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Greenville How about that! I almost called it for Kamala Harris, California’s Senator getting the Vice-President nod on the Democratic ticket for the November 3rd election. She quickly makes history as the first Black woman on a major party ticket and the first person of Asian-American heritage as well.
As the news broke, I scrolled my Facebook feed to see what was up. Let’s me be honest, my friends and associates are a solid progressive gang. There are few, especially on the right who would label me as anything other than a person of the left. In fact, Fox News has always been clear I was a dangerous revolutionary and the country was in danger. Nonetheless, my feed was blowing up with positive comments and excitement about the Kamala Harris pick. A friend from San Francisco cast some shade about her time as prosecutor there. One or two were unhappy about her record on crime and police as California attorney general. A number of them were essentially saying to their friends and the rest of us, “Hey, get over it, let’s go!”
I might add, “What did you expect?” Joe Biden is a moderate-to-liberal Democrat. Was he going to pick AOC? Was he going to go long on Cuba? As they used to say when there was football, you know, last year, “Come on, man!”
Harris is a smart pick. She hits the numbers we need. One analysis of Clinton’s loss in key midwestern states and elsewhere was the fact that although she swamped Trump on the Black vote, it was down from the Obama wave. Biden is trying to see if he can catch that wave again, and he might just be able to do it with a Black woman who is smart and feisty. It’s time to try. Black women have earned their place in the sun, and Harris is a burst of light.
For many of us this argument has been over for months, maybe for years. The “anybody but Trump” team is huge in this country, and it crosses a lot of political lines, right and left. The VP is important, but it’s not the life-and-death choice that many of us feel we have to make to have a chance to fight for the US as a wannabe democracy again. I would vote for a mangy dog on the ticket to beat Trump, and I would never apologize for my vote.
As for Harris and her politics, she’s a political professional. No matter what her record is on crime, police, and prison reform, she has her finger in the wind, and has already moved her position.
If we want them to be better, our job is straightforward. We need to make sure Biden and Harris feel the wind!