We have a perfect candidate in VP Harris, a Black South Asian woman with an excellent résumé who absolutely can win the presidency in 2024. Here's why.
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Earlier this month an 11-page memo entitled, “The Case for Kamala’” circulated among top Democrats. While it was, at times, condescendingly lukewarm in its enthusiasm for Harris, it did outline her strength in polling and her advantage with young voters of color. It acknowledged that Vice-President Harris “is our clearest path to win.” What it failed to mention were the multitude of reasons why Kamala Devi Harris is actually the perfect candidate for this moment in our American history.
When I say perfect, I mean it. Perfect as defined by “having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.” That is Kamala Harris. She innately understands that to serve the public, there are tough unpopular decisions to be made, red tape to cut through, and an onslaught of nonstop criticism from the public and the media. Kamala, like other Black women who run for office, receive additional biased scrutiny with an extra helping of bigoted gaslighting. Most people would whither under the weight of public service. It’s why only 2 percent of Americans even run for office, and less than 1 percent will ever serve. Kamala Harris is battle tested. Harris has made bigots nervous and predators apoplectic.
Kamala has done something Democrats have longed for: given us someone to vote for, not just against. Forty-four thousand Black Women quickly organized to hold a fundraiser and galvanizing talk to gird ourselves for the onslaught of inevitable attacks. Black men quickly followed, and together over $3 million was raised from those two events. Black fraternities and sororities (“The Divine Nine”) are honoring their fellow soror with fundraising events. South Asian, Latinas, and LGBTQ groups are also holding fundraisers. In a show of solidarity, white women, determined not to repeat the mistakes of 2016 and 2020 have called each other in and are preparing massive fundraisers.
We’re not just donating to VP Kamala Harris’s being battle-tested but also her experience, and her résumé is deep.
The top lines of Kamala Harris’s CV are: District Attorney of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, Senator, and current Vice-President. J.D. Vance’s jealous remark of “What has she ever done?” is more laughable than his Diet Mountain Dew shtick.
As president, Kamala Harris’s colossal experience is ideal to grapple with the fallout from our Supreme Court. SCOTUS’s Right Wing majority destroyed its legitimacy, weakened our democracy, and endangered our public health and safety.
SCOTUS was acting out of fealty to the man they believed was destined to take back the Oval, so they cleared a path for Project 2025 to implement its main goal: to make Trump the head of a unitary executive branch, or, as Voting Rights lawyer Marc Elias puts it, “where the president reigns supreme.” Not even the Supreme Court could have envisioned prosecutor Kamala Harris galvanizing her party, securing her delegates and her bag in less than 24 hours. And honey, Kamala has a plan for SCOTUS.
Before Biden exited the race he proposed new guidelines to reform the court which include term limits and a code of ethics. Kamala Harris not only supports those reforms, she is also open to expanding the court, something Biden was still hesitant to consider. Regardless if the court is expanded or not, a Harris presidency could lead to at least two new SCOTUS appointments (Samuel Alito is 74; Clarence Thomas, 76), once again rebalancing the court. A Trump win could cement the Right Wing majority on SCOTUS for the next 20 years and finish hijacking our voting rights and civil rights—the antithesis of Harris’s policy slate.
Securing civil, voting, disability, and LGBTQ rights have long been a priority for the Vice-President throughout her career. If Harris has a Democratic majority in both chambers, and 51 senators open to a rule change to amend the filibuster to a talking one, she’d be able to sign into law policies she already supports like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, restoring voting rights; the Women’s Health Protection Act, codifying abortion; the Equality Act; would provide “consistent and explicit non-discrimination protections” for the LGBTQ+ community; the Assault Weapons Ban, regulating assault weapons. And she’d be able to continue to support the expansion of environmental protections—all of which would just be the tip of the environmentally protected iceberg.
Being a Gen X candidate and someone who grew up with computers (yes, Gen X also had computers early in life—who do you think shaped the digital revolution?), Kamala understands the challenges of reigning in tech companies, AI, cyber attacks, and data security.
