Is Kamala Harris the “glass cliff” candidate in the 2024 US elections?

The version below has been edited for length and clarity. 

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Maria Luísa Moreira (Host):  Welcome to The Gender Diplomat. This is a very special episode because it is the very first episode of The Gender Diplomat podcast, and it is also a record breaking episode since we planned, scheduled, recorded and launched this episode in just a couple of days. Given the current state of affairs in the United States, which I'm sure you know about, we are here to analyze and make a tiny contribution to the analysis of the 2024 US elections. We're having this conversation just a week before Election Day. And so that's, of course, the very final stretch of the electoral campaign, broadly speaking, as it currently stands. Both candidates are tied nationwide with just a few swing states shifting poll predictions here and there. Then President Biden dropped out of the race a few months ago, and Kamala Harris, who was seen as the natural yet unpredictable successor, has filled his role as the Democratic nominee.

And while I don't want this podcast to focus just on gender, nor is The Gender Diplomat project as a whole just about gender, I did want to explore the positioning of VP Harris herself, but also her campaign in this race. Much has already been said about VP Harris, her background, her trajectory, whether her vision fits into the highly polarised US political system and how successful she will be in leading the Democrats across the finish line in November. And because this election has been nothing but unpredictable and nerve wracking, I did want to delve into the House and the whys or where she is right now. To help unpack this, I am so excited to welcome Marissa Conway, my very first guest ever and an award winning charity executive and feminist activist who writes the Feminist Tinted Glasses Substack. Marissa is a foreign policy expert, business strategist, and she's also an American citizen currently based in the UK. She has written about the glass cliff phenomenon in relation to the Harris nomination, and she has also been analysing its implications for women in power more broadly. So we will be diving deep into whether the Harris nomination could be setting her up for a steep climb or a potential hard fall due to the systemic challenges in place.

I do want to start by thanking you, Marissa, for being here. I really appreciate it. So let's get into it. Is Kamala Harris, the glass cliff nominee and potentially the glass cliff president if elected in a week? That's the theme of today's discussion. As soon as VP Harris was announced as Biden's replacement, alarms went off about her stepping into the verge of a downfall in US politics, facing a potential glass cliff, which is a term less familiar to many than the glass ceiling.

Marissa, could you start by explaining how these two ideas differ and why the concept of the glass cliff might be relevant to the Harris nomination process?

Marissa Conway (guest): So the glass ceiling is in reference to this kind of invisible barrier, and it prevents typically marginalised people, especially women, from advancing beyond a certain point in their professional careers or within organisational hierarchies. So if we hear a woman being described as the first woman to do x, y, z, that is an example of a glass ceiling being broken before her. There were only men in that particular position, and there are quite a few reasons for the glass ceiling, so this can be very blatant discrimination. This could include implicit bias. Women still take on the majority of care work and of household management, and this of course has impacts on career trajectories. So, you know, something I see a lot still is a lot of women in junior positions within companies, but not a lot in senior and leadership positions. There's definitely the glass ceiling refers to this pipeline issue.

The glass cliff is kind of a spin off of this concept, but it describes when a woman is placed into a leadership position during a time of crisis. So she is at a senior level, but there's a particular environment around her particular situation. And, and so she's going to be more likely to fail, not because of her ability or her skill set or her competency, but just because of the very impossible circumstances that she is facing. So I think, you know, Theresa May dealing with Brexit is a great example of this. Liz Truss dealing with a tanking economy and just so many issues within the Tory leadership. She's another great example of this. They both have plenty of things we can critique about their leadership, about their their policies, but the environment around them also played a very substantial role in their inability to deliver, I think. Marissa Mayer, who was the CEO of Yahoo!, she's another very good example of what this glass cliff kind of looks like. So it doesn't really matter who would have been in that role at that time. They were pretty much doomed to fail. And there is a trend where women are typically placed into those roles at that time.

