Kamala Harris spoke about many things during her historic speech to the Democratic National Convention to accept their nomination for president on Thursday.
She talked about affordable healthcare. Reproductive rights. The economy. The Middle East. Immigration. Project 2025. The insurrection. She told stories about her upbringing in Oakland, California, and talked at length about her special bond with her late mother, Shyamala Harris.
But one thing she never mentioned? Breaking the “glass ceiling” to become the first woman president of the United States.
It wasn’t just that Harris didn’t include this oft-repeated metaphor in her speech. She did not mention the potential historical significance of her win at all. And while she spoke at length about women’s issues in her address, most at length about reproductive justice, she only mentioned the word “woman” once, when describing her mother as “a brilliant, five-foot-tall brown woman with an accent.”
When formally accepting the nomination, she instead cast her candidacy as a sign of what all people—of any race, color, creed, or gender—could achieve.
“On behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America,” she said, to thunderous applause.
This choice, which we can assume to be intentional, is a marked contrast from the last and only other woman to be the presidential nominee for a major political party: Hillary Clinton. In Clinton’s 2016 campaign, she made breaking the glass ceiling a central piece of imagery, even, memorably, planning her election night rally at New York City’s Javits Center because it has, you guessed it, a glass ceiling. That glass ceiling was one that Clinton did not end up breaking when she lost the election to Donald Trump.
“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling — but someday someone will and hopefully sooner than we might think right now,” she said in her concession speech.
The difference between the two women’s approach is even more marked when examining Clinton’s address accepting her nomination in August 2016. Although the former senator herself did not use the exact phrase in her speech, she began by emphasizing the fact that she was the first woman to be in her position, and said she was the realization of a dream of generations of women before her.
“Tonight, we’ve reached a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union: the first time that a major party has nominated a woman for president,” she said. “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come. Happy for grandmothers and little girls and everyone in between. Happy for boys and men, too—because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.”
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