Say this mantra to yourself every morning after all of your other prayers and affirmations until Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Then turn on the news/read the paper/check your social media feed for any amount of time, absorb whatever nonsense has been unleashed by this POTUS, breathe slowly, and then repeat:
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Look (and I realize I am jumping in with both feet here by saying this in January 2019, but here goes everything): I am all in for Kamala Harris. PERIOD. I am comfortable putting that out into the universe until such time as the need arises for me to cast a ballot for someone else. But since we are speaking about a vote that I would presumably cast in June 2020, I am the Busy Black Woman and I approve this message.
I believe she is formidable. I believe she is well-qualified. I am inspired by her. I am ready to see this happen while my daughter is still young so that her earliest memory of a President is someone other than the Joker.
I don't have any issues with her record as a prosecutor.I don't have any issues with her past with Willie Brown.
I don't have any issues with her being an AKA.
I don't have any issues with her non-Black husband.
I don't have any issues with her music playlists or viral dancing to Cardi B.
I don't have any issues with her not completing her first term as a Senator.
I don't have any issues with Kamala Harris running for President.
A Black woman who graduated from law school in the late 80s/early 90s had very specific job tracts. She was either going to work as a prosecutor, as some kind of government bureaucrat, or as a civil rights do-gooder. I went to law school in the mid-90s so just take my word for it. Clearly, she was a woman with ambition, so it is no surprise that Kamala Harris chose to become a prosecutor and excelled at it. We can argue about her record, but it was her JOB to be tough on crime in California during the era of three-strikes. For that, you need to blame the legislature, not her. Once she ascended to higher office and sought to institute systematic reforms (incremental, yes), she continued to excel, which is why we are discussing her as a serious candidate instead of as a person who is running a symbolic campaign to raise issues.
As for her personal life, let's address all of it in this paragraph and then let it be. She dated former California Assembly leader and two-term Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown while he was married. They both admit to that, and while you are free to clutch your pearls over the morality of that choice, they were consenting adults. She is married now to a man named Douglas Emhoff and that is all I have to say about that. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc...but we've already established that nobody is perfect (oop-skee, in case someone thought I was serious).
And although I did not mention this in my list, I am NOT acknowledging any nonsensical ashy hotepian complaints about the authenticity of her Black experience.
But I did mention that Cardi B video and that music mood list that somehow included Purple Rain and Lady Gaga in A Star is Born, which has me looking at her in some kind of way. However, I am granting her a reprieve because we already know that her staff put this list together (just like Obama's millennials did for him).
Finally, I am willing to admit that my initial reaction before the official announcement was to question the wisdom of potentially giving up her historic Senate seat. She is only the second Black woman to be elected to that body, and I definitely watched her performance during the Kavanaugh hearings with an eye towards seeing her wield the gavel one day as the Senate Judiciary Chair. But that is my dream, not hers. And with all due respect to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, who have also announced their candidacies, perhaps Harris is trying to avoid the baggage that comes from tenure. If she's hearing the buzz and has that itch, better to scratch it now than to wait (which is what Barack Obama did). At worst, she stays in the Senate anyway because her seat goes up for re-election in 2022.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Seriously, I just need to re-emphasize my opening statement, which is we don't need to bake ourselves into this idea of perfection in a political candidate. Ideological purity, emails, and Russian bots convinced a bunch of folks to stay home in 2016 or to vote for Jill Stein (or Ralph Nader if you want to revisit 2000). Candidates have deficiencies and have made compromises that absolutely deserve to be examined, and where appropriate, for which they must be held accountable. If you prefer to vote for Julian Castro, that's cool. But please, for the love of God and country, do not allow a meme or a bunch of ratchet tweets or an edited soundbite or even a well-written blog influence your decision.
Because none of that swayed the voters who are happy with the current Administration...
No comments:
Post a Comment