Enthusiasm for Harris is greater than the sum of its parts

Eleven weeks to go….

Enthusiasm for Kamala Harris goes beyond the supposition that she has a better chance than President Biden of defeating Donald Trump. It certainly does not rest purely on excitement about having a female candidate of color.  Nor does it wholly stand on a hope that certain left-of-center policies will be pursued if Harris wins. The enthusiasm contains these elements, but it transcends them.

The new-found excitement that has emerged with Harris’s candidacy arises from the sense that the current malaise in American politics is being subjected to a tectonic shift. Kamala Harris offers us a reset.

I am one of those who believe that Donald Trump spells danger for America.  This does not mean that I don’t understand some of the aspirations of those who have said they will vote for him.  He has managed to captivate millions of Americans whose sincerely held values fall in the right-of-center column. Freedom of choice is the essence of democracy, and I respect the right of people to hold opinions, and vote for policies, that do not align with my personally held values.

But a core value in this country, set by George Washington in 1797 and observed ever since, is that the President walks away from his post when that President’s time is over.  Donald Trump blatantly rejected this principle when he tried to influence his party to resist certifying a fair election in January 2021, when he refused to use his position to halt the January 6, 2021 storming of the capital, and when he declared, as he has a number of times, he will not accept an election result in November 2024 unless he is declared the winner. Donald Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger on January 2, 2021 pressuring him to reverse Georgia’s election results, and the efforts of a number of Republican state legislators to appoint alternative Electors to tip the Electoral College vote, openly defy the norms of democracy. That the Republican party leadership of old has allowed this state of affairs to proceed with minimal protest is mystifying and frightening.

New York Times columnist David French describes our current Republican party as a party that has removed all considerations of character from qualifications for leadership, that tolerates overt lying, that publicly encourages and applauds violence, and that has treated sexual abuse and adultery as irrelevant to the law and the perpetrator’s capacity to lead.

This nihilist brand of politics has created a sour mood in our country. Civility is rarer as a result.  Oppositional behavior is pervasive.  This is not the tone we want from our leadership in a moment when climate change, war, and global migration cast a shadow over our world.  We are responsive to Harris because she is changing the tone of the discourse.  She is calling things as she sees them and projecting an optimism that feels like an antidote to the strange politics of the past eight years.

So, yes, I would like to use my vote to assert values that are different from Donald Trump’s. I believe Kamala Harris will bring a competent and refreshing presence to the White House and to American politics.  For those who say she shows few signs of promise that qualify her to hold the highest office in the land, I beg to differ.

Harris’s twenty-year career as a California prosecutor, which led to her election in 2010 as Attorney General of California, the world’s fifth largest economy, is impressive.  There are plenty of instances we could cite of her adept capacity to perform that job. Shortly after becoming Attorney-General, she made an impact right away by pulling out of a potential settlement of an improper mortgage practices case with the country’s five largest financial institutions.  In 2012 she settled that case with a $20 million payout, five times the original payout figure proposed. This and other cases suggest a high level of professional confidence, capability, and judgment.

Her four years in the US Senate – 2017-2021 – as only the second African American woman to be elected to the Senate, gave her experience of the federal legislative system.  Following those four years she had four years as Vice President of the United States. 

This accumulation of experience is a great deal more than Barack Obama had when he was elected in 2008. Obama also had had four years in the US Senate, but his additional work experience as community organizer, Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Chicago, and Illinois State Legislator does not add up to as impressive a resume.

It is true that Harris did not seem well attuned when she entered the presidential campaign fray in 2019. She adopted far-left positions, some of which she has backed away from.  Her “tough on crime” stance as a prosecutor did not match well with the nation’s George Floyd moment when police brutality was exposed.  She struggled to find self-confidence. She was, unmistakably, a DEI candidate when Joe Biden chose her as his running mate. After their election, the Biden administration was not helpful to her in finding tasks that would show off her skills.  But she has been unfairly accused by her adversaries of having failed in achieving reform of US immigration policies on the southern border, for, in fact, she was never tasked with being an “immigration czar.”  Her task – hardly less difficult – was to enhance relationships with the countries south of the border from which immigrants have been coming, and work with them to stem the tide. 

