On Election Day 2024, I had a superstitious plan.
I was going to do everything differently.
I thought it was one of those days when wed want to know what we looked like.
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In 2024, I left while they were still sleeping and went to work at my polling place.
He didnt mean I was cranky or mean.
He meant a real witch.
Hillary Clinton at a press conference on Wednesday, November 9, 2016, in New York City
The vibe that day at my polling location was joyful.
A deejay played outside.
People were chatty, cooperative, upbeat.
Kamala Harris at Howard University on November 6, 2024, the day after the election.
Every time someone identified themselves as a first-time voter, our whole staff applauded.
At one point, a mom I knew from school came in.
She had her two daughters in tow, both first-time voters.
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All three of them wore black T-shirts that said, They Didnt Burn Witches.
I remember thinking that was a good sign.
I think this is it.
This has to be what it feels like.
Today feels joyful for 77 million American voters.
Eight years ago, in 2017, there was far less hesitation.
The version of resistance that surfaced wasnt perfect by any stretch, but it was historically decisive.
Many of us who were hot-wired into the resistance in 2017 have disconnected, which makes sense.
The first time Donald Trump came around, he seemed like an emergencyto women and democracy alike.
In an emergency, you put your life on hold.
But now Trump is back as a known quantity whom the electors expressly wanted.
We have to live.
We have to go to work.
Food costs the same whether you voted against your own body or not.
But the quiet of today is not just a quiet of burnoutits one of reflection and reckoning.
Im embarrassed at how Im struggling with this revelation.
I dont remember ever articulating that it meant something to me.
But 2016 and 2024 have made clear that I believe both these things.
Where did I get these ideas?
Digital political strategist Annie Wu Henry zeroes in on 2008 as a mythology-building moment.
I can always tell who got to vote for Obama, she says, with a laugh.
I thought my first vote for president was going to be for the first female president, she says.
Because of how that night turned out, I take nothing for granted.
Gen Z understands that every election could be an Obama moment or a Hillary Clinton moment.
Theyve been fighting against Trumpism and MAGA their entire lives already.
ForEmilys Listcommunications head Christina Reynolds, the root of a female-president dream goes back further.
I mean, my dad flew Marine One, so I was very aware of the White House.
Reynolds rode that early encouragement into a career in political strategy.
I think that made me more emotionally prepared for [Clintons loss], she says.
Well, maybe not.
Five months later, I broke down in a Sephora when Fight Song came on.
There was more of a dont-want-to-count-our-chickens feeling, she says.
People were afraid to get excited.
The crowds at the Music Box Theatre forSuffson Broadway missed that memo.
The sudden switch at the top of the ticket brought a whole new resonance to the show.
Wells earned her a Tony nomination.
Im a Black woman, the daughter of two immigrants, she says.
In the play, Wells and Terrell have ongoing debates over the value of aligning withand trustingwhite women.
We just held each other and cried, James says.
Then we looked at each other and said, We have to prepare ourselves for the rest.
All the things that ended up being said about Kamala, I could have written those scripts.
So it was a moment of celebration, but also girding.
When the curtain came up at the performance that day, the audience broke into its typical applause.
I believe we were her first rally, James says, laughing.
I felt so hopeful.
In that moment, I was like, Were gonna win.
Harriss eventual loss unearthed Jamess own attachment to the idea of seeing a female president.
When Hillary lost, it was devastating, but I didnt connect it to her being a woman.
To see two qualified, unbelievable women be dismissedit illuminated for me how far we havent come since 1920.
It wasnt just the election that another qualified female candidate lost.
My relationship around a future female president is that its going to be a fight, Henry says.
There are so many barriers, and Im a realist to a fault.
Ive always been more realistic than I should be, to be able to dream big.
When I was little, people would say to me, Youcan be president someday!
But I was a political kid.
I would say, No, sorry, I cant!
I wasnt born here.
Maybe I can be a senator, but not president!
Ive never been much for the darkest-before-the-dawn line of comfort thinking.
Thats not lost on me.
We think progress has to be incrementalbut it isnt always.
Reynolds agrees that the inherent disruption a female president would bring remains a solid advantage.
The voting electorate always wants change, she says.
Reynolds believes the blank slate of the 2028 presidential election will serve progressive female candidates well.
We dont have to go crawling back to whats safestthe old, white guys.
How safe are they, anyway?
Ninety-something percent of people who have lost presidential elections are men.
Harris issaid to be debating whether or not to run againin 2028.
And Henry cautions not to lose sight of what really decided things, in 2024.
Everywhere I traveled for this election, I talked to my Uber drivers, she says.
I remember this one guy in Michigan so clearly.
He was a born and raised Michigander, maybe 55, Black, working class.
I asked him, Are there any politicians you like?
The man had one answer: Gretchen Whitmer.
She asked him why.
She paved the roads, he said.
As potent a motive as sexism can seem, at times, its nothing compared to potholes.
They woke up at 4 a.m. in their hotel to check the results and were shocked.
Living in a male-dominated world, I always tend to protect my heart, Jenna says.
But something just felt different with Kamala.
I felt like she was going to win.
I was bawling my eyes out when I first heard Trump won, Izzy says.
Now I still feel nervous about him, she says.
But I know I need to stay strong and figure out ways to keep my rights as a woman.
I trust in my generation.
We really want a female president, and I feel confident it will happen.
When she did, I saw the back of the tee for the first time.
It was printed with a timeline of womens rights milestones.
1924, Native American women become citizens in their own country.
1965, Black women could vote.
2015, Women can marry each other.
It can be hard to accept that you might end up being part of history, not the future.
I wrote Jenna back, about the shirts.
My voodoo didnt work, I wrote.
Then again, neither did that random mans singing bowls and sage.
