A grand dame in the Hamptons told me over her glass of Vin Rosé in August: “Kamala Harris is a lightweight,” she said. “Everyone I talk to says so. Biden had six picks, and he picked the worst.”
“Maybe so,” I answered, “but she packs a hell of a punch.”
Is anyone still calling the Democratic presidential nominee a lightweight? Only at their peril.
Earlier this summer, the electorate had to choose between two unpalatable candidates past their sell-by dates. Most voters didn’t care for either. In one corner stood Donald Trump, a convicted felon, sex abuser, fraudster, charlatan, and liar whose below-the-belt attacks on his enemies had worn thin like the shopworn zingers of a Borscht belt comedian. In the other corner was superannuated Joe Biden, seemingly on his last legs, a broken-down gunfighter reminiscent of Lee Marvin’s portrayal of Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou.
The picture seemed bright for Trump. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, the four criminal cases against him—two federal and two state—were on life support. They couldn’t even convict him of mishandling stolen classified documents, which he had stored in the Mar-a-Lago bathroom after he had left the White House. The evidence was abundant, and the charge should have been easy to prove. However, the Trumpy Judge Aileen Cannon, whom we have Marco Rubio to thank, would have none of the case, leaving the appellate courts to review the soundness of a highly unprecedented decision.
Trump and his MAGAs steamrolled Nikki Haley. He was ahead of Biden, and his staffers were already eyeing positions in the new administration.
Then, there was the attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, which won the sympathy of millions. Trump was not too grievously wounded to stand before the flag for an Iwo Jima-style photo, his face bloodied but unbowed, his body surrounded by his loyal (but not so competent) Secret Service.
The Republican convention disappointed many. Trump needed to unify the country whose sympathies he had. Instead, he was the same old Trump, attacking his adversaries, ranting about Hannibal Lecter, and naming J. D. Vance, a clunker of a running mate whose obsession with whether women did or did not have children was as weird as they came. Still, Trump seemed in the driver’s seat.
And then, with the Republican convention completed, Biden, on July 21, quit the race via X less than a month before the Democratic convention, endorsing Harris in a second tweet after omitting his blessing in the first.
Kamala Harris quickly locked down support, laying waste to ideas of a Thunderdome battle for the nomination, with some folk even suggesting Bill Clinton and Barack Obama host speed-dating debates. She quieted the skeptics and garnered more than three times Trump’s raise. She united her party and revived the traditional Democratic coalition of minorities, labor, the middle class, and women of all political stripes justly angered by the nullification of Roe v. Wade, all with a message of unity, optimism, and hope. Biden’s endorsement helped seal the deal, but the achievement was hers. Not a bad report emerged about her during Biden’s fall, nothing about her measuring the drapes, and her tone when accepting the baton was both grateful and commanding.
She presided over perhaps the most successful, conflict-free convention in modern times. With little time for formal vetting, she picked a formidable running mate, Governor Tim Walz, to electrify audiences and compliment her Bay Area urbanity with Midwestern folksiness, her femininity with his enlightened masculinity, the football coach who was the faculty adviser for the gay-straight alliance at Mankato West. She spoke of liberty and said we must not look back, and the people, hungry for a new birth of freedom, loved it. The perpetrator was facing another prosecutor, this time in the court of public opinion.
It recalled the hopes that accompanied her to the Senate.
Harris proved herself to be a formidable freshman. In June 2017, she made her way with trenchant examinations of Trump officials such as Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr, and Brett Kavanaugh from her perch on the Senate Judiciary Committee, a natural landing spot for former attorneys general.
For all the good it did, at his confirmation hearing, she confronted Kavanaugh with a combination punch:
“‘Can you name for me a single case where the court has dictated what a man can or can’t do with his body?’”
“I’m not aware—I’m not—thinking of any right now, senator,” Kavanaugh said.
Her skill as an advocate was not lost on then-President Trump. When Biden picked her to be his running mate in 2020, Trump said she had been “extraordinarily nasty” and “horrible” to Kavanaugh. “And I won’t forget that soon.”
He only recently and reluctantly agreed to debate her tonight at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
In The Wall Street Journal back in August, the conservative columnist and Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan argued that Harris “has the wind at her back” as she waged “the fight of Trump’s political life.” Noonan neatly summarized Harris’s formidable virtues:
· She is new
· On policy, she is bold to the point of shamelessness.
· She, too, is a born performer.
· She is beautiful. You can’t take a bad picture of her.
· She has a wave of pent-up support behind her.
I don’t know why Harris’s remarkable ascent through California politics and a perfectly fine start in the U.S. Senate was punctuated by a dreadful 2019-20 aborted presidential campaign where she couldn’t decide about Medicare for All, toyed with abolishing ICE, and wanted to ban fracking. The best that can be said is that she wasn’t alone as the Democratic Party reeled. All the candidates raised their hands when asked if criminal penalties should be waived for being in the country illegally. Only Biden, the eventual winner, declined.
As Biden’s running mate, she was a good campaigner, making mincemeat of Mike Pence at their debate, letting that fly on the Hoosier’s head sit there. In office, as veep, she did well enough but seemed to ignore her chance to talk up her prosecutorial credentials during a sharp drop in crime. Granted, the vice presidency is an ill-defined job that makes everyone who holds it seem wimpy until they step up (see Harry S. Truman, Richard Nixon, and Lyndon Johnson). She did a lot of gauzy events about “equity.” She had some interviews that led George F. Will. and even The Atlantic to buzz about her ability to form coherent sentences. She gave her Democratic allies some cause to worry.
Whether it was her strong performances following the 2022 Dobbs decision, personal growth, retaining staff after brisk turnover, or the master class of being at Biden’s side during the pandemic, she became all that she once was and then some.
In tonight’s debate, she’ll meet Trump in person for the first time. (They might have met if Trump had attended Biden’s inaugural.) They both moved to Washington in 2017, his first time living in the capital, and her return was three decades after graduating from Howard University. Will she be able to let him hang himself with his incoherent, nonsensical rambling? Can she use the well-timed joke to diminish and infuriate him? Can he break her stride, forcing her into an unintended error? Given Trump’s bizarre rambling when taking questions at the Economic Club of New York last week, you have to wonder if he’ll pull a Biden and stumble like the president did in June, a lifetime ago.
Last month, my friend in the Hamptons intended “lightweight” as a pejorative. But, as an old boxing buff, I recall that Benny Leonard, Roberto Duran, and Ike Williams were lightweights, and they were all champions. No one is going to underestimate Kamala Harris again.
