us. Feminist theorist Germaine Greer wrote: “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”
Not all men, of course. Some men love us and want the best for us. But a mere 32% of white men voted for Hillary in 2016 and it seems the number might even be fewer for Harris once all the stats come in.
What we weren’t expecting was how many Latino men would jump on Team Trump, ignoring his hate-filled rants about criminal Latinos crossing the border and raping and killing white women. How many ads blamed Harris for those rare (albeit terrible) crimes?
Reporting the news
I have been covering national politics for mainstream, independent and LGBTQ+ newspapers and magazines since 1988. The first presidential candidate I ever interviewed was Dick Gephardt who was lovely to a very nervous young reporter.
I have been reporting news about Harris since 2004 when she was marrying lesbian and gay couples in San Francisco. I covered her candidacy in 2019 and was devastated when she was forced to withdraw for lack of funds in December 2019, before the primary began. I wasn’t keen on a Biden presidency in 2020. But I knew Harris would move him left — which she did — and that was comforting.
And now it’s over. Kamala Harris is no longer our shining beacon of hope and promise. There is no seat at the table for women — 53% of the population. Now we face another Trump presidency in which Project 2025 is on the table, a third of states have killer abortion bans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could be running healthcare, two more justices could be appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court, our queer families are at risk as are trans kids, our democracy is at stake and why?
Because women are so feared. Because women are so hated. Because structural misogyny rules this country whether we want to acknowledge that reality or not. Some men even voted against their best interests in order to vote against a woman.
Kamala Harris was a beacon for America
I can’t forget the past few months of Kamala Harris fighting for America. I can’t forget her strength, her drive, her patriotism, her courage. But I will never again forget the hate that drove this race and the vicious attacks against Kamala Harris that were sane-washed by the media.
In 2016, America elected a reality TV star and self-proclaimed billionaire, known for his claim that he could grab women by the p*ssy, over a former senator and Secretary of State who, according to her former boss, Barack Obama, was nearly always the smartest person in the room.
In 2024, America voted for a convicted felon who tried to subvert the Constitution and incited a mob that wanted to kill his vice president and the Speaker of the House over a brilliant woman with 30 years of public service.
The best women, the worst man. Tell me again that they don’t hate us when we live with the reality every day.