Before I get to my main point (as if I had one), I want to touch on something a couple of pundits brought up yesterday, but put it into a little better context. It was pointed out yesterday that even if you take Kamala Harris’s ethnicity out of the equation, this was still an extremely rare event. Only twice before had a major party candidate chosen a woman of any race as a running mate. And that’s true.
In 1984, Walter Mondale got the dubious pleasure of running against a popular Ronald Reagan, mainly because nobody else wanted the job. Sweet Jesus, I was only 27 at the time, and even I had to hold my nose when I went into the booth. Mondale’s campaign had lost what little momentum it had even before the convention, so he pulled out his 3rd and 30 play and handed the ball to Geraldine Ferraro for an end round. We all saw how well that worked.
In 2008, a bitter John McCain, who quite rightly felt he had gotten totally boned in 2000, finally got to make his run for the White House. And as luck would have it, he ended up running against a charismatic black man, instead of the stodgy Al Gore. McCain struggled to find traction in the campaign, and McCain ended up throwing his own Hail Mary pass going into the convention, picking half term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Caribou Barbie promptly scuttled the McCain campaign like the Bismark.
This. Is. Different. In the two previous campaigns, both presidential candidates were foundering, and their choice of a running mate was a parlor trick to try to gin up support from women, and both times it failed, because they saw through the trick. But Biden isn’t losing, he’s kicking Trump’s ass all over the map! With Biden’s widespread lead, and his momentum, Biden had the rare chance to choose his dream running mate. And in a bow to the inevitability of history, he made the right choice. Which is why it will have such impact. It wasn’t a parlor trick, and everybody knows it, it was the right thing to do.
But here’s the main thing. Of course, once Kamala Harris was named as Biden’s running mate yesterday, it was all that was on the news. Host after host brought out African American congresswomen, former congresswomen, civil rights workers, and activists. And each and every one of them had that glow of total, complete validation. Many of them, as they described their feelings at that moment still had that sheen in their eyes that said that they weren’t quite through with tears yet for the day.
And as they spoke of that moment, of their feelings, of not only their own struggles, but those of their Mama’s and Grandmamas, the things they had to go through to get to this moment, I was humbled. Each one spoke of the moment the way a woman would describe to her party guests why the sweater she just got from her grandson was the most treasured thing in her life. They were the epitome of class, grace, and dignity in a moment of overpowering emotion.
Hey, I’m a privileged white dude, what do I know? But I’ll tell you what I do know. Forget the centuries of struggle and oppression. If I had had to suffer a single one of the indignities, outrages, and heartbreaks that these women and their forbears have suffered, and my moment in the sun finally arrived? Civility and grace would have gone out the window in a heartbeat. I would have held my interview in the end zone at Arrowhead stadium, spiking a football every 5 seconds. I’d be running around the end zone high fiveing myself, and doing soccer slides. My victory lap would last long enough to win the Indy 500, trailing a banner behind the car reading About fucking time!
That was what made yesterday so special for me. The response of those women, all of the, in their moment of ultimate triumph was a credit to their shared experience. And why not? They have showed quiet grace, poise, dignity and class through everything else, why not now?
To know the future, look to the past.before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen
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nice
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Damn well said. We’re about the same age and both old(ish) white dudes shaped by experiences from the same home state and I have to say I kept nodding in agreement as I read this. You oughta print it out and frame it. Being both a Chiefs fan and a Cubs fan (since I was a kid) myself the only thing I’d add is that in addition to spiking the ball every five seconds at Arrowhead would be to also do a badly danced home run trot around the bases at Wrigley – and keep repeating it!
