Time to drop the idea Harris is a ‘safe’ choice
What a moment. A moment that seemed historically impossible until there it was, right in front of you. “I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face,” one Black Democratic congresswoman told CNN.
Neither could I or many other women.
And neither, apparently, could Kamala Harris, in her first public appearance as Joe Biden’s vice-presidential running mate, deftly — even joyfully — stepping into history as the first Black woman, and the first woman of South Asian descent to be in the VP slot on the ticket.
So many reasons to cheer. And very few to grumble, although many pundits were, calling Harris the “safe choice.” Already a poll after Biden’s announcement shows Harris enjoys the support of nine out of 10 Democrats.
Please get rid of the notion that California Sen. Kamala Harris, 55, a former state attorney general, who sits on powerful committees and has publicly filleted the fishy likes of Supreme Court nomineenow-justice Brett Kavanaugh and Trump Attorney General William Barr — “Think very carefully before you answer, sir” — is a “safe” choice.
“She’s the prosecutor we need right now,” said one of my Democrat friends in Minneapolis, who never had Kamala at the top of her list, but is happy with Biden’s choice.
In a country ravaged by recent racial strife, engulfed by a badly mismanaged pandemic that has needlessly killed 170,000 people, many of them people of colour, with a sitting president who is not only a misogynist but an anti-Black racist, do you really think a Black woman who, if the Democrats win will be one 77-yearold’s heartbeat away from the presidency is a safe choice for Americans who haven’t even wholeheartedly affirmed they are ready for a woman to lead the country?
As all women in politics have to contend with these days, the scared-as-rabbits rabid right Republicans and their online pyjama brigade trolls will throw everything they have at Harris.
Although so far it’s been pathetic: a “whorendous” choice, a “nasty” woman,” whatever. It all sounds old and tired, especially when Black women are the essence and backbone of the Democratic party and all women are squinting coldly at
Donald Trump the way women look at their husbands just before they call a divorce lawyer.
As for the slurs and attacks, which will only escalate, this time, a magic circle of prominent women and men have already stepped forward, warning that they will call out and protect their VP candidate from any and all misogynist or racial slurs. They will have her back. In real time.
At the first live public appearance of Joe Biden and his running mate, a subdued but nonetheless fascinating affair in an empty gymnasium that had all the pandemic trimmings, masks, distanced seating and no roaring crowds, you could easily see that Biden made the right choice.
“It’s all on the line,” Harris said in her speech, and the nicest thing about that, after three or more years of the country being held hostage to Trump’s narcissistic ramblings was she wasn’t talking about herself and her historic moments, but the good of her country:
“This is a moment of real consequence for America,” she said. “Everything we care about — our economy, our health, our kids, the kind of country we live in — it’s all on the line.”
What struck me was the slight emotional tremor in her voice, followed by the steely evisceration of Donald Trump’s and Mike Pence’s record.
She also got the powerful symmetry of Biden’s choice right. “Today, he takes his place in the ongoing story of America’s march toward equality and justice as the only person who served alongside the first Black president, and has chosen the first Black woman as his running mate,” said Harris.
But Biden no doubt had to be pressured — or let’s say eased — in a multi-step process. As a boring septuagenarian white man, he had already boldly and strategically committed to choosing a female running mate back in the spring. She had to be significantly younger. But as the demands for racial justice and police reform escalated and exploded into the streets, Biden was urged to choose an African American woman leader to govern alongside of him and step into the presidency in that heartbeat.
Just like that, it was a leap that may work.
In the meantime, my favourite quote about Biden’s VP selection process took place before he announced that Kamala Harris would be his running mate and governing partner. There were almost 10 contenders — all women, mainly women of colour and, as the New York Times put it, they were “all riveting political characters, very possibly capable of commanding the spotlight in ways that Mr. Biden has struggled to do in his own right.”
In his own right. You have to have spent a long time in the feminist trenches to know what a delicious line that is. How many times has a wife or any woman been characterized as being notable “in her own right?”
Biden wasn’t “lucky” that he had so many fantastic women — almost all of them women of colour — from which to choose as his next VP.
He’s lucky he decided to meet the moment and see them. They are his ticket to the White House.