Opinion

‘I do think she can win!’ Impromptu thoughts on Harris doubters.

Use the audio player or The Post’s “Impromptu” podcast feed to listen to the entire conversation.

Ruth Marcus: Perry, how do you see Vice President Harris’s political strengths? And in particular, can you address the question in 2024 of both gender and race and whether they are a net plus or a net minus? How do they impact the path going forward?

Perry Bacon: I think it is worth saying that I believe there is racism. I believe there is sexism. I think these are important forces in our culture. But Barack Obama won two elections. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in a third election.

All things being equal, you’d rather be a White person in a majority White country and probably a man in a country with some patriarchy. But I don’t think that Harris cannot win or that she is not electable based on her race and gender. I could imagine her winning because the country is so polarized. Trump is so unpopular.

To be totally honest here, my worry is that it seems like Trump is likely to win. And as a Black person, I do think when Joe Biden loses, one White man who is old loses. And when Kamala Harris loses, we’re going to have another round of discourse about whether it was race or gender.

I’m not looking forward to it because I think it’s a complicated question. Her previous run was not great. She struggled at times to figure out what she was for in their 2020 run. I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but I do think she can win.

Shadi Hamid: There has been a lot of discussion about if the Democratic Party passed over Kamala, whether that would lead to an internal civil war — that Black women and people of color would be outraged that another person of color was passed over. I just want to register that this troubles me, this way of talking. Because it makes people of color sound like all they care about are race and identity politics — that the only thing that Black women could possibly care about is whether another Black woman was the candidate.

And this kind of thinking is just so narrow-minded and patronizing. I mean, as a different kind of person of color, the idea that people would just see me in one particular way because I’m Arab or Muslim or Brown just really rubs me the wrong way. Let’s say there was an Arab or Muslim presidential candidate and we realized that this person was not best suited to actually beat Donald Trump or some other future Republican in 20 years. I would like to think that I could put that to the side and support a White person who had a better chance.

Listen to the full conversation here: