'Karens for Kamala?' Inside the White Women Zoom Call for Harris

“Karens for Kamala?” actress Connie Britton joked.

Britton was one of two celebrities, several politicians, and, reportedly, more than 100,000 others on a Zoom call advertised as a way for white women to “show up for Kamala Harris.” What transpired echoed advocacy around Hillary Clinton eight years ago. It was also oddly reminiscent in tone, if not substance, of missteps we’ve seen from conservatives like Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio), in which those who aren’t on board with your side are assumed to simply be deficient human beings.

Also, pop star Pink was there. And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) told a story about her and Britton having to drink toad venom after eating bad seafood.

The virtual gathering was organized by gun control activist and Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, who modeled the meeting after recent calls set up by and for black women and black men who want Harris for president.

According to Elizabeth Minnella, who served as a sort of master of ceremonies of the call, more than $1.8 million was raised last night. Urging viewers to group chat their friends with a fundraising link, Minnella said she would be dropping it into her favorite group chat, titled “Witches for Harris.”

“I am here tonight, embracing myself in your incredible, profound white women midst, because we’ve got a fucking job to do, y’all,” said Britton, who has starred in shows like Nashville, American Horror Story, and The White Lotus. She went on to suggest that because Vice President Kamala Harris is a woman, she will “listen. And lead with empathy, integrity, and the power of the truth.” When President Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee and endorsed Harris to take his place, “the world blew up. Did you feel it?” asked Britton. “It was seismic. Cosmic, even. And since then—have you seen it? Have you seen Kamala glisten in the brilliance and shine of her true power and leadership? And what does that feel like? Feels like self-love.”

“Women, when we are capable of opening up to our own voices and gifts, can access a love of self that is reflective…and can shine outward to unknown depths,” Britton continued. “Which brings me back to us. Beautiful, beautiful white women. Here we are gathered together.”

If Britton sounds a bit gender essentialist, a bit patronizing, a bit woo-woo—well, that was just in keeping with the overall vibes of the call. At least Britton’s “Karens for Kamala” joke was one of the few moments in which speakers weren’t positively radiating self-seriousness.

If there was an underlying theme, it was that white women needed to use their privilege to elect Harris—or else.

“White women, we have 100 days to help save the world!” Watts said.

White women need to “step up and out and into the gap between democracy and fascism,” said author Glennon Doyle. Then, on election night, they would know “that we were among the women who finally united, and…we saved the goddamn world.”

The call was steeped in all the hallmarks of 2016 activism around Hillary Clinton and, in 2020, activism around Harris’ first presidential campaign. There was the insistence that the stakes couldn’t be higher (the very fate of the world) and that organizing for the Democratic candidate wasn’t just politics but an act of bravery. There were a lot of privilege acknowledgments, paired with scorn for any white women who might use their privilege in ways that Democrats don’t like.

And, oh boy, was the politics-as-self-care style of activism on display.

Much of the call was permeated with a sort of social-media therapy speak, as if winning the election for Harris is just a matter of enough white women self-actualizing.

Political activism is full of discomfort, risk, and backlash, and “that’s why white women so rarely do this work,” said Doyle. “Because it’s not safe. Because you have to get your hands dirty. Because you might make your neighbors uncomfortable. Because you also desperately need to be approved of and liked.” But white women need to care “more about our children’s futures than our own comfort,” suggested Doyle, insinuating that the only reason women might not advocate and vote for Harris was self-consciousness.

“This tonight…is a gathering of people with white privilege, discussing what we are going to do, what we are going to use our privilege for,” said poet and activist Andrea Gibson, who noted that she is “actively hunting out” the parts of herself that are “misguided.”

“Thank you, I feel like we all just went to collective therapy,” Minnella responded after Gibson’s talk.

