Are Voters Ready to Elect a Woman? Democrats Say They Have No Doubt.

Democratic women say much has changed since Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the White House in 2016 — and lessons have been learned.

The first time Kamala Harris ran for president, in 2019, one question dogged her and the handful of others running to be the first female president: Can a woman win?

Just three years earlier, Hillary Clinton had lost to Donald J. Trump after a campaign she and her defenders believed was dripping with misogyny and sexism. The question of whether Democrats wanted to try to break the gender barrier again was a running and fraught debate for months.

Those doubts have mostly been banished this time.

Riding a high of strong polling and heady optimism, Democrats today widely view Ms. Harris’s identity as a woman of color as a major asset. Interviews with prominent Democratic women reveal a striking confidence that the climate, tactics and voters’ perceptions about leadership have all moved in women’s favor since Mrs. Clinton’s loss.

“People are in a place where they can actually imagine a woman as president,” said Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota who ran alongside Ms. Harris in 2019. “They can actually look at Kamala Harris and say she looks the part.”

There are data points behind the bullishness: The Women’s March the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration mobilized a whole universe of organizations that support female candidates, which then helped lead to a historic wave of women elected to Congress in 2018. Ms. Harris has already broken a barrier as the first female vice president.