So, why not Vice President Kamala Harris?
Daniel Wirls makes a case in his March 11 Sentinel
Guest Commentary https://www.santacruzsentinel. com/2024/03/11/guest-commentary against Joe Biden running again for president because of Biden's age or a lack of enthusiasm for him by voters. Or likely, both. To be fair, other commentators say that as well.
Wirls' argument simply is Biden shouldn't have chosen to run again.
Let me be clear. I think Biden has done a very competent job, and I'd like to see him do it again. I'll take experience and competence over sociopathy any day of the week.
What surprised me is that Wirls made no mention of
Vice President Kamala Harris.
If your argument is that Biden should have been a one term president and ceded to a younger person instead of running for a second term, turning to the vice president is a logical move. Harris is 59 years old.
Harris has extensive credentials both here in California, as both as a U.S. Senator and California Attorney General. She went on to become the first woman and first Black American and South Asian American Vice President.
The Guest Commentary could have addressed that and gone on to unpack whether the American people are so racist and sexist that Vice President Harris could not win. Or, that she could.
After all, President Obama won, and he is partly African American, though I think the current alarming upsurge in racism in this country is due in large part to his having won. Twice.
Hillary Clinton did not win the electoral vote, though she did win the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million. Still, it may be that gender is the real sticking point.
My point is that Vice President Kamala Harris is largely invisible among commentators who argue, and they are legion, that Biden should not run for a second term and cede to a younger person to run as the Democratic nominee.
Would I need to make this point if Harris were a 59-yearold white, cisgender male with her credentials? I don't think so.
A United Nations report from 2020 found almost 90% of men and women hold some sort of bias against females. The “Gender Social Norms” https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-51751915 index analyzed biases in areas such as politics and education in 75 countries.
“Half of people worldwide still believe men make better political leaders than women, and more than 40 per cent believe men make better business executives than women,” according to the UN Development Program (UNDP) in its latest Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI) report.
So, perhaps it is not surprising that we have a much younger, experienced vice president who is a woman of color, and the column makes no mention of her at all.
The Academy Awards rewarded the movie “Barbie” with just one win for a best original song, but the songs and energy of the fantasy film dominated the country for months. It's a film about a plastic world where women run the plastic country, hold all the Supreme Court seats, have all the important jobs and are happy all the time until a plastic guy discovers patriarchy and tries to take over. It's a fantasy, so he's unsuccessful. Unlike at the Oscars.
So many women have related to the heart-felt speech by the character played by America Ferrera in “Barbie.”
“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.”
What is Vice President Kamala Harris doing wrong that she seems to be invisible when commentaries and editorials consider who should run instead of President Biden?
Harris is doing nothing wrong. But that seems to be the problem
Susan Thistlethwaite has been published in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and the Huffington Post. She is the retired president of Chicago Theological Seminary as well as a retired tenured professor. These days she writes mystery novels. She and her husband live in Santa Cruz.