Harris will also prioritize “pocketbook issues” like medical-debt relief, student-loan forgiveness, tax credits for the middle class and working poor. While aspects of Harris’s economic priorities will diverge from Biden’s, she’ll most likely keep aspects of his plan to lower taxes for those making under $400,000, raising taxes on America’s wealthiest, and quadruple the stock buyback tax. All of which could add $5 trillion in revenue by 2034. A sharp contrast to Donald Trump who would make the deep tax cuts for America’s wealthiest permanent sticking the middle class taxpayers with the $3.8 trillion dollar bill. Kamala is committed to an economy that works for pregnant mothers to senior citizens, and everyone in between.
Harris’s political philosophy of community comes from her beloved mother, Shyamala Gopalan, and encapsulates the president she’ll be for us, “None of us just live in a silo…You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” Kamala is both telling us no one makes it on their own, and we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. This is antithetical to Trump who has long touted the false claim that he’s “self-made” and the authoritarian mantra, “I alone can fix this.” Trump has already told us he intends to have a nativist and isolationist foreign policy, once again, in deep opposition to Kamala Harris’s positions.
On the global stage, Kamala Harris has centered human rights, “dignity, freedom, and self-determination” in her approach to Gaza and Israel. Human rights will also be the focus in her dealings with Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Harris has confirmed her support for Ukraine, rattling the Kremlin who had been optimistic about another Trump administration. Expect foreign and domestic disinformation to flow like the Rio Grande as a defensive tactic to deny Kamala Harris the presidency.
Of course not everything that will be said about her will be disinformation. There are some valid criticisms of her past policies as DA of San Francisco and Attorney General of California, but much of it has also been misrepresented by op-eds dripping with subterfuge and lacking nuance.
For example, no, Kamala Harris has never been pro-death penalty. She declined to seek the death penalty during her tenure as California’s Attorney General. California civil rights professor Hadar Aviram examined Kamala Harris’s law enforcement career and called her “a progressive prosecutor.” Aviram was critical of Harris’s “action on the death penalty appeal” but understood it was policy California voted to keep in place. Kamala Harris has stated she would like to see the end of the death penalty.
No, Kamala Harris did not jail any parents of children who were truant. Compulsory education laws, or truancy laws are on the books in every state, some since the mid-1850s to “curb child labor” and prevent “juvenile delinquency.” These truancy laws have almost always been punitive in nature as a way of enforcing children attend school. Kamala Harris no longer supports the punitive aspect of truancy laws.
Nor did Kamala Harris throw “thousands of Black men in jail” for simple weed possession. In fact, during her seven-year tenure as DA, less than 45 people went to state prison for marijuana-related cases. Harris was deemed, “the most progressive prosecutor in the state at the time when it came to marijuana” and low-level drug offenses. Kamala Harris supports decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level and expungement marijuana convictions.
Those examples demonstrate there is such a thing as a progressive prosecutor and someone who knows how to navigate complex policy decisions. Harris’s time in the Senate, and her 2019 run for office illustrate a person our country desperately needs: Someone who is willing to listen to our hopes, criticisms, and concerns. Kamala has handled fair criticism with aplomb and has moved forward in her approach to the law and its enforcement. And right now the majority of voters want a steady hand at the wheel who not only knows how to course-correct on our country’s deeply problematic past, but offers a hopeful vision on how to navigate our very complex future both domestically and globally.
People are right to ask the question, “Are we ready to elect a Black South Asian woman?,” when our country objectively got its economic standing as a world power by displacing and committing genocide on indigenous peoples, from the violence of chattel slavery, and by denying Asian Americans citizenship well into the 20th century while exploiting their labor. Kamala Harris intimately understands disenfranchisement—she was born when Black women were still a year from suffrage, and was bussed to school during Berkeley’s integration effort. This resonates with more people than Beltway media will comprehend.
It’s not a baseless feeling I have that we can elect her, let’s face it the last Trump administration left me numb, but it’s the data that shows me we can elect her. After all, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by millions of votes. Kamala Harris’s poll numbers are already climbing, because people are coming off the sidelines to support her. While members of the media, like Katy Tur will continue to pose asinine questions like, “But would you have a beer with Kamala Harris?” Voters have already shouted Katy down with a haul of cash so large it’d make Donald’s spray tan turn green with envy.
As Kamala Harris has indicated, no one makes it on their own. We, the people, must deliver Kamala Harris to the White House with a resounding majority in both the Senate and in the House to not only ensure her success but ours as a people, as a nation, and to show the world we are indeed led “by the better angels of our nature.”