As a collective empowerment session for white women, the call couldn’t have been more on point. And, hey, this is what a lot of base-rallying looks like. (“Make America Great Again” events, too, are often more about making former President Donald Trump fans feel they’re part of a virtuous club than about expanding the base.) Besides, nearly $2 million raised is nothing to sneeze at.

But as an exercise in convincing people who are unconvinced that they should vote for Harris—which at least some messaging around this call insinuated—it was way off mark.

Many of the speeches on last night’s call went light on things Harris has done or that she stands for, instead emphasizing her womanhood or the simple fact that she’s not Trump and/or a Republican. That’s a good way to rally people who already support your party and candidate, but not a good way to convince people who may be considering a third-party vote, not voting at all, or a vote for Trump.

This has been a staple of pro-Harris advocacy since Biden dropped out. Writer Kat Rosenfield called it “fandom politics”—an advocacy “fueled by rhetoric that is participatory fun for people already in the fandom, but categorically not persuasive to people outside it.”

As with Clinton fans in 2016 and Harris supporters in 2020, many #KHive types seem unwilling to interrogate the idea that women could be turned off by Harris (or any Democrat) for reasons other than internalized “white supremacy” or misogyny.

“The bad news is that a majority of white women vote for Republicans, because too many of us believe, subconsciously, that it is in our best interest to use our privilege and our support systems of white supremacy and the patriarchy to benefit us,” said Watts.

Watts went hard on the fact that majorities of white women often vote Republican. But as a voting block, white women are actually complicated. “At 39 percent of the electorate, white women are our nation’s largest voting bloc. They are also our most divided, with voting patterns that split along religious, educational, and marital status lines,” notes Democracy. “Every other demographic group votes more uniformly.”

Perhaps that’s part of why the idea of organizing a “white women for Harris” call seems so strange.

There’s nothing wrong with organizing folks who share certain affinities in order to discuss and act on political goals. But convening a group as broad as white women based solely on the basis that they are white women feels like losing the plot. It assumes white women by and large are more similar than they are different, just by virtue of being white and women. It is collectivist to its core. It laughs in the face of individuality.

On last night’s call, there was little room for the idea that some white women might vote Republican because they are Republican. They might favor Republicans for reasons having nothing to do with being women—that they might like, say, their regulatory stances or tax policies—or that they might even agree with ultra-conservative views on issues like abortion and what can be taught in schools.

It’s a mirror image of what we see with some segments of the right, best exemplified this week by old J.D. Vance comments about Democrats being “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” This sort of sentiment—which is far from relegated to Vance alone—has led to an outcry from not just progressives but conservative-leaning women too.

Vance’s comments are part of a common trope among a certain strain of conservative men, that all women who vote Democrat are simply miserable harpies who hate children, men, and traditional families, hate their own lives, and have problems with mental health and emotional regulation. This is insulting, of course (especially considering that many single and/or childless women aren’t that way by choice).

But it’s also lazy—as lazy as assuming that all white women who won’t vote for progressive candidates are simply sexists and bigots.

Both parties would do well to stop drinking so much of their own Kool-Aid. To step out of their respective echo chambers and realize how alienating this kind of rhetoric can be to normie voters and genuine independents—the ones who may have some political opinions but aren’t highly ideological, who don’t have a fanatical attachment to one side. The best way to call these voters in is probably not to insult or shame them—for their marital status, the number of offspring they’ve borne, their privilege, their past voting habits, or anything else—but to offer a positive vision of what your candidate represents.

Unless those “Witches for Harris” are mighty talented at spellcasting, Harris supporters should probably focus more on how a Harris presidency would help the country and less on how it would help white women to be good allies or show self-love. But if 2016 and 2020 are any indication, a lot of progressive white women are going to learn this lesson too late, if at all.

The post ‘Karens for Kamala?’ Inside the White Women Zoom Call for Harris appeared first on Reason.com.

Source: https://reason.com/2024/07/26/karens-for-kamala-inside-the-white-women-zoom-call-for-harris/