August 18, 2020, was the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, which celebrated women’s suffrage. Ironically, this date saw Kamala Harris accepting the Democratic candidacy for Vice-Presidency, a rather incongruous moment. As the first non-Caucasian woman to vie for the Vice Presidency from a primary party, she made a point to appreciate the efforts of female pioneers such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, and Mary McLeod Bethune, amid the fanfare of her address. Unsurprisingly, no reference was made to the lack of real achievements and influence of these symbolic gestures.
Her ambition doesn’t stop at the Vice Presidency; Harris now has her eyes set on capturing the Oval Office. However, fixation on her history-making quest has been sidelined due to the nature of her adversary, Donald Trump, a man eternally stuck in the ‘now’, unconcerned with the past and therefore blase about the future. His shortcomings, as they often do, unfairly get cast onto others.
If the 2020 presidential campaign was a poignant struggle for America’s moral fabric, the 2024 endeavour seems to be a battle for its very skeletal system, its democracy. The competition with an opponent who leans more towards dictatorship than Republicanism relegates any historical bemusements to the sideline. Ironically, Harris barely includes her ethnicity or gender in any campaign narrative, perhaps an admittance that these factors aren’t the measurement of true leadership.
Kamala Harris is keen to ascend to the Presidency in her own right without any subscripts or disclaimers. It doesn’t translate into her not partaking in traditional feminist agendas such as reproductive rights, or policies related to care. What’s interesting, though, is her decision to leave her identity out of this narrative. It’s a striking divergence from the ‘I’m with her’ era, signifying progress or indicating pandering, whichever way one sees it.
The rhetoric of ‘making history’ is sporadically comforting and deceptive. Rights that one assumes to be inviolable can often be violated. This comprehension probably has influenced the roadmap and focus of Harris’ campaign. Her emphasis is much more on her presumed potential as a leader than the symbolism her Presidency might offer.
She has vocalized her intent to run for the top office, giving a seemingly noble reasoning that her belief in being at the right place at the right time is for the benefit of all Americans, independent of ethnicity or gender. Of course, overlooking the notion that America has had far more decorated and capable leaders in its history.
Often the most disconcerted moments in her campaign have been when the eyeballs suddenly shift from her opponent to her. In these moments, she draws on the differences between herself and her competitor, prophesying the cataclysmic scenarios that another term of Trump might precipitate. She stages herself as the white knight come to reverse the tide, concentrating more on the disaster she anticipates than the glory she seeks to claim.
Interestingly enough, while chasing the Presidency, Harris has declared that she is ‘not bothered about being the first,’ which would only mean something if the implication was there was something extraordinary about her being the first. Tellingly, she is more perturbed about ‘ensuring she is not the last’, but presumably the true concern should be presenting the best caliber of candidates, regardless of ‘first’ or ‘last’.