Kamala In The Kitchen
Harris loves food, yay. But why does her campaign want us to know that?
Living as I do, in a house of three cat ladies (and one dog with, we’ve decided, strong cat lady vibes), it is no surprise that we are now sign-on-the-lawn down for Kamala Harris. My 11-year-old and I were hooked on the debate Tuesday night, both for just how unhinged and meandering Trump was, and for how brilliantly Harris baited, trapped, and responded to him with her words and her body language. This is how you handle a toxic man who is up for the same job as you even though he’s wildly less qualified, I told her.
Harris won the debate decisively —and yet, as
wrote so succintly this week, that victory is also a problem: “Harris is likely to be punished by many people for her display of competence,” she says. “When women make men look bad, we are widely perceived as aggressors thanks to the workings of misogyny.”Kate rightly argues that we need to be on guard for the nasty woman attacks that Harris is “insufferable,” and didn’t “play fair” just because she…actually did the homework and came to the debate prepared to perform. She says we need to call this out for what it is: “Misogyny of the kind that loses crucial elections.” But it’s also worth noting that the Harris campaign has been quietly preparing to handle this kind of “I just don’t like her” pushback for years, by continually showing us the softer side of Harris: Kamala The Foodie. And the way we see Kamala loving food, cooking food, and eating food, says a lot about the way her team is marketing her as our first woman president.
