“The lens used and applied to non-normative campaigns is always harder because you’re not only proving your capacity to do the job, you have to prove your right to be in the race,” Abrams said about the coverage of Harris’s campaign and the candidate’s political record. “She has a complicated story, which anyone who’s been effective in politics must have. The difference is that rather than being given the benefit of the doubt, or more importantly, having a fair set of questions asked about everyone who shared her past, the focus on what might be considered her foibles outshone any celebration of her successes.”

Asking Abrams about whether the United States will ever elect a woman president like other democracies unleashed a searing indictment of the electoral college and voter suppression. “The reality is we can’t simply win the race… We have to win the system. The Electoral College is a racist and classist system,” Abrams said before explaining how the electoral college came to be, why the president should be elected by popular vote and what changes need to happen so that all voters can vote.