People’s uncertainty about Harris made Democratic Party insiders slow to act to remove Biden as an option for the 2024 election. But the enthusiasm for Harris, born on July 21, 2024, arose because we saw that she had found her footing.  She was ready and convincing in the moment of crisis. Commented Tressie McMillan Cottom in the New York Times, “Kamala Harris is a different candidate than we saw four years ago. She is even a different rhetorician than we saw six months ago.”

Now, the question is, whether she can sustain this under national scrutiny during the Democratic Convention which begins day after tomorrow in Chicago.

Harris overtakes Trump in three important states

Twelve weeks to go…

This morning’s New York Times presents Times/Siena poll numbers from August 5-9 indicating that Kamala Harris is four percentage points ahead of Donald Trump in three of the most important battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

This is a huge shift. Throughout the year leading up to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Joe Biden was at best equal to, but more often slightly behind, Donald Trump.

In the other four states (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina) that make up the crucial seven swing states – PBS NewsHour says three have moved from the Trump column to “Tossup.” Newsweek reports that in the seven swing states taken together, Harris leads Trump 42% to 40%.

Harris has hard work to do to consolidate this.  For one thing, the margin of error in the New York Times poll is just over 4%.  In addition, voters have made it clear they still trust Donald Trump more to handle matters of the economy and immigration.

Meantime, Harris took a mere 18 days to choose a running mate, drawing her followers into the suspense and debate created by the “short list,” then choosing the least-nationally-known of her six finalists. 

Tim Walz brings both a down-home, ordinary-guy aura that might soften the edges of the elitist tone of the Democratic party, while also bringing a further left political position than the other contenders.  His capacity to help Harris appeal to the undecided center thus might be a mixed bag.  As far as the optics were concerned, I had hoped for Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is in his forties and projects high competence along with youthfulness. But Beshear also has the elitist credentials that, on the long term, Democrats need to offset. The Democratic Party needs to retrieve its identification with ordinary white folks of the middle class, and Walz could help with that.

The standard belief about the V-P pick is that it doesn’t make any difference to the race.  But nothing is standard about this particular race, with Harris, a woman of Jamaican and South Asian parentage, emerging late as the Democratic candidate, and spearheading a rapid turnaround in the emotional tone of the national political scene.

Harris, apparently, chose the man she felt most comfortable working with. Some fear that he is too nice and somewhat lackluster.  It is too soon to know. Harris-Walz are attempting to define a new “normal,” says the Economist (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/07/the-wisdom-in-calling-donald-trump-weird), and Tim Walz comes across as quintessentially normal. In this new “normal,” Donald Trump is not to be interpreted as having coherence, and instead is dubbed as downright “weird.”

Laughter is a continuing theme in the Harris-Walz camp.  Walz thanked Harris for “bringing back the joy!” in their first rally. Harris’s sense of humor is all over this campaign. 

The elation of these new developments is still in the air, even if we hear frequent references to the inevitable end of the “honeymoon.”  A legitimate criticism coming at her from both the right and the left just now is that we haven’t heard her in a press conference or a one-on-one interview.  Does she have what it takes to speak extemporaneously in those situations and present herself and her vision eloquently?

Of course, Harris’s big opportunity to present herself and her running mate to the nation will occur during the week of the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago, starting August 19. This gives her a perfect staging ground to define herself and her campaign.  Two weeks from now, we will know a good deal more about her.

I ‘m no political strategist, but I do have the wellbeing of this country at heart. I hope that Harris-Walz find ways to state their understanding, and at some level respect, for how those tilting to the right see the issues.  Harris-Walz will stand for what they believe, but it helps lower the tone of animosity in the country as a whole if you can acknowledge legitimate concerns that your opponents express. After all, Harris and Walz speak frequently of their belief that their party has room for everyone. In my view, concerns on the right about abortion and illegal immigration having become too easy, and inflation too high, are not “weird” views. If Harris-Walz can acknowledge this, they might be able to contribute to a new discourse to displace the constant discounting of the other that has come to define our politics.

