A six-minute test of Kamala Harris

An initial evaluation of the Democrat on foreign affairs.

Our interviews with Pennsylvania voters last week included one with a woman who questioned whether a woman could be president. She specifically asked whether Kamala Harris would be accepted as an equal on the world stage:

I'm concerned with Kamala, a woman, when you go up against somebody in the world like Putin and what's happening in China and some of those countries. I am concerned about that. I don't know that it's the right time. Running the country is one thing, but international affairs is a whole another issue… Because we are such a large, powerful country, it's not like if you had a woman in a smaller country.

I’ve since been in enough other conversations to know she is not the only person asking this.

Some people are likely to be offended and angry that anyone would ask this question. Still, the people who ask it are citizens who have the vote. You can address their question, or you can leave them to their own devices. Either way, they still have the vote. And as I heard the question, I realized that there was a simple test people could apply to answer it for themselves.

When we get down to it, the question is the same as it would be for a man. Can this individual, Kamala Harris, handle the complexities and demands of this moment? It is the identical question many voters ask of Donald Trump.

When we frame the question in that specific way, it becomes something that you, as a voter, can evaluate. I will propose one way to do so after giving a little background.