Save It, Kamala
My good friend David has properly rebuked me for my obsessive critique of Barak Obama. There’s certainly a kernel of truth in the charge. I’m always talking about Obama’s failure to engage on the critical issues of the day. The fact that he is finally mobilized, talking about the gubernatorial race in Virginia, the use of the military in domestic settings, and our rapid descent into an authoritarian kakistocracy has taken some oxygen away from my screed. But perhaps my screed has saved Obama, himself (?!). At least that’s the way I’d like to imagine it.
Not so his would-be successor, Kamala. Her biography of Summer 2024 failed to reckon honestly with her candidacy, that she could not connect viscerally with many potential voters. The line that sticks most clearly in my mind is that she “wouldn’t have changed anything” about the Biden presidency. I’m touched by the loyalty embedded in that statement, but it was a foolish move from a late-breaking candidate. Last summer’s electorate was in a sour mood. The administration had failed to deliver its message that the country had been benefitted by the Biden presidency. It wanted change and Harris promised…the same. She should have figured out language for the moment, like: “I love Joe Biden, but I think we can do more. We have to use all the levers of power to lower prices and deliver respect to rural America. I know who feeds this country, and no tarrif will see the light of day during my tenure.”
Looking back, it was a poor performance, even though I didn’t think so at the time. But lo and behold, Kamala’s back. On television last week during a rare national interview, she said that we would one day have a woman president and hinted that she might be just the one.
As they say in the Resistance, not on my watch. Kamala hasn’t noticed that The Crisis has arrived. Americans by the millions have taken to the streets to register their loathing of Donald Trump. Project 2025 is fully operational, and Steve Bannon has promised a third Trump presidency. Masked ICE thugs in battle gear are rounding up immigrants who have done nothing worse than take refuge in this country while they keep what’s left of our economy humming. Tariffs have destroyed our relationship with the world and Trump’s irritable arrogance is now the meaning of “America.” I personally feel that the toilet has been flushed and that we are slipping down the sewer of American ruin. I do not want to remember this terrible year as the moment Letitia James was brought low, but it’s too late for that. It’s too late for everything.
But you wouldn’t know any of this from our friend, Kamala Harris. As a party leader, she was required to act, to raise herself from her close defeat and lead the resistance against Donald Trump. She was entitled to a month off for good behavior, but after that she had to fulfill her obligation to stand with a megaphone on a nearby street corner and rally the rest of us until her voice was hoarse. Then she needed to pop a Chloraseptic and start yelling again until the job was done.
Instead, she made the rounds of elegant events, sitting demurely on gold-painted garden chairs, touching her pearls with self-soothing timidity. I may live to regret this judgment, but give us someone else in 2028. It could be a man, a woman, or a non-binary Democrat, but let it not be Kamala Harris. She has already lost my personal primary. Save it, Kamala, we need someone else.