The Vibe Shift

This is not only a political movement. This is a social movement. This is an inflection point. And this is, to me, a spiritual movement… 

-   Tracy Nailor, 56-year-old Atlanta pediatrician.

The excitement is electric. Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate for president in 2024 – confirmed Friday when she received pledges of sufficient electoral votes.

The next thirteen and a half weeks are going to be so crucial to the future of this country that it seems imperative to record and share reflections and impressions. It is an inflection point for us all. So I’m going to track these weeks in my blog.

I’m not naïve.  She could fail to win.  But in seventy-two hours she turned American politics around, and she is still doing so.

No question, we live in a world with challenges that would be paralyzing to the faint of heart.  What we deeply don’t want is a set of leadership choices that locks in the paralysis before we even get out the starting gate. But that was pretty much what many of us were feeling during a presidential campaign that had bogged down as a contest about which of two over-seventy-eight-year-olds was least uninspiring.  With my brain I knew who deserved my vote in that setup.  But could he win?  Young people, African-Americans, and Arab-Americans were, apparently, giving up on Biden.  I could understand why. I felt peeved with my country for getting us into to such a pickle. 

Cautionary phrases about the Kamala honeymoon are repeated frequently.  But, says Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, “no iron law of politics” says a political honeymoon has to end. “Yes,” Goldberg continues, “she’ll have to explain her shifting positions on issues like fracking, single-payer health insurance, and border enforcement. But when it comes to Trump, we’ve seen that the feelings he evokes in his supporters matter more than the inconsistencies in his record. Maybe he’s unique, or maybe that’s just how politics works in a highly polarized country with a short attention span, a fragmented media and a longing for change.”

But let’s take a few minutes to enjoy this moment for what it is.  First, those of us who believe Trump is a danger to America’s future have a realistic possibility to challenge that Trumpian future.  Secondly, the choice of a Biden alternative occurred rapidly.  We know a testing primary would have been a good way to put Harris through her paces and to give the nation more participation in the choice, but the fact is, nobody wanted to oppose her.  Is this a moment to wring our hands about that?  We’re sensible enough to recognize that in the pinch we were in, the pragmatic move is the right one. Thirdly, amazing as it seems, she is a woman, a woman of black and Asian origin.  And while all kinds of work has proceeded over years to get us to the point of having a black female vice-president, when it came time to endorse her for the presidency, this was not a DEI choice.  It was simply the right and appropriate choice.  And fourthly, for all of us women participating in the extraordinary turn-around of female consciousness and inclusion that has been the mark of post-World War II western society, Kamala sums it up, models the things we have been learning and asserting and applying throughout our lifetime – finding voice, discovering what it is to be yourself on a big stage, mobilizing the range of gifts that women bring to high office when they use their authority and intelligence to make a difference.

Kamala signifies a future worth fighting for.  We are not bogged down.  We have seized history by the throat. We can be proud participants in American democracy because our candidate is an emblem of smarts and a capacity to rise to the moment.

Said Jess Bidgood of the New York Times on July 25, “A presidential race that felt to many Democrats like a dispiriting slog toward an all-but-certain defeat by Trump suddenly feels light. Hopeful.  People are even feeling….is that joy?”

Yes.  Joy is exactly what we feel. An informal poll of friends abroad indicates the joy has global reach. In this hot summer of global warming and environmental deterioration, in this world network of displacement and desperation, in the midst of war in one crucial part of the world and incipient war in another, in this American gridlock of a deeply divided culture, we are enjoying a boost of energy and good humor.