So I am foreseeing a situation where, as president, which I genuinely hope Kamala Harris will be our next president, she will be facing really just incredible scrutiny as the first woman, the first woman of color as president and where she doesn't make progress against these overwhelming problems facing American society, facing American foreign policy, where she doesn't show progress or success. She will be blamed personally, rather than having her work be contextualised within these systems of inequality. So, you know, we're talking the classic: the patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism. She will kind of be seen as the one responsible for her inability to fix things, when really we're just in a bit of a dumpster fire in the US. And there are such underlying systemic issues that no one person can come in and fix them in four years.

Luísa: So running for president is a tough run in itself, but this feels like uncharted territory, especially with Biden's unexpected move. I don't think the Democrats had a smooth succession plan in place. Well, we know that, and Harris feels like the candidate because of circumstance, a bit of a last minute saviour in an intense political climate. And honestly, I don't think this race, as it is currently set up, matches what American voters are demanding right now from politicians and from politics in general. But here we are. I guess, and what I want to know is, do you think America is ready to embrace a president who's not only a woman, but also a biracial woman, and especially under these pretty unique circumstances? How do you see all that playing out socially and politically right now in the US?

Marissa: I don't think there will ever be a time where we could say, American society is ready for a woman president, or ready for a woman of color as president. I think that's because there's still such strong voter bias due to gender and due to race. I recently read this really phenomenal blog post on LSE's website. It was by Dr. Sydney L. Carr-Glenn, and so she wrote about Kamala Harris and the upcoming election and talks about how black women, black women, politicians are perceived by voters to kind of be angrier, be more aggressive compared to non-black women politicians. So she's kind of measuring the racial prejudice of voters. And I think that piece of it does play a very strong part in how women of color are able to kind of move into leadership positions within American politics. So very well could be the case that had had things played out differently had we had the Democrats really tried to champion Kamala Harris from the beginning, maybe it wouldn't have worked. Maybe, you know, in the primaries she wouldn't have had the vote or buy in. And so she has come into this position of power in kind of a very interesting way, where Biden was very clearly not okay to run for president anymore. I think it kind of blows my mind that we have such older white men who just seem to cling on to these positions of power, rather than letting younger generation step into place. So I think it was the right thing to do to have Biden step down. I think there's probably quite a lot of strategy and tactic behind it as well. And and I think that the underlying issues of racism, of white supremacy, of sexism and patriarchy in the US means that it probably would have been next impossible for her to kind of organically come into the role of the presidential candidate and the Democratic candidate. I think it is kind of that thing of like, when is there ever a good time? There will always be people that will, you know, not want a woman in power, that will not want a person of color in power. Those prejudices will influence wider conversations, wider voting patterns. But I don't think that is a good enough reason to not pursue these things and to not encourage people to to step into these positions and to, you know, to write off Kamala Harris. She's incredibly competent. I think her track record demonstrates that she will make she has been making a very, very good Democratic candidate so far. I think she would be a very, very good president. And again, I think there's plenty that we could criticize her on the policy front, but her as a candidate, I think I'm quite fascinated by it and I think she would do an amazing job. So there's a lot of layers at play here and I'm. I'm very glad that it's come to to this where we are. We do have a Harris candidacy. I'm very excited by it. But I think there's also quite a lot of cultural commentary that can be pulled out in this particular situation. That kind of exposes the very deep flaws and very deep prejudices that exist within America right now.

Luísa: There’s also a lot to say about the way Kamala Harris is portrayed publicly, not just from, you know, the side of Trump's campaign where we expect opposition, but also in the mainstream media and on social media, too. We have seen this focus on her identity often overshadow her policy work, with critics saying she's not outlining her policy plans enough, although I think she has done plenty of that. And to me, that's a bit of a double standard because Trump isn't held to this same demand yet the Democrats are criticized for not doing more on this policy front. So do you think this portrayal, public portrayal of Kamala Harris has been balanced or how do you see these identity based narratives impacting her credibility in the eyes of the public? But also, if you think there is any hope of shifting this conversation back to her policies.

