Kamala Harris Mattered, and Still Does

[Shrek]

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/kamala-harris-race-gender-2020-democratic-primary-922279/

We can note the mistakes of the Kamala Harris campaign while recognizing that the road became tougher for her, throughout the campaign, simply because she inhabits the body and skin that she does. No other candidate saw herself targeted, at as high a perch, by as many racist and sexist attacks as Harris. That isn’t surprising, being that she was the most high-profile female candidate of color and our strange and terrible politics and societal standards are still oriented to make presidential runs especially challenging for anyone who isn’t a white guy. But one of those great “only in America” ironies of this abbreviated Harris campaign is that bigotry may have limited her ambitions, but her mere presence in the race may be what makes her run so historic in years to come.

Harris may have been the most publicly imperfect of the top-tier Democratic candidates, and that is why she is no longer a candidate at all. She didn’t even make it to Iowa, in part, because she has a political future to protect. Her endorsement will be valuable, and it is doubtful that this the last we’ve heard from her in the 2020 conversation. However, her campaign’s clumsy policy launches often deflated the strength of her branding and her powerful embrace of her heritage. Her reversals on medical plans weren’t articulated well, and news cycles and public confusion often buried her best ideas, such as a recent education proposal to modernize the school day to aid working families.

Even the “anti-Trump” message failed to truly cut through the maelstrom of obsession with, well, Trump. Even if it wasn’t Harris herself, voters seeking to fire this charlatan of a president should have been seeking a polar opposite to him. Instead, it appears that the Democratic electorate is battling it out between two visions that seem like riskier bets. It actually seems wiser, to me, to follow the candidates who see Trump as a wobbly incumbent, leaving an opening to pursue brazenly progressive visions for the nation. We have been down the road before with careful moderates who are out campaigning like the typical Democrats of the past, more concerned with turning off voters who chose a white nationalist last time around (and appear ready to do so again) than about turning out their own loyal base.