Barely a month ago, it was hard to imagine anything but a fraught and woebegone Democratic National Convention presided over by a post-debate President Biden sinking in the polls to Donald Trump. Instead, Vice President Kamala Harris arrives in Chicago this week on an astonishing and unexpected groundswell of support and enthusiasm as the presidential candidate who wasn’t supposed to be.
When Harris gets the official nod later this week, it won’t be a surprise. She has already secured the necessary delegate support. Nevertheless, it will be a singular moment in American history.
The California politician is neither the first woman to be nominated as the Democratic candidate for president, nor the first Black person to be nominated as the Democratic candidate for president. But she will be the first nominee who is both a woman and Black — and South Asian. Those things alone make her a historic figure.
Of course there was a path trod before her. In 1972, the late Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm was the first Black person and first woman to seek a presidential nomination from one of the two major political parties. In 1976, the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan was the first Black person and the first woman to deliver a keynote address at the Democratic convention.
The Harris who wraps up the convention is a different Harris from the short-lived candidate in the 2020 presidential primary, who morphed into Biden’s running mate and then the vice president, with the requisite stumbles and cringeworthy interviews along the way.
This summer, she never sounded more eloquent and commanding than when she was defending Biden after his catastrophic performance in the June presidential debate.
Hers has, so far, been one of the most successful turns by an understudy who stepped into a lead role. This week, she must give her best performance yet.
But even before she makes her acceptance speech on Thursday, she heads into a convention already made extraordinary by Biden’s last-minute decision to exit the race and her electrifying ascendance to the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
It’s not just that she arrives on a wave of energy, having nudged the polls from trailing Trump to slightly leading him. She has won support among Black, white, Gen Z and millennial voters, and been anointed by singer Charli XCX as “brat.” Charli XCX’s term for an edgy party girl has now expanded to include a presidential candidate with a suit, pearls, a big laugh and a bigger resume.
Part of her appeal is how clear-eyed and upbeat she is about the election and the future. Her message is not about glorifying herself, but about making the country a better place for everyone (not just loyalists) by keeping the presidency out of the hands of Trump. As she soberly reminded a group at a campaign stop in western Pennsylvania on Sunday: “We have a lot of work to do to earn the vote of the American people.”
Consider where Harris and the country stand at this moment in time. We are a century past the ratification of a woman’s right to vote and 150 years past the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed that no one could be denied the right to vote based on race. (Although it would take the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to get that enforced.) Yet, a mere two years ago, women lost the constitutional right to control their own bodies and now face an onslaught of regressive laws that treat them as incubators. Soon, this particular woman might be in control of the entire nation. How righteous would that be?
