On Tuesday, Americans will again cast our ballots for a woman who might be president. The first time around, this felt hopeful, and perhaps even inevitable: Hillary Clinton was a competent, highly qualified candidate running against a vulgar reality-TV host. There was really only one way the election could go.

Now, of course, we know better. But here we are again, staring down the final hours of a race that pits a would-be authoritarian who is mocked and loathed the world over against a competent, highly qualified woman who seems to have learned some lessons from the Clinton campaign. She doesn’t emphasize her race or her gender. She has none of the decadeslong baggage Clinton carried as a former first lady who had been in the public eye for the better part of 30 years. Her politics are moderate. And yet, still, President Kamala Harris is far from a foregone conclusion.

It’s easy to pick the Clinton campaign apart and argue over what she did wrong (Wisconsin, “deplorables”) or how she was wronged (James Comey, “but her emails.”) It’s much more devastating to look at this election between that same vulgar reality-TV host and a different woman who seems to be correcting for all of Clinton’s perceived errors, who is running in a country in which women are being killed and maimed by conservative abortion bans, and realize that she still might lose. Former first lady Michelle Obama captured that sense of despair and betrayal just a few days ago when she gave a speech practically begging men to just care about women—to care whether we live or die, to care about whether we can get the health care we need, to care whether we can plan our own futures and make our own choices.

The truth, though, is that many Americans (a disproportionate number of them men) don’t care. Many Americans (a disproportionate number of them men) read competence and authority into men where it doesn’t exist, and either weakness or unlikability into women. And many Americans, men and women alike,........

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