Kamala Has Made the Presidential Race More Hopeful Than Ever
I am thankful for Biden's service to our country, and I am so thankful that millions of Americans are rallying around Harris.
Gratitude is very important. It is among the most empowering forces in the universe. It certainly felt that way Sunday when news came that President Joe Biden will not run for a second term, that he was instead endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for top spot on the ticket.
For a moment, I was leery, as my husband had tricked me with a parody headline a few days earlier with essentially the same news, but not at all the same content after clicking. But as my phone began blowing up, I felt confident that these new headlines would not again return a pornographic-pic gag.
Indeed, the news was genuine and my gratitude ratcheted up to a nearly giddy level. I changed my online mug shots to a 2019 selfie in my “Kamala Harris for the People” campaign T-shirt. I could feel my pituitary gland releasing endorphins. I made my first campaign donation of the season, meager as it was. Apparently I was not alone. Harris cleared upwards of $80 million within 24 hours of Biden’s endorsement. Not too shabby.
As a tediously typical, white, Gen X, gay, cis man, I dutifully quote The Golden Girls. One line has been running through my head since the debate. It’s from an early 1992 episode, months before that year’s party conventions. Democrats were still stinging from eight years of Ronald Reagan followed by George H. Bush trouncing — 426 electoral votes to 111 — Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in ’88.
That was my first presidential election. Merely 19, even I was politically aware enough to know that Dukakis was likely doomed. His campaign tried to make him look tough, so they filmed him riding a tank. Politico offers a short video documentary of the military misadventure aptly titled, Dukakis and the Tank: The Making of a Political Disaster. In the aforementioned Golden Girls episode, matriarch Sophia meets a dog that can apparently find anything. “Anything? A viable Democrat for president. Go!”
Biden at the debate felt like Dukakis in the tank. Harris feels like the viable Democrat we need.
Gratitude is something to share, to celebrate. Accordingly, this column is my expression of thanks. Moving from Sophia to Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, there is another quote worth including: “When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
I am thankful for Biden’s service to our country, for his incredibly successful term, to date. And I am thankful his patriotism outweighed any ego or intransigence. And I am so thankful that millions of Americans are rallying around Harris.
How abundantly grateful I am that we now have Harris to take on the Donald Trump-J.D. Vance ticket. The MAGA movement, already emboldened by its convention, has taken its zealotry to a disturbing new level in the wake of Trump being shot. The unhinged devotion, cruelly complemented with the Project 2025 blueprint for delivering authoritarian minority rule in ways the Electoral College barely brushes, is a toxic blend.
It’s a horrible prospect for the LGBTQ community, for bodily autonomy, for critically examining our history, for democracy here and abroad. It’s The Empire Strikes Back, with Trump as Emperor Palpatine and Vance as Darth Vader. (Even if he’s long struck me as the personification of a Diet Mountain Dew, which is now universally agreed upon. Notably, Rep. Jasmine Crockett is that bottle of tequila Lizzo’s been saving for you.) I don’t know what role to assign the libertarian-esque, tech bro tycoons who back this menace. The dark side?
My gratitude is not, however, based in fear of or hatred for that band of bullies. It’s full of hope and determination and love. Because a fundraising windfall and a majority of delegates gives us our champion, Princess Kamala Organa.
I don’t offer Harris the sort of false-god worship we see in the Trump Camp. Not even if somebody makes a golden idol of her. I’d never offer unquestioning devotion to anyone. I’m not fighting for her, but beside her. She’s the one who inspired me to do it with her 2019 memoir, The Truths We Hold.
“My daily challenge to myself is to be part of the solution, to be a joyful warrior in the battle to come,” she wrote, long before Moms for Liberty stole the “joyful warrior” phrase. “My challenge to you is to join that effort. To stand up for our ideals and our values. Let’s not throw up our hands when it’s time to roll up our sleeves. Not now. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
Not ever, indeed, as the fight is never over. Whoever wins the presidency in November, we’re still going to be a very split country, ever evolving. A Harris win would, at least, pull the ship of state a little more to the left after the severe right turn Trump’s Supreme Court crew has us sailing.
On Harris versus Trump, another Wiesel quote is apt. “One person of integrity can make a difference.” I am so hopeful she will, immeasurably thankful she’ll do her best for all our sakes.
Will O’Bryan is a former Metro Weekly managing editor, living in D.C. with his husband. He is online at www.LifeInFlights.com.
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