President Joe Biden has just withdrawn his candidacy for President in the 2024 election. The Democrats will have an open convention next month.
It almost goes without saying at this point that our nominee should be – must be – Vice President Kamala Harris.
I confess that just a month ago I feared Harris’ ascent to the top of the Dem ticket, not because I don’t want her there. She was my first choice for President in 2020. My recent apprehension has been about whether a country as racist as ours would vote for a mixed-race woman. Yes, we elected Obama, but we are currently living the backlash of that. File it under the nightmare we call MAGA.
With the emboldened and blatant racism and sexism of many in Donald Trump’s vocal following, it seemed natural to be scared of a Harris candidacy for President.
Notice my use of past tense.
What has shifted for me in the last month is a perfect storm of Trump and his MAGA leadership waffling on Project 2025 because of its clear unpopularity, plus the mess Trump already put in motion with his Supreme Court picks who lied in their confirmation hearings to ultimately take away reproductive rights from American women.
In the stunning, ensuing two years, Harris has been out there, talking to people who have suffered the blows from that decision. She has been bringing searing stories to light of women with wanted pregnancies having to risk their lives before being treated for miscarriages in an emergency room because doctors fear being arrested under new draconian abortion laws. Our Vice President has been consistently advocating for our fundamental freedoms, including voting rights, and appropriately blasting Project 2025.
In every election since Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortion bans started popping up, the issue of diminished reproductive rights has been rejected at the ballot box. Citizens overwhelmingly do not want to visit the dystopian land created in Margaret Atwood’s imagination.
You don’t give people agency over their bodies for 50 years and then say, change-o, presto, all gone. We were just kidding. You don’t get to determine the timing or the size of your family, nor can you opt for abortion rather than give birth to your rapist’s baby, even if it’s your grandfather. A handful of jamokes in Congress or your governor’s mansion know what’s best for you, lady.
Nope, that isn’t flying.
This is my roundabout way of saying this is Kamala Harris’ time. I feel it. I don’t even know what I mean by that, except that for a week I’ve had an overriding energy around this idea that, just as Biden was the man for the job in 2020, Harris is the woman for the job in 2024.
Ironically, MAGA has created her moment. I mean, after the misogynists on display at the recent Republican National Convention? Trump picked a running mate who wants a national abortion ban.
Ask the average woman if she’s willing to give up reproductive rights for her, her kids, and her grandkids and I can assure you she is not. Trump can promise to stop all the Hannibal Lechters he wants from crossing the border and he can keep saying he’ll dish out tax cuts to the me-me-me wealthy folks, but when he also finds it irresistible to brag about his Supreme Court, it’s not going to turn out to be the flex he thinks it is. The astute con man in him already senses that and has begun to backtrack a bit.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of knocks on Harris we’ll hear about again. I guess we’ll inevitably revisit her relationship with Willie Brown. Lord, haven’t you people ever watched The Closer? Even after her direct reports find out she once slept with the chief of police, they grudgingly admit that Kyra Sedgwick’s character works harder and better than any of them. Because she does.
And sure, go ahead. Get it out of your system. Trot out the mocking montages of Harris laughing and dancing and talking in supposed word salads. Try to make this VP seem unserious or frivolous or dumb with clever editing cuts.
But guess what?
Real people laugh and dance. Some of the best people, actually. Am I really having to write this? Is right-wing media (and some left-wing, too) that compelling in its weirdly skewed portrayal of a female with power?
Bring me laughing, dancing, engaged-with-life Kamala Harris any day. My favorite clip of Obama is him doing Al Green in front of Al Green. Capable of a light moment, and yet somehow he still managed to greenlight the raid that nailed Bin Laden.
Back during the 2020 primaries I wrote a column about Trump calling out Harris’ “nasty wit” and in it I asserted that it’s an asset. I still believe it is. Now she has spent three-plus years learning up close how the levers of government work. She’s ready.
I am grateful to President Biden for kicking some serious butt in his term as our commander-in-chief. I have never been embarrassed by him and I have never regretted my vote for him. Not once. He has served his country more than admirably over his lifetime.
His choice to step aside – even if coerced – has given the United States a better chance of staying a democracy. I can feel it down to my toes.
Let’s do this.
[Editorial Note: This is my 30th installment in a series I began in order to give my writing some flow after being in a healing phase from knee surgeries for a year (2023-24).]
(This photo is from Kamala Harris’ Instagram account.)
