At This Year’s DNC, Every Night Is Ladies’ Night. It’s About Time

The first nights of the Democratic National Convention have been the polar opposite of what played out at the RNC. Instead of aggrieved masculinity, joyful and determined Democratic women stole the show—implicit in their presence and explicit in their speeches that this election will be a major milestone in feminist history.

The biggest DNC star was, of course, the hopeful future Madame President, Kamala Harris herself. Harris made an unexpected appearance Monday night in a tan pantsuit—perhaps a cheeky nod to Barack Obama, who set off a mini-scandal when we wore a beige suit to a 2014 press conference?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cemented her status as a Democratic talent with a primetime spot, less an up-and-comer than a young woman who came to Congress, moved the party left, and is now a power player flexing her political muscle. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), another rising star, teared up when she told a personal story of Harris helping her through hard days in office, Dr. Jill Biden brought her usual heart, and the three women who spoke about the necessity of abortion rights through their own devastating stories of miscarriage, near death, and surviving rape and incest made for the most poignant and important moments of convention's opening night.

On Tuesday, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) linked her military service fighting for American freedoms to the fight for reproductive rights—a battle she has a stake in, having conceived her daughters with the help of IVF. Michelle Obama, the greatest living American politician to have never run for office, brought down the house.

Every woman who spoke made one thing clear—they came to win.

For one woman in particular, this must have been a bittersweet scene: Hillary Clinton, the best-known woman in American politics and the person so many of us were sure would be ending her second term right now. While Harris has been careful as a candidate to steer clear of talking about race and gender too explicitly, or at least to avoid talking about her own and the history-making potential of her campaign, Clinton spoke with no such constraints during her DNC appearance. She ran through a list of feminist political trailblazers, from Shirley Chisholm to Geraldine Ferraro to her own run in 2016 and the outpouring of rage and grief that followed her loss. Through all of it, even the defeats, “we kept our eyes on the future,” she said. “Well, my friends, the future is here.”

Even with a younger and more energetic candidate on the ticket, the Democratic Party still has an uphill battle ahead. One of the party’s biggest challenges is knitting together its diverse coalition. This year, Democrats are trying to secure support from working-class white men and college-educated liberal women; the young Black and Latino men who have been defecting to Trump and their partners, peers, sisters, mothers and grandmothers who have long been among the most reliably Democratic voters. Every piece of music the campaign plays at rallies and every piece of merchandise it touts online is calibrated to appeal to one or several of these groups—without alienating the others. And Harris, it seems, has determined that overtly voicing her own ambition may push away voters she wants to pull in more than it will motivate those she wants to keep.

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So, then, Clinton played the role of wing woman, making an unabashed appeal to the liberal women who were With Her, who aren’t embarrassed to say that they want to see a woman in the White House. Yes, these women are overwhelmingly supporting Harris anyway. But it’s Clinton who rallied the troops. And while it’s technically Joe Biden who is stepping back so Harris can step up, it was also Clinton who was visibly ceding her place in politics to a younger candidate—and leaving a ladder behind for her to climb.

Having a female president will not, of course, end sexism in America or even make the playing field even for women in politics. But as woman after woman took the stage on Monday night, it was clear not just that women are far more integrated into the Democratic Party than the GOP, but that women have fundamentally changed the party from within—and for the better.

None of this was what we were expecting six weeks ago. The show of Democratic unity is certainly not what most talking heads assumed would happen if—or, as it turned out, when—Biden stepped down. This moment is a hopeful one, with voters and party leaders alike seeming to agree that Democrats are back in the race. And it is a historic race in its abnormality, with a one-term president dropping out so late in the cycle and a quick coronation of a replacement about whom Democratic voters seem to have gone from meh to mania.

But it’s also historic because of who Harris is, what she stands for, and the degree to which she embodies a fundamentally changed Democratic Party. Rights for women have been a generations-long fight. On stage at the DNC, that long struggle entered a new phase.