Trump and others of course responded with the opposite of the class of the women you spoke of. Crass not class is just how he and so many of them are. One thing I’d keep an eye out for today and till the end of the week. I GOP Congress critter is about to be the subject of an epic Trump twitter storm thrashing. Some white guy Congress Critter from Tennessee of all places actual put up a tweet with a measure of class. I don’t recall his name or the exact words but the theme was that while he disagreed with Harris on just about every dadgummed thing (the expression he actually used) he thought it was COOL that the daughter of two immigrant parents could wind up being our VP! Uh Oh…
Beautiful, Murph; what a beautiful article. I’m still grinning after last night’s news. It’s a good thing my cats are used to me – when I saw that Joe chose Kamala Harris, I was jumping up and down, whooping, laughing, and crying. What a FANTASTIC choice! Can’t wait to see them inaugurated…
Nice work here Murf!! And all of us female critters felt the import of the moment–every darned one of us has one or two or 50 pretty awful stories we could tell about how it feels to be marginalized, called nasty, too fat, too thin, too this or too that, too ambitious, too aggressive (not assertive, that’s a positive word), not as smart as we “think” we are, yadayadayadayada. Patriarchy ain’t letting go, not on a bet, and when it is twinned with racism, whoa buddy, it is as mean as a basket of poisonous snakes.
Good job pointing out how much dignity and class all the women interviewed demonstrated yesterday. I saw Amy Klobuchar on The Last Word and talk about class. Plus, she and her husband are very good friends with Kamala and her husband; which means I hope Amy is right there in the mix helping to steer this very big and valuable ship to victory.
Lovely article, Murph. I couldn’t stop thinking of Gwen Ifill. And Barbara Jordan. And Shirley Chisholm. And so many others… this was for them, too.
For the slightly more than half our population who’ve been so patient, your time is coming.
Not intending to bring any rain to the picnic, but you’re being just a touch patronizing here. After all, that “slightly more than half our population” felt their “time” had come 4 years ago with the possibility of the FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT. And, many of them felt it would’ve been much better if we’d had the first woman president two election cycles earlier. Yes, a Black President was an historic achievement but it’s ironic that several of our overseas allies had managed to get women to serve as their heads of government while their success with getting minorities in that same position is much less. The UK had (for better or worse) Margaret Thatcher running things–granted, the UK in Thatcher’s time was a bit less ethnically diverse than today, but there’s never been a “person of color” in charge of the country (and, ironically, more people were concerned at the lack of a Black Doctor Who than the lack of a Black Prime Minister). Israel had Golda Meir (anyone think that she would tolerate Netanyahu’s antics much less want any assistance of any sort from Trump?) and India had Indira Gandhi. Argentina had Isabel Perón (okay–she got there largely because she succeeded her husband but she held out as President for almost two years); Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, had Sirimavo Bandaranaike; the Philippines had Corazón Aquino and Gloria Arroyo; Pakistan had Benazir Bhutto. And, of course, there’s the formidable Angela Merkel in Germany.
How many females have to be “elected” to the Vice-Presidency before their “time” actually arrives? I use “elected” because, let’s face it, most people don’t really pay that much attention to the VP candidate’s name in the actual election. The VP choice is a much bigger deal prior to and the day of announcing the person’s name than it is in the general election. (Sure, the VP debate is a bit of a thing but when was the last time you actually cast your vote for President BECAUSE of the VP name attached to the line?)
The excitement I’m seeing from all the black women I know posting on Facebook is tremendous. I know a lot of AKAs and Deltas and you can bet they will be kicking their neighbors’ asses to vote. They’re all talking about combining their colors on one Kamala t-shirt and stuff like that.
People who said black voters weren’t excited about her in the primary didn’t get the dynamic of the primary & why it may have SEEMED that way when they were just saying that at the time, based on what they knew, their support was elsewhere — not that they rejected her.
Of course we’ll never know because she dropped out before voting started, but keep in mind that her cratering fundraising was in large part media driven because the media ginned up a narrative about her “flailing” campaign, and people don’t donate to “flailing” campaigns. But I never saw any evidence that black votes didn’t like her. In fact, my congresswoman, who is a black woman, endorsed her.
i am probably very, very late to the party not having known about this video. Someone who did know clued me in. It goes back th Hillary’s concession speech