Tuesday’s news that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden chose California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate sent shock waves of pleasure through much of the party and also signalled that he was committed to not only having a woman, as his vice president, should he be elected, but that he was also sensitive to the mood of the country as it grapples with the quest for racial equity, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, by choosing a woman of color.
The 55 year old Harris is the child of a an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, and identifies as a black American, and in a country with a long legacy of racial criteria, this identity is both one that is claimed, (and part of the racial landscape in this country), and affords her the pleasure of being a historical choice.
It also gives a hefty boost to the Biden campaign, and a candidate, that needed to free himself from earlier gaffes mostly representing a generational understanding of race, but also from simply being an older white male in a country that is trying, in progressive circles, at least, to go beyond a traditional face of leadership.
Therefore he bypassed the white female candidates such as Elizabeth Warren, and Gov. Whitmer or Michigan. And, while both of them offered unique advantages: placating progressives, and getting Michigan votes, lost to Clinton in 2016, are just two, they fell short of overall campaign goals.
Harris also boosted the Biden campaign, with $36 million in donations, many of them from first time donors, and this shot in the arm, along with a younger outlook, can help Biden capture the much sought after presidency in a nation that has been divided by race, in no small measure beginning, but not ending with his positive comments about the Ku Klux Klan that marched in Charlottesville, Va.
While some in the media made much of the “suitability” and “safeness” of her selection, as a standard, this has not alway been the case and in 1960 the selection of Lyndon Johnson by John Kennedy was seen as neither, by many, including his brother Bobby, who was his campaign manager.
Johnson helped secure southern votes in a Congress that was then dominated by the South, and also brought a surge of electoral votes, and protestant support for the country’s first Roman Catholic presidential candidate since Al Smith.
Harris can bring much of the black vote, but not all of it, and also many women voters, especially those that are younger and educated, both black and white who have become dissatisfied with Trump, and within that camp, independent voters
To be fair, there are some blacks that do not view her as authentic since her parents were both professionals who immigrated from other countries, and earned advanced degrees, (in endocrinology and economics),which they feel does not mesh with their more standard view of black families, holding service jobs and on the lower income rung.
While those votes might not come, an expanded view of what it means to be black may be exactly what is needed.
Along with California’s electoral votes.
Harris did face some formidable competition for the role; and while Karen Bass, another potential running mate, had far more legislative experience, and as head of the Congressional Black Caucus, had influence, she is relatively unknown and echoes of “Karen who” might have blighted an auspicious beginning
Susan Rice, former national security advisor for President Obama, a Rhodes Scholar, had the global experience, much needed after the Trump actions, but she has never held elective office, and might not have been ready for the rigors of the campaign trail.
Val Demings, another black woman, and a highly qualified legislator, was also relatively unknown, although her law enforcement background would have been a plus (she was police chief for Orlando, Fl.) the lack of immediate recognition, might have hampered her other skills, and past accomplishments.
Harris then made the final cut, but there are some who saw her prior presidential run, as something of a bust, not only for some organizational snafus, but also for lacking a central message that American voters could easily grasp, and her stumblings about an older poll on what many mid to lower families could do when faced with an emergency need for $400, would be a “complete upheaval” was not only was off the mark, from the original poll in 2017t: borrow the money, or a cash advance from a credit card, also made her seem less knowledgeable, in 2019; or represented her failure to vet a staff memo.
Of course this is all behind her now, and with a well oiled and newly re energized Biden campaign,she brings the experience from lessons learned to a campaign that is gaining on the incumbent, so much so that Harris was anointed by Trump as being “unqualified” to be the presumptive nominee, because of her parents birthplace, a racist trope that the he had falsely claimed about Barack Obama.
Her passions and her strength of character, especially towards those who are less advantaged, gives an edge and counterpoint to Biden who can often come as too avuncular, while Harris’s aggressiveness, seen in her questioning of Attorney General William Barr, and most infamously to Supreme Court nominees, Brett Kavanaugh, made her a household name to those opposed to his selection.
Both she and Biden have some work to reach progressives, who were not in his camp, from the beginning and Harris in her roles as District Attorney and California Attorney General when she raised the ire of local police for her support of the prison system in California, the skewed effort to deny sex workers the internet, in defense of them, but without the infamous backpage.com, many were forced back onto the streets where they faced greater danger.
Harris also took a more cautious stance in investigations of police brutality, killings of black and brown men, and also the death penalty for the killing of a police office, which at first she refused, and then facing the loss of police support reversed her stance, and then reinstated later, as she faced election.
That balancing act that, where she almost fell, had some in the black community, feeling as if she was selling out to the more conservative positions towards police, and undercutting the communities that they serve; but also showed how easy it is to lose support for the top cop, from the crew in blue.
If these and other issues surface, and they will, the former attorney general will have to do some damage control from her past, and deal with the ongoing patterns of police abuse towards black and brown people.
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