Marissa: Yeah, I mean, I've been out of the US for almost ten years now, and the longer I'm away, the more bizarre. I just find everything about American media and American politics and and just American society. If I'm honest, there's such a strong cult of personality, and individuals are placed on very high, high pedestals. And with that comes this kind of cult of party loyalty, where you get this Republican versus Democrat conversation. And the main bulk of that conversation revolves around insulting and discrediting and dehumanizing the other person or the other party. And this is all to to get votes, basically to secure the next your candidate as the, the person of the highest position of power in the country. And this comes this kind of bleeds down into the media as well. I think it's perpetuated by the media, but then also reflected by the media at the same time. So you get kind of more left leaning coverage, more in favor of the Democrats, of course, more right leaning coverage, more in favor of the Republicans. And and it's tough these days, I think, to find kind of neutral, more objective type of news reports, especially in American media. And it's just because it's becoming part of this bubble of this really kind of polar opposite conversation. I think a good example is. When Trump was being investigated and I don't know which one. All of the investigations he's been kind of involved in. Eric Trump said something along the lines of like, oh, I've never seen hatred like this before. Um, like these people, these Democrats, they're not even people to me. So there's just this element of like, you dehumanize the other person in order to make yourself look better. And the media plays a huge part in that, even when people say that and then the media reports on it. That sort of setting the narrative. Right. And so, you know, we've already seen a lot of racist coverage of Kamala Harris. We've seen Trump, we've seen other people in American politics making just absolutely wild comments about her and kind of invoking her identity as a means to critique her, rather than obviously focusing on the policies and what she would actually do as president. We're creating echo chambers, right where kind of Democrats are listening to Democrats. Republicans are listening to Republicans. But very interestingly, studies have been done that show perception tends to be that the other the other person, the other party is actually talking more badly about you than they are. So when you tell a Democrat, for example, that Republicans actually aren't bad mouthing them as much as they think they are, they then start to have a softer, more amenable perception towards the other person or towards the other party. There have been some very interesting kind of psychological studies around this. And so I do think this particular element of dehumanizing and then teaching people how to humanize other people is going to be a very essential part of fixing this dynamic with media coverage, with voter perception and kind of healing the quickness with which we jump to using people's identities as a way to criticize them, as a way to discredit them. When, you know, I think we're both in agreement. Really the focus. It's quite it's quite a nerdy, like, unglamorous thing. The focus should be on the policy. We should be talking about the policy. What are they actually going to do? You know, what are the platforms they're going to be kind of championing? It's it's less, uh, clickbait probably makes a bit less money when when you start talking about things in this way, which I think is another kind of underlying factor as to why media coverage is shaped in a certain way. Just following on from your points, Hillary Clinton was recently interviewed to compare the similarities and challenges with her own presidential run back in 2016, where she was asked if her campaigns opened the door for Kamala Harris, and reflecting on Clinton's courageous bid. Many analysts suggest that shaping her entire story around her identity as a woman might not have been the most effective political strategy at the time. If you remember, her campaign slogan was I'm with her. And she would often say that. Harris, however, seems to have taken a different approach, focusing less on identity and avoiding, you know, those questions and those soundbites. So given what you've said about visibility normalizing diverse leaders, do you think

Luísa: So given what you've said about visibility normalizing diverse leaders, do you think the Harris nomination could help at all redefine the traits we expect in these traditionally male roles in leadership styles, and how might these gradual shift impact the future of American women? You know, entering politics and and running for the presidency?

Marissa: I absolutely think so. I think her running. Helps to normalize just seeing different people in leadership roles, especially at these like ultra high levels of political leadership and just that process of visibility of, you know, creating a new norm, quote, unquote, if you will. I think there's a lot of power in that. And I think just the simple fact of, you know, young girls, younger women looking at someone achieving something makes it so much easier for them to think, oh, like, maybe I can do that as well. So I think it kind of does set this precedent of it's within the realm of possibility, whereas it's tough to be the first person to do something, um, and, and kind of take on that role. I also think an interesting thing I've always found with Hillary Clinton is the way she either I don't know if this is intentional, maybe subconscious, but I would argue that she has always taken on a much more kind of masculine, quote unquote persona with how she has presented herself. She's never come across as an ultra feminine woman, and I think a large contributing factor to that is because it's such an intensely patriarchal space, especially foreign policy. You know, she was secretary of state. She had to adhere to certain norms in order to even access that place of power in the first place. She had to fit in to kind of the existing systems. So the more we see women enter these spaces, the more normalized it is for different types of people to be in those positions of power, the less people will need to adhere to really specific ways of operating or behaving in order to be taken seriously. So I think that peace alone is very, very powerful. And it's slow. Right. Like, it's a really it's a bit of a bit of a marathon, this part of it. But I think we shouldn't underestimate the power that, that also has, the impact that that has in the long run.

