They say we get the democracy we deserve. I certainly can’t disagree with that.
They say a woman has to be twice as good as a man to get the same recognition. Obviously I haven’t experienced that personally, but my observation would tend to say that one is also true.
Well, on Tuesday night Kamala Harris was at least four times as good as most men in politics, and exponentially better than her opponent. It’s all the more remarkable, then, that we basically lucked into having her as the Democratic nominee. The power brokers who pushed Joe Biden out, and yes, some of the reasons were good ones, didn’t have their eyes on VP Harris. They didn’t really intend for us to get a nominee this good. But here we are, because we demanded better than some focus-grouped, billionaire approved reactionary centrist or Corporate Democrat.
Anand Giridharadas had some great thoughts on the matter this week:
Her facial expressions worked harder than Charlie Chaplin’s back when there was no sound. The mics may have been muted, but they forgot to press the button to silence her face. Eyebrows up, eyebrows down. Hand on chin, hand down. Eyes enlarged, eyes narrowed. Skepticism, sadness, eagerness to butt in, exasperation, wonder — she might cycle through all of this during one of Donald Trump’s answers. Can one’s side-eye be nominated for an Emmy? Though Harris often looked right at him when she spoke, when Harris spoke, he looked straight ahead, with his resting fascism face.
Sometimes she listened, letting him wild. Sometimes she seemed like a predator on the savannah, ready to pounce as he meandered. Sometimes, many times, she planted bait for him, with the exterminator’s faith that the pest will eventually come for his nibble. He gobbled instead. Every one of her traps he found, true to biology, and gobbled. The thing about bait is you don’t know it’s bait. Otherwise, you wouldn’t fill up on it. Bait ruins dinner, because by dinner you’re dead.
What a small needle! In addition to all this, Harris sought to show, not tell but show, that the multiracial democracy America is becoming will be fun. One shouldn’t have to convince people that freedom is better than tyranny and the thriving of all better than the thriving of some, but here we are. You have to show people that what they are being manipulated to fear isn’t scary. And Harris carried herself, amid everything else she needed to be doing, with a joy that embodies the kind of future she promises.
The most important new thing I saw her do was prebunking. Pre-, not de-. Debunking is waiting for someone to lie and then hitting back with the truth. It doesn’t work in politics as much you would hope it would in an age saturated by lies. But prebunking works better. Prebunking is explaining to people how they are being (or, better yet, will be) manipulated, what the motive is, how the con works, how the lie will be crafted and how it will function, and, for extra credit, who benefits from it and how. In the age of Trump, too many of his opponents have been all debunk, no prebunk.
But in last night’s debate, again and again, Harris rose to the meta level and explained Trump’s ways in advance so as to inoculate against their infectiousness. “I’m going to tell you all, in this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old, tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” she said in the first minutes. In another moment, she prebunked any professions Trump might make to be admired by foreign autocrats for his strength: “It is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors.”
We can still deserve such a candidate, and such a President, but that’s in our hands not hers. Vote. Get your friends and family to vote. Talk to your coworkers and even total strangers about voting if you get the opportunity. Volunteer to do something, anything. Phone calls, text messaging, driving people to the polls, becoming a poll worker...anything you can feel comfortable with.
Then again, maybe we will deserve such a candidate. Postcards to Swing States fully topped out their biggest goal by getting funding to print and distribute 36 million postcards to volunteers who hand write and buy postage for them. If we’re putting this kind of energy into everything to do with this election, it’s going to be a really good one for Democrats and Liberals.
Because when Democrats vote, we win.