Will Kamala Harris be able to translate a magnificent opportunity into a win?  Will she gain in strength and confidence?  According to standard beliefs about American politics, she is not an ideal candidate – she has done poorly at winning the confidence of staff and of stating a clear vision for the country.  She flubbed in 2019. But that was then, and this is now. She’s a learner. People who have been watching her say she has grown in stature in the last two years, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision. Rallying women to defend essential rights to needed health care as well as the right to choose, she has connected with people, and in the past thirteen days those connections have grown.  She calls all of us to step into who we are and accept the challenges before us.  The rest of us were slow to foresee what the moment would look like. But she knew, and so far, she has shown herself ready.

“The expectation projected upon the refugee is that the past is less relevant than the future…”

Book Review

The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, Edited by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Abrams Press, 2018.

Viet Thanh Nguyen has become perhaps the most eloquent voice of the past decade of the immigrant experience in the United States.  Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer (2016) stakes out a very particular angle on the Vietnam war and challenges all Americans who think they know the meaning of that war to think again. Philip Caputo’s 2015 New York Times' book review described the book as "giving voice to the previously voiceless [in other words the Vietnamese perspective] while it compels the rest of us to look at the events of 40 years ago in a new light." Nguyen is Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.  The Sympathizer was followed in 2016 by Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, an account of the way the Vietnam War has been remembered, and in 2021 by The Committed, a sequel to The Sympathizer.  

In The Displaced, published in 2018, Nguyen has gathered the essays of twenty-one refugee writers in the United States who capture the texture of the refugee experience.

The book is filled with heart-pulling refugee moments: The glowing flash when a twenty-year-old girl in a refugee camp receives a brand new turquoise dress with a lace collar, specially extracted for her by one kind woman from a pile of used clothing donated to the camp;  The heroic Hmong children who venture outside the Thai camp to collect greens for their younger siblings, paying the price of subsequent fury not because of the wrath of the enemy but because of their parents’ terror - they linger in the minds of the other children as “the real warriors;”  The Iranian refugee child whose teacher helps her make a papier maché topographical map of the United States - when the child explains that she has recently arrived and knows little about her new country the teacher responds “Oh, sweetie, you must be so grateful;” The Palestinian who underlines that his loss is not only the loss of home, but of his “entire country.”

The refugee as orphan, stripped of extended family, homeland, and agency; the refugee as actor, assimilating to be accepted, but knowing all the time assimilation is another word for performance; the refugee assuming a dual identity – one person at work, another at home; the refugee as ghost, invisible, particularly to those who do not accept her.

Even the most liberal amongst those living in host countries must be made thoughtful by the requirements and pressures that the refugee experience places upon newcomers.  The call from the so-called “host community” for gratitude, a condition of acceptance, scarcely camouflages the American need for smug self-satisfaction, our need to feel we are better than others.  The burdensome requirement to be exceptional to overcome the newcomer’s sense that those they meet see them as a statistic and nothing more. 

The refugee possesses a special relationship with the past, these writers tell us.  On the one hand, the past contains the loss, the wounds, the trauma of departure.  It represents an “incomplete narrative,” a ghostly sense that there is more to be known and understood in order to reach a sense of coherent identity.   And so the refugee sustains a “repetitive wounding,” says Chris Abani, born in Nigeria, now professor of English at Northwestern University.  But the expectation projected upon the refugee is that the past is less relevant than the future.  And so the refugee has a special relationship with time itself – you are always a refugee, while gradually no longer perceived as a refugee. Instead, he says, you are “a stutter in time-space, always repeating… unable to return and unable to truly settle or belong anywhere else.”

Refugees create an uncomfortable feeling for Americans, argues Abani, not so much because they are strangers per se, but because they awaken Americans’ fears that the stability of the state is an illusion, that any American could become a refugee themselves far more easily than they wish to believe.  Refugees arouse guilt at our misleading sense of well-being and suggest that our compassion is shallower than we would like to think.  They shake up our American consciousness as the nation of immigrants, reminding us that we are in fact a nation of refugees. Not only does each of us have a connection somewhere else, but our story contains more precariousness than many of us wish to admit.  We are thus a nation bent on hiding our fragility at all costs, first from ourselves and then from others.  We try to normalize our environment; we are disturbed by those who lift the curtain.