Twice as good for half the respect: Kamala Harris’ battle for the White House

Kenny Holsten/EPA/AAP by Clare Corbould, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of color, Vice President Kamala Harris. Using past elections as our guide, we could have expected an outpouring of commentary on this potentially historic moment. Why haven’t we seen this? We could point to the gravity of the election, as Trump and the Republicans ramp up their ethnonationalist rhetoric. We could also point to a continuing desire in media circles for disunity in the Democratic Party; the chances of which have been stymied by Biden’s late withdrawal from the nomination process followed by a swift endorsement of Harris. But the best and most simple explanation is simply that the legacy media have not –at least for the first few days of her campaign – taken Harris’s candidacy seriously enough. The reason is that they have not taken Harris herself seriously enough. Narratives about Harris’ 2019 campaign for the nomination to lead the Democratic Party ticket said it was “unclear what she stood for”. We have heard that judgment repeated in recent days, including in liberal media...