The headline poses the question:

Harris Doesn’t Campaign on Her Gender. Is That a Sign of Progress?

Hillary Clinton did, overtly and zealously, when she ran for President on the Progressive-Democratic Party ticket in 2016. That didn’t run out well for her, but her failure was far more a result of her being a lousy and openly arrogant candidate than it was a function of her running on her sex.

Harris’ decision to eschew running on her sex could have been a sign of progress as the headline alludes. She also isn’t campaigning on her race, for all that there was a brief back and forth with former-President and Republican Presidential campaign over her variously self-identifying as black [via Jamaica] or Indian, and that could have been a sign of progress, also.

However.

Against the backdrop of Progressive-Democrat Joe Biden’s having selected her as his running mate explicitly because she was black and a woman—what many termed, for good or ill, a diversity hire—either of those would have been a tough sell to make independently of her origin as Vice President.

The touting would have been too likely to have been taken as sexist and racist—just as Biden was accused for his selection criteria.