It has taken just a few short weeks for voters in Democratic caucuses across the country to send the race into uncharted territory — sending women to the top echelon in the presidential pack for the first time in history; giving the so-called shoo-ins Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden a jolt that they may not recover from at the polls. They are being challenged by Elizabeth Warren and by Kamala Harris.
While Biden and Sanders still control the major purse strings in the Democratic campaign, both Warren and Harris have made surprising strides in accumulating both large scale and small scale donations from a broad spectrum of political funding groups — including unions, small business owners, and, surprisingly, farm groups in the Midwest.
Both women have done very well in the televised debates, scoring points off their male counterparts in areas such as economic inequality, race relations, and immigration. One of their biggest advantages is that both are perceived by a large segment of the American public as untainted by ‘Beltway Fever’ — the lust for power and prestige that supposedly affects all presidential candidates.
Many feminist organizations are now urging Warren and Harris to combine on the same ticket, with Warren running for president while Harris fills the VP spot. Such a combination would make a powerful team — but such a plan must wait until further primaries are conducted in the next few weeks; a process that will weed out nearly half of those currently in the Democratic sweepstakes.
