Jill, Michelle, Hillary and the Curious Force of First Ladies
They leveraged their platforms and wielded their influence as election results came up short.
Three iconic women in modern American politics—First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, former First Lady Michelle Obama and Sec. Hillary Clinton—for weeks rallied to get out the vote, but their efforts to help elect Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris fell short in a stunning and decisive defeat Wednesday by former President Donald Trump, now the president-elect.
There was a thrust of energy infused in the Harris campaign that began at the Democratic National Convention in August where Harris was named the Democratic presidential nominee after President Joe Biden decided not to run for reelection. Democrats showed an enthusiasm for their new candidate that harkened back to the first presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. So much so, Michelle Obama at the convention this summer declared “hope was making a comeback.”
It was Donald Trump, however, who made the bigger comeback—this time winning the Electoral College and the popular vote.
As the outcome of this remarkable election with its unprecedented markers—Trump, a convicted felon surviving two attempted assassinations; Joe Biden, a sitting president who lost the faith of his party; and Harris, the first woman of color to run for president within a truncated time period—continues to be examined and debated, it didn’t go unnoticed the efforts three first ladies put in to support the Democratic nominee and to get people to the polls.
History shows that first ladies have sway both in and after the White House. As first lady, Clinton’s 1995 remarks, “Women’s rights are human rights” at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, were embraced as an international rallying cry for gender equality. Michelle Obama in her post-White House years established the nonprofit When We All Vote that reached 10 million voters ahead of the election and helped register thousands of new voters while advancing civic education. And, Dr. Biden led the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research that in the past year has funneled millions of dollars to research efforts focusing on new treatments and products in support of women’s health.
Never had there been a time in history, according to scholars studying United States first ladies, when sitting and former first ladies all leveraged their platforms and wielded their influence to rally support for a presidential candidate, a woman.
“They all had an impact,” said Myra Gutin, immediate past president of First Ladies Association for Research and Education and author of The President's Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century and Barbara Bush: Presidential Matriarch, who believed the greatest impact came from Obama with her speech at the Democratic National Convention in August exhorting people to “do something” and echoing the Harris campaign’s mantra, “We’re not going back.”
“The [Harris] campaign needed a rallying cry,” Gutin said. “It represented the idea that we just were not going to go back in time and give up freedoms.”
The former first ladies brought out the crowds and brought in the fundraising dollars, said Anita McBride, former chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush and co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women.
“They are popular and experienced campaigners,” McBride said. “It certainly was a striking example of the power of using their political platform. Gender issues were their primary message. They were disciplined to stay on point with that particular campaign strategy.”
—Anita McBride, former chief of staff to former First Lady Laura Bush and co-author of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women
“They are popular and experienced campaigners,” McBride said. “It certainly was a striking example of the power of using their political platform. Gender issues were their primary message. They were disciplined to stay on point with that particular campaign strategy.”
Lisa Burns, professor of Media Studies at Quinnipiac University and co-editor of Cambridge Companion To U.S. First Ladies, set to release in 2025, was surprised at how active Jill Biden was on the campaign trail in recent weeks by helping the Harris campaign’s ground game and by spending much of her time visiting campaign headquarters and helping with phone banks.
“These ‘get out the vote’ efforts are critical in such a close race,” Burns said, noting that Biden spoke to a key target demographic—older white women voters—who the Harris campaign needed.
On the flip side, Burns went on to say, Clinton and Obama were not as active as some might have expected. Clinton mainly offered her support online and on social media, at the Democratic National Convention and during her book tour while promoting her new memoir, Something Lost, Something Gained. This approach, Burns said, may have been strategic by not wanting to remind voters of 2016.
Meanwhile, it’s well known that Michelle Obama doesn’t like campaigning, even though she’s incredibly good at it and considered a strong “closer,” Burns added, suggesting that’s likely why the campaign saved her until the final weeks.
“She’s still very popular. When she speaks, people listen,” Burns said. “We saw this in Michigan where she gave that powerful speech calling out men, asking them not to make the women in their lives ‘collateral damage’ to their rage.”
Gutin also believed Obama, who in 2016 campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while she was the incumbent first lady, was effective in connecting with people imploring them not to sit back and then implicitly asking them to vote.
Part of the first ladies’ appeal, according to Nancy Kegan Smith, president of First Ladies Association for Research and Education and a former archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration who retired as Director of the Presidential Materials Division in 2013, is that they “often connect in a more personal way with their audiences on issues” and humanize the candidate.
“I think spouses in the next immediate elections will not have that luxury and will be expected to take part and be seen.”
—Teri Finneman, journalism professor at the University of Kansas who studies media portrayals of first ladies and co-editor of Cambridge Companion To U.S. First Ladies
So the election outcome, preceded by polls predicting a race that was a virtual toss-up, is baffling, according to Teri Finneman, a journalism professor at the University of Kansas who studies media portrayals of first ladies and co-editor of Cambridge Companion To U.S. First Ladies. She also finds the future impact of first ladies as a result of this election cycle curious.
“Melania Trump took a decidedly different approach from any modern major presidential candidate spouse by declining to participate in the campaign,” Finneman said. “I think spouses in the next immediate elections will not have that luxury and will be expected to take part and be seen. But, it will be interesting to consider the longer-term impacts of this and how the modern first lady role could change if it becomes seen as more optional to fulfill, particularly if [Melania], again, takes a more low-key approach to this position in the next four years.”
The Weekly Wrap
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