“Something is happening in America,” Hillary Clinton told a rapturous crowd at the United Center on the first night of the Democratic convention. “You can feel it. Something we’ve dreamed for a long time.”
Clinton’s speech to Democrats starved for a win was about a lot of things — including electing the first female president.
“Together we’ve put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. Tonight, so close to breaking through once and for all, I want to tell you what I see through all those cracks. And why it matters for each and every one of us. What do I see? I see freedom” — for our lives, our loves and our families. And more.
Where we left off on this story of electing the nation’s first female president, it was 2016. Clinton’s backers got the shocking bad news about Donald Trump’s victory standing under a glass ceiling put up at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York.
Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, was supposed to shatter that glass ceiling that night and become the nation’s first female president.
“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but someday someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now,” Clinton said in her concession speech.
I wasn’t sure then when “sooner” would be.
Now we know it could be 2024. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, if elected, would be the first female president. Also, the first woman of color.
Clinton, born in Chicago and raised in Park Ridge — a former secretary of state, New York senator and first lady — threw a spotlight on finally cracking that glass ceiling on Monday in her Democratic convention speech. She noted that her mother, Dorothy, was born in Chicago before women had the right to vote.
Before Clinton spoke, Harris had gone on stage for a few minutes.
She gave us just a taste. Thursday is her big night. She talked about the future. That’s the message. The future.
I was standing on the floor when she came out. The United Center exploded in cheers.
She wore a pantsuit. As did Clinton. Nothing special. But back in the day — when Clinton was running for president, her pantsuits were, for some — not me — news. Now, it’s not a thing.
The Harris campaign is not playing up the glass-ceiling angle. At least not yet. Clinton and her backers leaned heavily into, as they put it at the time, the “herstory” at stake.
Monday morning, I asked Minyon Moore, the chair of the Democratic National Convention Committee, about Clinton and Harris and if the road in 2024 will lead to a female president.
“Clinton, she has paved the way. And I want to also level set, she has been an incredible partner to Vice President Harris. They have a great friendship. You know, they’re on speed dial with each other,” Moore said.
“I say this all the time — we’re trying to change, to shift the mindset of people to see a woman as commander-in-chief,” Moore said.
Chatting with Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza in the late afternoon on the convention floor, under the Illinois pole marking where the delegates from our state sit, I asked about electing a female president.
Mendoza flashed back on the devastating 2016 election night.
“That was the night of my election as comptroller for the state of Illinois. Tammy Duckworth and I both got elected for the first time in our current positions that night,” Mendoza said, referring to the U.S. senator.
“We thought it was going to be a trifecta, and it was the weirdest thing that, at the victory party, where everyone was (supposed to be so) happy, everyone was crying, people in the front of my victory party bawling their eyes out because we couldn’t believe that she didn’t pull through,” Mendoza added.
“And so you better believe that’s not gonna happen this time. We’re not gonna be denied twice. So it is our time. Women are here to stay, and it’s about time that the leader of the free world is a badass woman.”