During a rousing endorsement of Kamala Harris’s bid for the White House, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed credit for smoothing the vice president’s path to victory.
Clinton’s enthusiastic support for Harris in a New York Times op-ed expressed a belief that the presumptive Democratic nominee can “defeat Donald Trump,” while mourning the “sexism” she believes surrounds American politics.
Clinton, however, believes Harris is in a better position because of her, writing on Tuesday that she’s proud “my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket.”
“I know a thing or two about how hard it can be for strong women candidates to fight through the sexism and double standards of American politics,” Clinton lamented as she looked back on her failed 2008 and 2016 bids for the White House. “It still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling.”
Clinton’s belief that misogynistic “MAGA mouthpieces” threaten female candidates was a running theme throughout her op-ed.
“I’ve been called a witch, a ‘nasty woman,’” Clinton wrote.
Clinton indicated that one of her most pressing worries is that sexist attacks would distort Harris’s record as vice president and California’s attorney general.
The former secretary of state vigorously defended Harris and the Biden administration for leading immigration initiatives: “Illegal border crossings are also dropping fast and are now the lowest they’ve been since 2020.” However, Clinton deplored the “unique additional challenges” she says Harris faces “as the first Black and South Asian woman to be at the top of a major party’s ticket.”
“Ms. Harris is chronically underestimated, as are so many women in politics”, the multimillionaire wife of former President Bill Clinton wrote as she heralded Harris, a former prosecutor, for taking on “drug traffickers, polluters, and predatory lenders.”
Hillary and Bill Clinton endorsed Harris for president shortly after Biden endorsed her on Sunday.
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Hillary Clinton’s defense of Harris’s resume comes as the vice president faces criticism for a historic rise in illegal immigration at the southern border.
For her part, Clinton maintains that even the “ugly prejudice” of Trump supporters can’t stop a Harris ticket from claiming the Oval Office. Female voters will be galvanized “like never before,” Clinton says, as Harris leads a movement that “become[s] an unstoppable wave.”
