The Tribune

Win or lose, US Vice President Kamala Harris has run a remarkable and near flawless campaign to become her country’s 47th and first female president. It is easy to forget how far she has come so quickly in her national public career generally, and in her brief 13-week campaign for president.

With President Joe Biden faltering as the Democratic nominee, many of the naysayers scoffed that a black woman could ably compete with Donald Trump. Many of the simplistic clichés that dogged Harris as Biden’s number two were regurgitated.

She was said to be “gaffe-prone”, though she was no more and much less prone to gaffes than a succession of contenders for the White House over the decades including Biden and Ronald Reagan, both of whom became president.

Many harped on her previous unsuccessful bid for her party’s nomination, while seemingly forgetting the number of times Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Biden unsuccessfully ran for their party’s presidential nomination.

Her first “unsuccessful” bid landed her as vice president and now as the Democratic nominee. Biden saw something in her, including the capacity to be president and commander-in-chief.

While some of the critiques of Harris may be spot-on, many of them are empty regurgitations of certain prejudices often visited on the intelligence and capacity of women, especially black women.

While this is expected from many men, it is sad to see that some black men and women, including quite a number of Bahamians, continue to internalise and believe the prejudices spouted by misogynists.

It is alarming though not surprising when women repeat misogynist refrains. Recall when Dr Christine Blasey Ford courageously came forward in 2018 during the Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Though reluctant to speak out, she alleged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. The ordeal is described in her memoir One Way Back.

After the accusation, quite a number of women, including Bahamian women, attacked Dr Ford before hearing all the facts. They automatically assumed the man had to be telling the truth.

Some even questioned whether she was paid for her testimony. Such is the horrendously typical victim blaming. The Senate never fully investigated her claim.

A friend who worked on Wall Street recalls that many of his white male colleagues constantly disparaged Harris as Vice President. When challenged as to why, none had any substantive arguments.

The friend concluded that they simply did not like having a black woman serve at the highest levels. Moreover, former white male vice presidents were not subject to such criticism.

Ken Burns is one of the more brilliant documentarians in American history. His features have explored an extraordinary range of topics: baseball, jazz, the Roosevelts, the Central Park Five, the Gettysburg Address, the Civil and Vietnam Wars, Jackie Robinson, the Dust Bowl, the National Parks and many others.

Burns has spoken of the role of race in every aspect of US history. His understanding of America is expansive and profound. He has endorsed Harris.

In an interview earlier this week, the 71-year-old Burns effusively praised the Harris campaign, which he described as one of the best-run presidential campaigns in his lifetime. This is high praise indeed from someone with an appreciation of the sweep of American politics.

Michelle Obama has given among the best surrogate speeches in this campaign, often surpassing her husband. With trenchant insight, brilliant tone and lyrical dexterity and finesse, she has repeatedly made the case for Harris.

Mrs Obama has debunked the nitpicking from some Democrats, media pundits and others on the sidelines.

Her recent speech on reproductive rights skewered the mindset that would hold Harris to the highest standards while giving the feeble, unstable, gaffe-prone, inarticulate, policy-lite, tone-deaf, crave, vulgar and despotic Trump a pass.

Recall some of the silly and unserious criticisms of Harris. A highly corporatised, cossetted, and removed media elite lounging in green room bubbles and suites kept complaining they were being sidelined and Harris had to give more interviews – to them.

Harris rightly ignored the whining and gave interviews on her timeline to a host of national and regional broadcast outlets, as well as to various social media and influencers.

Her interviews have generally gone exceedingly well, while Trump cancelled a series of sit-downs, afraid of tough questions and interviewers.

When he ran for president and during his time in the White House, Obama realised that much of the chattering, sometimes bombastic, and often mind-numbingly shallow shouting matches and “analysis” by pundits and many celebrity journalists on cable news was mere distraction, and often off-base and simplistic.

It is a safe bet that if most of one’s news is derived from MSNBC, Fox or CNN, one is only quite partially informed on everything from wars to presidential elections. To better understand American society and politics, one has to read more, including books, journals, and newspapers. There are also many good podcasts.

Watching cable television alone as one’s main source of information is akin to only listening to a few prosperity gospel preachers opining on scripture, not doing Bible study, and reading scripture throughout one’s life.

Another cliché making the rounds was that Harris was not answering questions. Exactly! There are questions she should not answer.

She has deftly ignored certain questions, skipped through gottcha traps posed as questions, or turned certain questions into boomerangs. As she quipped, sticking to one’s talking points is called discipline.

Her Fox News interview with Brett Baier was classic. He kept interrupting her. But she kept her cool and got out her main points. She did not become angry, which would have been used against her. However, when Trump is off the rails this is supposedly a sign of a strong man.

Did she slip up at times and miss opportunities during the campaign? Of course. All candidates do. However, she has been near flawless in her discipline, tone, and relentless messaging.

Now count the tens of thousands of times Trump has not answered a question, often out of stunning ignorance or memory lapses.

Those who have little understanding of how campaigns work are often the ones with most of the sillier criticisms.

As in sports, there are many ill-informed, inexperienced armchair experts on the sidelines who do not appreciate the grueling intensity, crises, and exigencies of a complex and multi-layered billion-dollar plus campaign in numerous cities and counties in 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Harris’s campaign has not had too many damaging leaks or internal disagreements made public.

Highly disciplined, she successfully merged staff from the Biden campaign, former Obama staffers, and her own staff to create a campaign juggernaut and an impressive ground game. Even the curmudgeonly often-critical James Carville of Bill Clinton-fame has expressed deep admiration for Harris and her campaign.

Kamala Harris is calling America to a higher place! Hers is more than a campaign for the presidency. She is truly trying to secure a better democracy and world.

Even many who have policy disagreements with on her on issues ranging from abortion to the economy to foreign policy, know that she is the better candidate. They deeply recognise the grave threat of Donald Trump to America and the world.

In many ways, the joy-filled, organised, punctual Harris has made it all seem somewhat easy. It is not. She must be exhausted. She has grown as a politician, while Trump has become more pathological, fascistic, demagogic, nativist, and – pathetic.

Vice President Harris’s extraordinary campaign is a combination of a well-staffed and well-honed campaign with an exceptional woman as the candidate. If Harris lose, it will not be because she was a poor candidate or ran a poor campaign.

It will be because enough Americans in certain states voted for a despicable demagogue, with all manner of pathologies like Donald Trump, a highly poisonous and ulcerous symptom of a seemingly untreatable cancerous mass entrenched in America’s body politic.

This campaign is not a referendum on Kamala Harris. It is a referendum on the state of American democracy, which has a binary choice between a more perfect or beautiful union and an ugly, bleaker and dark future.