Kamala Harris hits back for the sake of her campaign — and women everywhere

In recent days Vice President Harris has flooded the airwaves, appearing on a long list of high profile and nontraditional media platforms to spread her message to voters across the country. In each appearance from Fox News to syndicated radio host Charlamagne tha God, she has smartly and pointedly hit back, directly and indirectly, against former President Trump and the attacks and smears that have been relentlessly hurled at her from the right. 

It’s both the right time and the right strategy. As the first woman of color to be a presidential nominee, Harris already has faced a massive double standard in expectations, and an absurdly high bar compared to her opponent. But history and research show that the only way to upend the double standard confronting women candidates is to fight back fearlessly. 

Renowned gender and politics researcher Celinda Lake looked at this question in depth, as have other researchers working to support women’s political participation here and around the world. They found that, in most instances, directly, calmly and powerfully clapping back at perpetrators of sexist attacks shifts the public perception of women running for office in positive ways. It makes them look strong and unintimidated. And importantly, research has found that not responding can make women look weak.

According to a study by the Barbara Lee Foundation, “there’s a longtime misperception that silence is a strong response when women experience sexism—this research suggests otherwise. Ignoring or being perceived as turning a blind eye to serious incidents of sexism can potentially result in blowback against women candidates because voters want to see strength and backbone.” Going high, as Michelle Obama once urged, is not an option.  

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For good reason. Since President Biden stepped aside as the Democratic candidate, All In Together, the national non-partisan women’s civic and political education organization that I founded, has been tracking instances of racist and sexist attacks against Harris. Since the beginning of 2024, and especially since launching her candidacy, they have exploded online.

There have been 170,000 unique individual public posts, (not including replies and shares) on Twitter/X, Instagram, and TikTok, containing racist and/or sexist attacks against her, creating 8.86 billion impressions. There have also been hundreds of deepfake AI-generated attacks. The sheer volume of these horrific attacks is sure to be helping shape and warp public perception of her, just as they impacted perceptions of Hillary Clinton in 2016.

While the attacks come from diverse sources including foreign actors who are working to disrupt the election, former President Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, have contributed significantly to them. Most pernicious in the line of attack are the claims that she’s not a serious person, that she has mental deficiencies, and that she used sex to get ahead in her career.  Just a few days ago, Trump called her a “retard.” A smear that’s profoundly offensive for a long list of reasons.

Of course, such smears against women candidates are not unique to Harris; they have become an all-too-common campaign tactic everywhere. Studies show that globally, incidences of gendered disinformation and attacks against women running for elected office have exploded in scale and impact, especially driven by autocratic leaders who often rise by marginalizing women’s political power.  As a result, many women in the U.S. and around the world have opted to leave their races or politics altogether rather than face attacks that can be violent, scary and dangerous in nature.

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Over the last decade, as I have worked to bring more women into the political process and served in local elected office myself, I have seen how such attacks can have a profoundly negative effect on the public perception of women leaders.

At one point during my elected term, threats on social media against me and my children were so serious I had police stationed outside my house. Women who might have made great candidates saw what I went through and opted not to run. It may be one reason why in 2024 after years of progress, fewer women are running for office. 

Harris benefits however from the lessons learned by others and, frankly, from the mistakes made by the Hillary Clinton campaign. In 2016, social media was flooded with sexist smears and disinformation about Clinton — much of it fed, we now know, by Russian sponsored troll farms who sought to sow division. They succeeded in large part because the campaign was unprepared to fight back. It was too new for them to fully appreciate the damage that was being done in real time or to effectively counter the destructive narrative.

This time is different.

All In Together found that Harris has been winning the online Infowars for weeks. Since August, the positive responses and pushback to racist and sexist smears of her online has been double the volume of the negative attacks. This “Fight Back Ratio,” fueled by an extraordinary formal and informal online army of supporters, may be one reason that Harris’ favorables in most polls have grown steadily all summer despite the volume of smears.

And now Harris herself is fighting back, reminding voters that she’s strong, prepared and unintimidated. In her groundbreaking interview with radio superstar Charlamagne Tha God, she responded head on to some of the most common attacks. When asked about repeating her talking point too often Harris replied smartly and in a subtle dig at her opponent’s meandering blabber — “it’s called discipline.” And she did not hold back on Trump saying, “the man is really quite weak. He’s weak. It’s a sign of weakness that you want to please dictators and seek their flattery and favor.”

The Vice President and her team are now making all the right moves to simultaneously play offense and defense. Her win on substance and strategy is urgent, not just for this election, but for the sake of women’s political participation now and in the future.

Lauren Leader is co-founder and CEO of All In Together, a non-profit women’s civic leadership organization and host of MAJORITY RULES on www.2WAY.TV