US exceptionalism is reflected in a number of ways with important political ramifications. The electoral college and the composition of the Senate violates the modern democratic principle of majority rule. The American presidency is a medieval office as it combines the functions of a head of state as well as of government and is an anachronism amongst modern constitutional practices. It was described by Schlesinger as imperial and continues to be so. The defeat of two well-educated wo men presidential candidates in 2016 and 2024 by a pronounced misogynist male supremacist reflects this exceptionalism. On crucial issues of economic equality, racial integration and women’s rights, the US, according to Dahl, has fallen behind other nations seriously denting its soft power status too.
The US Constitution did not forbid slavery nor did it empower Congress to do so. It also did not guarantee the universal right of suffrage. Initially only, white male landowners had the right while women, African-American and native Americans struggled hard and long to secure it despite Washington wishing for an end of slavery and incorporation of native Americans in the political process as equals. The 14th amendment (1866), passed after the Civil War ended slavery and granted the right to all adult males and the 15th amendment (1870) stated that voting rights could not be denied on account of race. But it wasn’t until the 1960s after the Civil Rights Movement that African-Americans secured the right to vote. Women despite their struggle since the 1820s got the right to vote in 1920 through the 19th amendment.
The first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet was Frances Perkins as Secretary of Labour. She was appointed in 1933 by President Roosevelt and served until 1945. Till date, seven women have served as labour secretary, the highest number. Since 1933, some 83 women have been part of different presidential cabinets. The highest number, 19, were in Obama’s Cabinet followed by 17 and 15 in the cabinets of Biden and Clinton respectively. All three were presidents from the Democratic Party. Women occupied three of the top Cabinet posts in the Biden Administration, the vice president, secretary of treasury and director of national intelligence. It is for the first time women hold these three positions. Biden’s Cabinet was mul ti-racial as it included four White and four Black women, one AsianAmerican, one Hispanic, one American-Indian and one multiracial woman. The cabinets of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon were exclusively male. There were four women in Carter’s Cabinet. Other than being visible in the corridors of power and decision-making the important issue is whether women were part of the inner cabinet which included secretaries of state, defence, treasury and the attorney general that serve as counsellors to the president as opposed to the outer cabinet which included soft departments like housing, commerce and welfare, where the role, as Cronin observes, is one of advocacy.
In 2020, Kamala Harris, a person with African and Indian roots became the first woman vice president. This big push for women’s presence was because of the emergence of socio-economic and humanitarian concerns like human rights, safety nets for all, environmental protection besides women’s empowerment with the end of the Cold War in most of the well-established democracies of the world. The president’s cabinets since the mid-1990s are no longer all-male as it was in the 1950s. Zweigenhaft and Domoff point out that the powerelite has become more multicultural and gender sensitive as more women and minorities are visible in corporate boards, cabinets and as Supreme Court Judges. Women made it to the inner cabinet positions. Hillary Clinton made her bid for the presidency first in 2008 and then in 2016. There were 12 aspirants before her; Victoria Woodhull from the Equal Rights Party was the first presidential candidate in 1872. When Hillary lost to Obama in 2008, she referred to the ‘highest and hardest glass ceiling’ which she could not shatter but certainly gave “about 18 million cracks” to.
In 2016, she was able to garner 54 per cent of the overall women’s vote which included 94 and 68 per cent from black and Latin women respectively. Her adversary, Trump, secured 53 percent of white wo men’s vote bringing out the stark racial divide among American women. Hillary had the support of 51 per cent of college educated white women. Trump secured the overwhelming support of non-college educated white women. White women in 2016 supported Trump over Hillary because of his policy positions and his record as a businessman, which for many meant values of hard work and sense of effort. Another important reason was that Trump, a pro-life advocate, would as president be able to nominate the right kind of Supreme Court judges, which effectively meant overturning Roev Wade and returning the question of abortion rights to the states, which the Supreme Court eventually did. They also felt that Trump would be more effective when it came to dealing with radical Islam and terrorism. Despite his anti-women statements, many white women were troubled with Hillary’s political record, her failings, and her dynastic advantage. Working class white women were concerned more with economic and cultural issues than gender and race.
