It’s Not Because She’s a Woman

There was a moment last night, shortly before the major news networks begrudgingly announced that Donald Trump had won the state of Pennsylvania, when the journalists manning MSNBC’s election desk began looking a bit uneasy. The writing was on the wall: Kamala Harris was not only failing to win in crucial swing states but hemorrhaging voters in areas that Joe Biden had won by double-digit margins four years earlier. The camera panned from one commentator to the next, as if in search of an explanation, and this was when audiences received a preview of the coping strategy to come. 

“I think it’s important to say, anyone who has experienced this country’s history, and knows it, cannot have believed that it would be easy to elect a woman president, let alone a woman of color,” said a grim-looking Joy Reid. “I mean, this was really a historic, flawlessly run campaign.”

Whoomp, there it is. 

There were always signs that her supporters were ready to invoke the specter of sexism in the event of her defeat. The idea even got a high-profile test run in October, courtesy of Barack Obama, who scolded black male voters for failing to support Harris in the same numbers as they had supported his presidency in 2008. “You just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president,” he hectored. “I’ve got a problem with that.”

And in the hours since the race was officially called for Trump, the media has continued to double down on the notion that it was sexism that did it.