For the last 20 years or so, a tension has defined the Democratic Party. There has been a party that has been looking forward; and there has been a party that has been leery of forward progress. The forward-looking party has consisted of the people who said, for example in 2008, let’s nominate Barack Obama. Let’s be fearless; he can win. The leery caucus has been those who just weren’t sure, the people for whom American history’s grim lessons suggested that these wild dreams just weren’t possible.
The forward-looking side has been the more emotionally compelling one, and of course, it won the argument in 2008. But it must be said that it has sometimes been too optimistic, a little more aggressive about the future than reality warranted. It also got a cold slap in the face after the 2016 election results came in, and the seemingly unstoppable forward-spinning wheel of history was jammed, in the most sobering way possible. Team Leery got a tragic win there, and with other developments—like Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory and the improbably important loss by Terry McAuliffe in the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, which seemed to say that the bright future of that new America was a ruse—they seemed to have a point, maybe. Slow down.
But on the night of August 22, 2024, at the United Center in Chicago, that tension evanesced. It had slacked over the course of the week, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders and Bill and Hillary Clinton all sang from basically the same hymnal. But it culminated in Thursday’s electric speech by Kamala Harris. For my entire adult life, there have been two Democratic parties. Now, there is one. And Harris—amazingly, surprisingly, but forcefully and unmistakably—is the author of that unity.
This will still be a close, ugly, filthy, heart-stopping election, because an ugly, filthy man is on the other side of the equation. But this much is clear. Kamala Harris is a historic figure. How she has risen to this occasion—her poise, her power, her sure-footedness—has been just breathtaking to watch. I kind of thought, kind of worried, that tonight might be a bit of a disappointment. The first three nights were so successful that it might have been the case that this was a bit of a letdown. As good as she’s been in the last month, just maybe, on this impossibly grand and high-pressure stage, she might have been … just okay.
She was badass. And she said to every Democrat from left to center: We have one future, and I am the person who is taking us there.
As we look at history, it’s easy for us to see the men—white men, except for Obama—who moved history forward. We’ve never seen a Black woman do it. She’s Kennedy in 1960, and then some: “We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And on behalf of our children and grandchildren, and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love.” If that isn’t Kennedyesque rhetoric, I don’t know what is.
Like a lot of people, I wasn’t much of a Harris fan in 2019–2020. I wasn’t surprised to see her candidacy fizzle. I thought she was a logical political choice by Joe Biden for vice president, but then I thought—like a lot of people—that she was politically maladroit in her first year or so as veep.
I stopped paying attention. Most people did. But it now seems obvious that while we stopped paying attention, she was working, thinking, learning, getting better, figuring it out. And so this woman who burst upon us four weeks ago was a completely different person than the one most of us had fixed in our minds.
So now she heads into battle against Donald Trump. No one that I can see feels that a Black woman can’t beat that white man. No one. It’s not a factor. And this is potentially the secret to this candidacy: Her identity is manifestly clear to everyone to whom it is important, while to everyone to whom it doesn’t really matter, well … it doesn’t matter. Think about how hard it is for a Black woman to pull that off, while running for president.
Some will say, glibly, she’s the female Obama. But, no offense to Obama, who was obviously a once-in-a-generation figure, Harris is more. Being a woman, she has to be. And she is. She benefits, surely, from a broadly shared yearning to unite to defeat a unique evil. But it wasn’t remotely inevitable that she could pull it off. Well, she’s doing it. If Trump isn’t scared of this, he’s dumber than I thought.