Hillary’s focus was the white collared workers, overlooking the concerns of the blue collared ones who were hurting the most due to globalization, automation and free trade policies. The blue-collared workers perceived her as part of the global elite. She also neglected the Rust Belt, the hub of manufacturing industries, and rarely spoke of jobs and the economy, a major concern among the working class of all races. Bill Clinton advised a change in strategy and policy which she ignored. Hillary’s overemphasis on identity politics moved the Democratic Party away from the coalition that made it a mainstream majoritarian party post the 1968 Chicago Convention that saw the dismantling of the Daley machine and side-lining issues like social security and solidarity which continued since the New Deal.
The Democratic Party felt comforted that Trump, like Nixon and George W. Bush, won with the help of the electoral college vote while Hillary had the majority of the popular vote. Vice President Harris came into the presidential race accidentally in 2024 following Biden’s decision to quit a few mon – ths before the election and without the scrutiny of a primary. Despite her repeated utterances of the need to turn the page, she was unable to convince voters of what new she would bring. For the fear of being projected as disloyal, she did not distance herself from Biden’s track record either. The Biden-Harris administration was rated poorly on the twin raging issues of immigration and inflation. Harris assumed, following the 2022 elections, that if she put reproductive rights at the centre of her agenda, she would mobilize angry women and secure record votes which did not happen. This emphasis on abortion was also a reason for Harris’ poor showing among men, just 43 per cent down from Biden’s 48 per cent in 2020. CNN estimates that women voted for Harris by smal – ler margins, by 10 points less than 15 points for Biden and 13 for Hillary. White women voted for Trump, just as in 2016 and 2020. Black women, the mainstay of the Democratic Party, supported Harris by 85 points.
“A main takeaway this year,” according to Amanda Becker “is that a gender gap that many political experts predicted could be historic did not materialize, in part because the share of the women’s electorate that Harris won decreased across all age groups, except for women over 65. These women were motivated by the same issues that were important to the overall electorate, like the economy, threats to democracy, immigration and abortion, something central to Harris’ failed bid for the presidency.” The gender gap in the US has been apparent since the 1980s. More women than men have since 1996 voted for the Democrats. Men and women have favoured different candidates in presidential elections since 2000 with the exception of 2008 when men were divided in their preferences for Obama and McCain.
Moreover, women aren’t a monolithic voting bloc. White women since 2000 have voted for the Republican candidate except when they were equally split between Gore and Bush. Black, Latin and Asian women have supported Democratic candidates. The defeat of Hillary in 2016 and Harris in 2024 underlines the point that while gender is an important social division, it cannot be the only basis of mass political identity to structure political debates nor establish political parties.
Gender like class is a mega-category which makes it less cohesive and hinders collective identification and mobilization. A person in a modern society is one of multiple identities that includes besides gender, social class, race, ethnicity, religion, language, region and the like. Harris and Hillary lost not because they were women but because they were not perceived as the right choice. Unlike 2016, Trump won the popular vote in 2024, carrying every key swing state, a disquieting fact for the Democratic party. A significant number of Democrats are of the view that it might be decades before the US gets a female president. Many are re-examining their commitment to fielding diverse candidates, especially women.
Interestingly 40 per cent of both Democrats and Republicans feel that a woman will not be elected to the nation’s highest office in their lifetime. The top position in the US still eludes women.
Men still continue to have a disproportionate share in the political process putting the US far behind not only Scandinavian countries but also some of the developing countries of South Asia and Africa. Globally, less than 30 per cent of parliamentary seats are held by women, and fewer than 30 countries are led by women, raising a fundamental question about the nature of representative systems that neglects half of the population. The American democratic system has accommodated and broadened but the challenge of sexism and racism persists as long as the voters want an imperial presidency. This is the seamier side of US exceptionalism.
(The writer is a retired Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi)