Take a Step Back

Reflections on how far we've come in three months

Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash

Consider two contrasting images from last Friday.

On a stage in Houston, surrounded by tens of thousands of jubilant supporters, Kamala Harris made a compelling case that reproductive freedom is on the ballot across the country. With star power provided by Beyoncé and Willie Nelson, her Texas rally was at once sober and ebullient—a somber accounting of the pain inflicted by the Texas abortion ban and an exuberant celebration of spirit and will—reflecting the fierce and joyful warrior Harris has become on the campaign trail.

At the same time, Donald Trump engaged in an incoherent three-hour interview with Joe Rogan, where when he wasn’t threatening his domestic enemies he was babbling about how he both won and lost the 2020 election and wants to be a whale psychiatrist. The interview rambled on so long that it caused Trump to be almost three hours late to a rally in northern Michigan, where a stream of supporters left before he arrived. And this was before last night’s paean to fascism in New York, which I will address more fully when we can better assess the fallout.

These are the closing arguments of the two candidates. One is campaigning in bold daylight, the other in the darkness of authoritarianism and mental decay.

The contrast is jarring. Because elections are about contrasts it will make a difference in the campaign’s final week.

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When the year started, we were not on course to this moment. This election was going to be a replay of 2020.

Because Republicans decided to enable Donald Trump rather than convict him in the Senate when they had a chance, his reactionary politics was allowed to fester and spread to the point where it fully consumed their party. Now the nominee for the third straight time, Trump is running openly as an authoritarian promising to preempt the future by forcibly returning the country to a distant past.

To prevent this from happening, Democrats chose to renominate Joe Biden without any real opposition. The alternative to the forces of reaction would be to stay on the bridge Biden had built between the politics of twentieth century white America and a rich multicultural future growing ever larger in our field of vision but still believed to be beyond our grasp.

We know what happened next. Biden’s debate performance in late June sparked a rebellion from nervous Democrats who feared the electorate would resist sending him back to the White House until he is 86. The bridge collapsed.

There are a lot of frayed nerves right now as Election Day approaches, and they are understandable. But regardless of how anxiety provoking it is to live through these final campaign days, the true moment of peril came the day Biden dropped out. That was the day we were thrust into the unknown. That was the day when Democrats chose to bet on voters embracing the politics of the future in order to avoid what felt to many like the certainty of defeat with the incumbent.

I was on vacation when news of Biden’s decision broke, but I had written up some thoughts about what would happen in the event Biden decided to withdraw while I was away. This was originally posted on July 21:

My hope is that Democrats have a plan for an orderly transfer to Kamala Harris. If they do not, or if the question of who will replace Biden remains open, we will have to have a different conversation when I return in early August. Democrats can survive passing the baton to Harris, but I would be deeply concerned about an open convention in late August or any other replacement candidate.

And I hope they are prepared to confront the anger and disappointment this decision is going to generate. Biden received millions of primary votes. Some will see this as the Democratic establishment overriding their will. Others will be furious that their choice was taken from them or will be unhappy about Harris.

Democratic leaders will have to come together quickly to address these wounds, which are largely of their creation. They will need to address the pushback from voters and give spurned supporters time to heal. Biden himself can play a big role in this, as he is now the elder statesman of the party even if he is no longer its leader.

Harris will attract a different coalition. She has spent a lot of time on college campuses and has appeal to younger voters, who until now have been largely checked out of this election. There is also potential upside with voters of color. But she risks losing voters who would have considered voting for a white man. We have never elected a woman to the presidency, no less a woman of color. Now we have no choice. The fate of democracy rests on her shoulders, and Democrats are now asking the country to do something it has never done before as the only way to preserve our freedom.

What happened next feels miraculous, and it is attributable to the remarkable strategic skill of the party’s new standard bearer. Within hours, Harris was able to consolidate the Democratic party around her candidacy, reaching out to Biden delegates and potential opponents to claim the nomination before a challenge could take root.

This was only the first step. She then had to recalibrate a campaign that had been built to re-elect Joe Biden into an organization that could elect her. It meant devising a new message. Developing a policy platform. Shaping a new strategy. Integrating new advisors with an established team. Rapidly vetting potential running mates. Reconfiguring the national convention. Defining herself as an acceptable mainstream candidate before Trump’s campaign successfully marginalized her.

Doing any of these things is hard. Doing all of them fluidly and effectively is exceptional. But Harris rose to the moment as she has been rising to every moment of every day since she became the nominee.

No modern campaign has been asked to do as much as the Harris campaign. And no campaign has been as stunningly effective.

Harris was assisted in ways that were also not predictable. Donald Trump was never able to adjust to running against her, and spent the rest of the summer pining for Biden’s return rather than recalibrating a strategy that relied on running against an old guy. And the outpouring of energy, money, and volunteers that greeted Harris was impossible to imagine because it’s unlike anything we’ve seen in contemporary politics.

Harris saw these advantages and knew what to do with them. Now it is up to the electorate to do the thing that Biden’s withdrawal required. We must exit the bridge safely, without falling into the dangerous currents below.

On July 21, I also wrote that if it was disconcerting to ask the electorate to do something it had never done, it was also clarifying:

Having Harris at the top of the ticket puts the choice this November in stark relief. On one side is the young, multicultural emerging America—the country Biden promised to deliver us to as a bridge from the past. On the other side is a reactionary movement that wants to restore that past and then some, to move the country back to the nineteenth century by force.

I have long wondered if we were ready to make that choice. I would have been more comfortable putting it before the electorate of 2028 or 2032, but we no longer have the luxury of waiting. Biden and the Democrats have made their decision. The future has arrived early.

Kamala Harris is a talented and capable politician. Her elevation to the top of the ticket should generate a level of enthusiasm that’s been missing from our politics. Democrats need to come together around her candidacy, encourage that enthusiasm, and prosecute the case against MAGA.

The game plan for this election has been torn up and tossed out, but the fundamentals remain unchanged. Through all the chaos, a majority of the country still sees Donald Trump as a dangerous and unacceptable choice. Harris has the political and prosecutorial skills to make that the driving narrative of the next few months. If she succeeds, she can win this election and make history in the process.

Kamala Harris is indeed a talented and capable politician, more than she was given credit for before taking center stage. Every day she has driven the narrative. Every day she has avoided the pitfalls that have derailed other candidates. To do what she set out to accomplish required running a near perfect campaign. And she has.

We enter the final week with Trump displaying that he is dangerous and unfit, and with Harris hammering home the contrast.

The prosecutor is now making her closing argument. She has earned our faith that she will acquit herself as well as she has every day since late July. We should trust Kamala Harris to lead us safely off the bridge.