Kamala Harris Is Still Missing in Action
I just got a note from Kamala Harris. Not a real note, of course, but an engineered message from a low-level someone doing fundraising for the Dems. Low-level work is always the same: tepid language, small-bore ideas, nothing to stir the conscience or the soul.
This one was pretty much on the mark. It told me that the DNC (Democratic National Committee) was looking at a reporting deadline. If I gave the organization five dollars immediately, I would spike the haul to an intimidating level and Republicans would back away from key races in the midterms.
There are so many issues here, I am already floundering. The language of the note felt flaccid and underdone, like someone whispered into ChatGPT and asked for a message that was…flaccid and underdone. I used to have a relationship with Kamala Harris that made me feel mobilized and alive. It’s hard for me to gin up the same for the DNC, a faceless group of earnest operatives who have yet to figure out how to win elections or even make judgments about borderline incumbents. Yes, Joe Biden, I’m looking at you, and the unforgivable hubris of imagining that you could lead us.
But the real sin here is the smallness of the message: a meager little piece of inside baseball about some obscure deadline and party strategy. For the record, I know all about marginal wins and the importance of detail in mounting campaigns. But we are never going to advance if this is all we get: a crappy little message with a five-dollar ask without a single big idea to make the party dance. It is never enough to tell me how Trump stinks. I sing that song from sunrise to midnight. What I need is a vision that is grand and transporting: a message about restoring dignity to labor, embracing difference, and finding national purpose. It also has to be tough and grounded.
But Kamala Harris has already checked out. She reportedly gave a speech yesterday morning at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Crystal chandeliers and gold appointments. I’m seeing wealthy socialites on bamboo-flavored chairs, not single mothers about to be pulverized by a recession. The New York Times gave it below-the-fold attention and quoted a line that was comically overstuffed: ““A vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda….” That is not the language of a winner chicken dinner.
It’s been almost six months to the day since the catastrophe of her loss, and Kamala is still licking her wounds out of sight and out of mind. She should not, by a long shot, be our next candidate for president, but she should be promoting the hell out of a whole range of prospects. And she should be using her charisma, her power-girl forcefulness every Sunday morning on national television.
Who are you saving it for, Kamala Harris? Your day may be done when it comes to the presidency, but we need people like you to stand between us and the cliff.