Can Kamala Harris Be the Unlikeliest of Heroes?

At first glance, Kamala Harris may seem an unlikely savior of democracy. As a career prosecutor, including stints as the district attorney of San Francisco and the attorney general of California, she specialized in sending people to jail and prison, adding to the nation’s crisis of mass incarceration. As a senator and failed 2020 presidential candidate, she was often accused of opportunism. As vice president, she operated largely out of public view for three years, and was saddled with disapproval ratings that rivaled and sometimes exceeded those of President Joe Biden.

But if the study of the past teaches us anything, it is that history is often driven by unlikely heroes who rose to the occasion in an hour of dire need. Abraham Lincoln, born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky, ended chattel slavery and defeated the Confederacy in the Civil War. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, born into wealth and privilege, oversaw New Deal programs that rescued the American working class from the Great Depression and a world war that defeated the Nazis.

Harris may never be mentioned alongside Lincoln and FDR, but she is off to a good start. She has already rescued the Democrats from certain defeat in November and energized the party’s base in a way not seen since Barack Obama in 2008. Barring the unforeseeable, she will be the Democratic nominee, and, if the election breaks her way, she will make history as the first female president.

This late in the election cycle, Harris is the only realistic alternative to Trump and all that he stands for.

Harris will campaign for the presidency at a time of national emergency born from the dark impulses of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement he leads. There are many ways to understand and characterize Trumpism, a phenomenon that is at once authoritarian, racist, misogynistic and reactionary. I was among the first opinion writers to refer to Trump explicitly as a fascist, and I continue to believe there is no better label to describe his behavior, psychopathology, support for white supremacy, nostalgia for a mythical past and dictatorial aspirations.

Whether Harris ultimately decides to pin the “F” word on Trump — and to-date (unlike Biden) she has not — it is imperative that she defines Trumpism and the stakes in the election in stark and unmistakable terms. In a speech delivered in Wisconsin on July 23, two days after Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, she did just that, framing the election as a choice between “freedom, compassion and the rule of law, [and] … chaos, fear and hate.”

To win, Harris will have to do more than highlight Trump’s negatives or promote herself as a seasoned prosecutor capable of standing up to her opponent. The “cop versus con” slogan that has emerged in the early going is catchy but insufficient. A successful campaign will require the formulation of a forward-looking positive agenda. In this regard, too, Harris has made considerable strides.

Appearing before the Zeta Phi Beta sorority in Indianapolis on July 24, she began to sketch the outlines of that agenda while at the same time boycotting Bibi Netanyahu’s war-mongering address to Congress. Harris set herself up as the perfect foil to Trump — a multiracial woman who, at age 59, is younger, more vital and more articulate than the former president, who turned 78 in June and is showing the same signs of cognitive decline that drove Biden into retirement. “We face a choice between two different visions,” she told the cheering crowd of 6,000. “One focused on the future, the other focused on the past. With your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”

Harris touted the Biden administration’s achievements in reducing student debt, broadening assistance for new mothers and cutting child poverty. Looking ahead, she pledged to expand affordable health care, secure childcare and eldercare for all Americans, establish universal paid maternity leave and restore the right to abortion.

“Across our nation,” she declared, “we are witnessing a full-on assault on hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights. The freedom to vote. The freedom to be safe from gun violence. The freedom to live without fear of bigotry and hate. The freedom to love who you love openly … the freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and whole history, and the freedom of a woman to make decisions about her own body.”

In what may be the dominant theme of her campaign, she tarred Trump and the GOP as “extremists” who want to “take us back, but we are not going back.”

On July 25, at a gathering of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, she expanded on her vision for the future, vowing to sign both the Protecting the Right to Organize Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act into law, and to pass an assault weapons ban.

A successful campaign will require the formulation of a forward-looking positive agenda.

Back in Washington on July 25, she unexpectedly moved left on the war in Gaza in a press conference held after meeting privately with Netanyahu. In contrast to the deference Biden has shown to the Israeli prime minister, she said that while she recognizes Israel’s right to self-defense and denounces Hamas for the “horrific acts of sexual violence” committed on Oct. 7, “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies [committed by the Israeli military] in Gaza. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent.” She called for a ceasefire, the release of the hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state, adding, “As I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.”

Harris is not a perfect candidate for all voters, and in the coming weeks and months, she will come under withering attacks by Trump and the GOP, who have already begun to mock her for her distinctive laugh and for being “a childless cat lady.”

Such slanders paid great dividends for Trump in 2016, and to rebut the attacks this time will require a united front akin to the effort mounted by the French electorate that blocked the far right from taking power in June. This late in the election cycle, Harris is the only realistic alternative to Trump and all that he stands for. We have much to gain from supporting her, and everything to lose if we don’t.