Why Vice President Kamala Harris Is Good For America

Supply: Boston Globe / Getty

It has been nearly three years since then-candidate Joe Biden made one of the vital consequential selections for his marketing campaign and the nation – naming Senator Kamala Harris as his operating mate.

Now, I perceive that as we have a good time this anniversary with the 2024 elections looming earlier than us, it’s simple to have a look at that historic second by the lens of political gamesmanship or cynicism. It was simple to speak about how the Biden marketing campaign wanted a younger, Black girl on the ticket to counter the “one other outdated white man” syndrome columnists like to jot down about. It was simple to have a look at geographic and demographic steadiness and Harris’ skill to ship in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and California.

However, the reality is that – whether or not as District Lawyer, Lawyer Basic, Senator or Vice President – Kamala Harris has been a powerful and fixed voice on a few of the most necessary problems with our time from voting rights and housing to job creation and local weather change.

Oh, don’t take my phrase for it. Take a look at the truth that, as California’s Lawyer Basic, she gained a $20 billion settlement for Californians whose properties had been foreclosed on and a $1.1 billion settlement for college kids and veterans who had been taken benefit of by a for-profit training firm. Take a look at the anti-lynching invoice she wrote and handed as a Senator in 2018, take a look at her laws to protect and assist HBCUs, take a look at her marketing campaign for hire aid and her battle to deliver badly wanted sources to low-income communities through the COVID-19 pandemic.

But it surely’s not simply the distant or close to previous we’re taking a look at right here. It was a sizzling afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida when Vice President Kamala Harris took the stage on the Ritz Theater & Museum when the Vice-President took the stage to blister Gov. Ron DeSantis and the MAGA Republicans making an attempt to “substitute historical past with lies.” And it wasn’t simply the climate.

Let me inform you, watching the Vice President tearing into “so-called leaders” pushing white supremacist propaganda into our lecture rooms to persuade a technology of youngsters that slavery was really a very good factor, was a factor of magnificence and nobody watching may deny the reality. That wasn’t the “Harris the Politician” the pundits wish to criticize. That was “Harris the Chief” was proper there earlier than their eyes.

Perhaps they see it now.

Perhaps they’ll see the lady whose dad and mom taught her about Supreme Courtroom Justice Thurgood Marshall and took her to civil rights demonstrations when she’s combating towards a court docket gone loopy and standing up in Des Moines Iowa for girls throughout America who’ve had their proper to decide on stolen away.

Perhaps they’ll see the Lawyer Basic who defended the Reasonably priced Care Act in court docket when she’s combating to enhance maternal well being or standing up for 2 Black legislators expelled from the GOP-controlled Tennessee State Home for daring to talk out after a 28-year-old gunman fired 152 rounds killing three adults and three youngsters in Nashville.

Perhaps they’ll see “Harris the Chief” when she’s taking the lead on voting rights, serving to this administration create new high-tech jobs like constructing the world’s largest semiconductor web site and calling out loopy right-wing candidates who declare slaves really benefited from slavery.

Again and again, President Biden has talked about this election and the final as a battle for the “Soul of America” and, whether or not it’s talking to the NAACP in Boston or Everytown for Gun Security in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris is exhibiting us not solely that this battle is actual, however that she’s proper there on the entrance traces. And that issues as a result of, in a world so dominated by Trump headlines and nation music controversy, it’s simple to really feel remoted and ignored, like we hold getting shouted down as a result of we’re out right here on our personal. However we’re not alone.

“Harris the Chief” is with us main by instance and, by her braveness, exhibiting us that we don’t need to be afraid. You see, the MAGA crowd is shouting so loudly as a result of, on the finish of the day, they’re afraid. They’re afraid as a result of, when even Budweiser can inform that you just’ve gone off the deep finish, their outdated sport of divide and conquer isn’t going to work anymore. They’re afraid as a result of you may’t cult chant “Lock Her Up” when he’s the one underneath indictment. They’re afraid as a result of they’ll’t scare us with indignant scowls and tiki torches as a result of Vice President Kamala Harris is on the scene…and she or he has our again.

Antjuan Seawright (@antjuansea) is a Democratic political strategist, founder and CEO of Blueprint Technique LLC, a CBS Information political contributor, and a senior visiting fellow at Third Manner