Almost as quickly as Democrats took a sigh of relief after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign, many also started holding their breath.
There was relief because a diminished, doubted 81-year-old candidate stepped aside and endorsed 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. After weeks of criticism and calls for the president to pass the torch, Biden was instantly loved and praised for his patriotism and selflessness in dropping out of the race.
But then the panic set in. Will the country elect a woman, let alone a woman of color, as president?
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million in 2016 but not the Electoral College. Donald Trump claimed three blue wall states in 2016: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He lost them to Biden in 2020. Potentially facing a woman again on the ballot in 2024, could Trump win those swaths of the Rust Belt again?
Here are some big reasons Harris, if she’s the nominee, is not a repeat of Clinton in 2016: