It's Kamala time!
Kamala Harris's life as Vice President took a 180-turn in 24 hours from her stumping for Biden in Provincetown, an LGBTQ+ culture hub and haven, on Saturday, July 20, to becoming a potential presidential nominee on Sunday, July 21, when the news broke of Biden leaving the race.
The Biden Victory Fund event at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum showed enthusiasm about a possible November win with the Biden-Harris ticket. As the keynote speaker, Harris was wildly welcomed to P-town with placards that read "VP-Town!" Everybody on the Biden team at the event was on message. However, most attendees hoped Biden would exit.
So when the news hit that Kamala Harris was now a potential presidential nominee for the head of the ticket, enthusiasm swelled. Both the Black Caucus and Asian American Caucus immediately endorsed Harris. Within 30 minutes of her announcement, One Silicon Valley, a software engineering consulting firm, raised more than $ 1 million.
Also hours later, a national Zoom call from the D.C.-based Black women's organization "#WinWithBlackWomen" had over 40,000 sistahs in attendance. In three hours, these women raised over $1 million to support Harris, which T.V. personality Star Jones, the campaign chair, spearheaded.
"#WinWithBlackWomen" is a national intergenerational and intersectional sisterhood of black diasporic women who leverage talent, influence, and networks to support Black women.
The politics of being the first
When I heard the news of Harris running for president, I immediately thought about how my deceased Brooklyn Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm would be proud of this moment. Chisholm was the first African American woman to campaign for the presidential nomination in 1972 on the Democratic ticket. A woman of temerity and integrity, her slogan was "Unbought and Unbossed." Confronted with racist and sexist opposition, Chisholm lost the nomination. In 2024, similar concerns arise for Harris, too.
When news broke that Kamala was in the race for the White House, Black Twitter was abuzz with exuberance and trepidation." Much of Black Twitter is on board with Kamala as a candidate, but unsure if America feels the same way, "The Root reports.
"Okay, so now it's Kamala. Every white person who wanted him to drop out needs to figure out how to defend a Black woman in person and online for the first time in their lives. That's the job now. I'd like to see it, but I never have," Comedian and podcaster Akilah Hughes wrote on Twitter.
Prominent Democratic donor John Morgan of Florida emphatically stated he would not fundraise for Harris. "She would not be my first choice," Morgan quoted in The Hill. "The donors holding the 90 million can release those funds in the morning. It's all yours. You can keep my million. And good luck," he continued.
Striking the right balance with white Americans - Republican or Democrat-is difficult in this polarized era, especially for a woman of color in power who identifies as black. The "angry black woman" trope hovers over all sisters of African descent. Harris is attacked for her laugh. She runs the risk of being perceived as too loud, too forceful, not knowing her place, not staying in her lane, and being arrogant, albeit she is the V.P.
Must Harris struggle to avoid the misogynoir trope when asserting her power and authority? She mustn't be a titular head for fear of being perceived as unqualified, tokenized, or a DEI hire. Research shows that Harris is one of the most targeted politicians on the Internet, and FOX News runs a constant thread of bogus articles about her.
Job performance
Harris struggled to carve out a lane for herself in her early years, feeling the weight of being the first Black and Asian American V.P. With a job performance approval rating no higher than 39 percent from multiple polls, she had to convince the American public for a second term.
Republicans have made Harris the face of Biden's unfavorable immigration policy to win political ground in this election period. The intersexuality of her race and gender was weaponized to discredit her ability. It was unsurprising to women and people of color that Harris was appointed to fix immigration that previous administrations couldn't resolve, which set her up to fail.
I'm with her!
Harris's blunders were magnified, and her victories muted. Harris has accomplished a lot since taking office. Alongside Biden, Harris helped America get vaccinated, rebuild the economy due to COVID, led Congress to protect voter's rights by building a broad and diverse coalition, expand workers' rights to organize and collectively bargain, and women's issues-reproductive justice since the overturn of Roe v Wade, maternal health, child poverty.
In her first public speech since her running announcement, Harris said, "Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency. We here know when our middle class is strong, America is strong."
In one day, Harris garnered more than half the delegates needed to win the nomination. She has reenergized the base and injected hope, focusing on working folks like me.