Many of you have asked me about what happened to my blog posts and after my long weekend trip to New England, I had decided to take it slow and go with either one or two blog posts a week - it is not that I was running out of ideas or anything - It was just the real nature of your primary source of income getting in the way of your favorite pastime. Having said that, my professional work will not stop me from writing and blogging - it is something I restarted for the betterment of my writing abilities and it will continue albeit at a slower rate than the usual this month. Now that that's out of the way, there is no other issue right now that is far more galvanizing to the citizens of the US than the fact that we could be looking at a Harris v Trump for 2020 - no other matchup would be as riveting or revealing - and of course, Harris still needs to get through the primaries.
Harris, today, is in top form - she nailed the First Debate with her Democratic candidates going after Vice President Joe Biden's pressing issue against busing. We don't need a tragedy to enact a common-sense gun reform - this economy is not working for the working people - every American needs a path to success and we need to speak truth. If Harris' campaign has a mantra, that's it - truth truth truth truth. She delivers her talking points while dressed in her uniform of dark suit, pearls and black heels - I know, I shouldn't be writing about her clothes, but the clothes themselves are a smart cautious play, one that Hillary frankly could have benefited from. If you wear the same outfit every day, pretty soon the haters will run out of snarky little things to say about your appearance and move on. Among Harris' core traits, aruably her Shakespearean-tragedy gait - the one so central to her character - that it has the potential to lift her to the highest post in the land but what could also take her down is her discipline. It is what has allowed her to play the long game, to protect her future. It has infuriated constituents over the years who wanted Harris to take a stand and fight for them today - not when she reached a higher office. Yet Harris, on the trail, seems bolder than she has in the past - she's declared that she's for reparations, for the Green New Deal, for decriminalizing sex work and legalizing pot. She comes across as a woman who is cashing in her chips, taking all the political and social capital she was safeguarding for all those years and putting it on the table, declaring that her moment is now. She's a black female prosecutor - what was all that care taking of her future for if not for this?
By Harris' side on the road is not her husband Doug Emhoff, but her sister Maya who was a top policy adviser for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and before that, the vice president for democracy, rights and justice at the Ford Foundation and the executive director of the ACLU of Northern California. Harris' parents Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris - met in Berkeley during the early 1960s when the Civil Rights movement happened. They'd both come to the US to study at UC Berkeley - Shyamala at age 19 from a Brahmin community in South India, decided to pursue a doctorate in endocrinology and nutrition. Donald,from Jamaica, for a doctorate in economics. As with almost everything else in her life, Harris has a set of stock stories she tells about her upbringing all of which are revealed i her surprise-free memoir, The Truths we Hold, which was released two weeks before she announced her candidacy. Harris has had a struggle really, just like how first generation Americans from immigrant parents usually find life in the US. Her race for California attorney general was extremely tight - so tight that her opponent, Steeve Cooley, gave a victory speech on Election Night that he had to retract the next day. She campaigned as a progressive, figuring perhaps that many people think they support criminal-justice reform more than they actually do. Her record in office is marked more by what she didn't do than what she did (especially when she was against the three-strikes law which incarcerated people for a life sentence for petty crimes), but she has taken strong progressive positions.
Kamala won her Senate seat on the night Trump was elected. By then, she was walking the line she's on now - using fearless as a campaign slogan despite letting fear stop her from taking positions. Trump has been a productive foil for her - highlighting the value of her legal training, casting her discipline as flattering and calm rather than pinched and nervous. In Washington, she hasn't done much - she introduced a few bills: one with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul to study reforming the cash-bail system; another with 13 Democratic colleagues to begin addressing the high mortality rates black women face in childbirth. She also introduced with fellow Democratic Presidential candidate Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott, a bill to make lynching a hate crime. This was classic Harris - tough on crime, seemingly progressive, entirely risk-free. It passed the Senate unanimously. Has the US dealt with its own racism and misogyny enough to elect a black woman Asian American president? There's little rational basis for saying yes, but there was little rational basis for believing that a man named Barack Hussein Obama could win the White House too. Only time will tell! She's definitely in the talking to be the 46th P.O.T.U.S and now, New Hampshire is on her horizon to conquer.
The very fact that I want to blog about this is because we could be looking at a new age in American Politics - when African Americans and Indian Americans are appropriately represented in decision making and high powers. What makes her the Democrats' best option to take on current president DJT? The presidential hopeful and 54-year-old junior senator from California is a prosecutor by training - she knows very well that any misstep - anything you say or do - can and will be used against you. Her fundamental understanding of this (and of course, constitutional) has made her cautious at times. Her demographic identity has always been radical - she was SFO's first female district attorney, first black district attorney, first Asian American district attorney. She was then California's first female attorney general, first black attorney general and the first Asian American attorney general. She was the second black woman to ever win a seat in the United States Senate. But in office, she's avoided saying or doing much that could be held against her. As attorney general, she decline to support two ballot measures to end death penalty. She declined to support drug possession a misdemeanor and she declined to support legalizing pot and marijuana. She declined to support a ballot measure striking California's brutal three-strikes law. The reason? She had power - she kept most of it in reserve. More important than fixing the broken criminal justice system, it seemed like she was protecting her status as a rising star. She had earned that reputation by the time the first major profile was written about her in the San Francisco Magazine in 2007 - it described her as maddeningly elusive.
Harris, today, is in top form - she nailed the First Debate with her Democratic candidates going after Vice President Joe Biden's pressing issue against busing. We don't need a tragedy to enact a common-sense gun reform - this economy is not working for the working people - every American needs a path to success and we need to speak truth. If Harris' campaign has a mantra, that's it - truth truth truth truth. She delivers her talking points while dressed in her uniform of dark suit, pearls and black heels - I know, I shouldn't be writing about her clothes, but the clothes themselves are a smart cautious play, one that Hillary frankly could have benefited from. If you wear the same outfit every day, pretty soon the haters will run out of snarky little things to say about your appearance and move on. Among Harris' core traits, aruably her Shakespearean-tragedy gait - the one so central to her character - that it has the potential to lift her to the highest post in the land but what could also take her down is her discipline. It is what has allowed her to play the long game, to protect her future. It has infuriated constituents over the years who wanted Harris to take a stand and fight for them today - not when she reached a higher office. Yet Harris, on the trail, seems bolder than she has in the past - she's declared that she's for reparations, for the Green New Deal, for decriminalizing sex work and legalizing pot. She comes across as a woman who is cashing in her chips, taking all the political and social capital she was safeguarding for all those years and putting it on the table, declaring that her moment is now. She's a black female prosecutor - what was all that care taking of her future for if not for this?
Comments
Post a Comment