Luísa: Given what you've just described, and if you could give a piece of advice to the Harris campaign, what would you say? I mean, how might Kamala Harris best frame her messaging for maximum impact while staying true to her honest, clear cut, values based approach to politics? And she's known for that, and I don't know what language choices or framing techniques could she employ to tackle highly polarized issues like the war in Gaza or sexual and reproductive health and rights in a way that not only, you know, convey honesty, but also resonates deeply with undecided voters who may be a bit tired of this blunt language.

Marissa: I think my advice to her would just be be bold. You know, Trump says exactly what he thinks. For better or for worse. It's kind of wacky. It's kind of shameless. And, you know, he's not playing by the rules. He's not kind of thinking about policy. He's not thinking about his impact on people. And I think now is the time to just be very bold and very honest with her approach and what she would bring and to not, like, play politics as part of that process. I think we're past playing politics, and what I mean by that is calling things for what they are calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide and appropriately handling it and de-escalating violence. And yes, that fundamentally changes the foreign policy relationship with Israel, which is a delicate thing. But I don't think we really do. We need to be delicate about these things anymore. I think we're past that point. You know, when it comes to reproductive rights, I think a very clear call for reinstating federal protection for abortion rights needs to be front and center and something taken seriously and something where it's not just it's not just words. It's not just. Language. But, you know, this very detailed commitment to here's how the justice system is failing women. Here's how the checks and balances are failing women. Here's how the setup of the Supreme Court and their ability to make these decisions are failing women. We're not just going to reform reproductive rights. We're also going to reform these wider things to make sure that decisions like the can't be taken anymore. So I think it would just be, you know, just just go for it. Just go. Go bold, go strong. Say what you think. Say what's right.It's not a time in the world. It's not a time in American society right now to dance around things anymore.

Luísa: I share your view that domestic issues will likely dominate, you know, voters decisions. But it's hard to ignore the effects of foreign policy, not just on, you know, the Biden administration, but on the image of Kamala Harris as a candidate. So I wonder how the Biden administration's role in the world might impact this election, whether we or the Democrats would like to admit it or not. So one last question if she were to lose the election, do you think that foreign policy, her vision of foreign policy and the fact that she is a sitting vice president in the Biden administration would play a role in a potentially negative outcome in November.

Marissa: I don't think foreign policy issues are going to be the main motivator behind why people vote the way they do. I think it's going to be domestic issues. It's going to be the economy. Um, this type of thing. However, there's obviously wider things at play. We know that there's disinformation around the election and obviously that is a foreign policy issue. Interference from other countries and that, you know, bleeds into how voters perceive certain candidates. So it's not quite a black and white answer. I guess in that in that way. But I think on the whole, my perception of why people will vote for certain candidates is really, really going to be centered around the domestic issues. The impact on foreign policy, of course, will be tremendous. What Trump means for foreign policy is, you know, black and white, from what Kamala Harris means for foreign policy. Um, and that makes me very nervous, very, very nervous, especially about the issue of Ukraine. Uh, if Trump gets into president, gets into the presidency. So we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Luísa: Marissa Conway, thank you so much for this look at the Harris campaign and a broader reflection on the importance of what's at stake for women running for the US presidency or for women entering politics in general. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope the US emerges victorious in November. And just as a goodbye. Thank you for listening and for supporting the gender diplomat. You can subscribe to the newsletter on the website. See you next time.

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