As the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris has generated a remarkable level of enthusiasm almost from the moment President Joe Biden endorsed her.
Observers along the political spectrum have been caught off guard by the Harris phenomenon. David Axelrod, the political consultant and former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, characterized Ms. Harris’s early strong poll numbers, when matched against those of former President Donald Trump, as a result of “irrational exuberance.” This, instead of mere “exuberance,” which could, of course, be rational.
Upon viewing her filled-to-the-rafters and turbocharged campaign rallies along with her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s political opponents have cried foul. There is no way that many people are coming out to see her! With no evidence, Mr. Trump accused the Harris campaign of doctoring photos to make the crowds at her rallies seem larger.
The quick and strong reaction — part jubilation, part bewilderment — to Ms. Harris’s candidacy reminds us of the important role that contingency, shaped by timing, biography and historical context, plays in American politics. Viewed in the proper manner, Ms. Harris’s ascent should not come as a big surprise, both because of who we are now (and have been historically) and because of who she is.
We Americans have been through a great deal over the past 10 years, including a worldwide pandemic whose effects we have yet to sort out. Our Republic has been put to a stress test with an outcome that is still uncertain: Political norms, which had come to be seen as akin to law, have now been shattered. In fact, laws have been broken with no evident sense of urgency about repercussions.
A symbol of American democracy, the Capitol building, was attacked, creating scenes that would have seemed unthinkable to Americans (and probably to people around the world) in years past. Challenging the legitimacy of lost elections — or even elections not yet held — rather than regrouping to fight (or promising to regroup for) the next round, is now a recognizable and demoralizing feature of the political landscape. With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a right that had been adjudged constitutional was taken away, an act that has caused great consternation and fear about just what other rights might be in jeopardy.
We approach 2026, the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, with legitimate reasons to question whether the American experiment — always an imperfect and fragile work in progress — will survive in a recognizable form that, at least, maintains the will to believe in a notion of progress toward a more perfect union. It has been disheartening to me and, judging from the comments I receive from people across the country, to many others, to realize that so large a part of our citizenry has seemingly given up on that experiment and now seems to prefer the cultural values and strongman style of government one sees in authoritarian regimes in places such as Eastern Europe.
In this context, the spontaneous burst of enthusiasm for Ms. Harris makes sense. Many Americans want to be able to feel good and positive about the country’s political future in the face of all that we have lived through this past decade. Americans are generally an optimistic people. Of course, that has not always been to good effect. The trope of the New World — optimistic, overeager Americans versus the jaded Old World weary Europeans — is a cliché, but like all clichés it contains enough truth to be instructive about how we respond to crises and opportunities.
Some level of optimism, even if others feel it unwarranted, is required to move ahead, but Ms. Harris has offered not just enthusiasm but “joy,” as the campaign has come to call the response to her candidacy. The very fact that her campaign has decided to lean into the word reveals that she and her team have intuited just how deeply many Americans long to move beyond the relentless and unbridled negativity and the casual cruelty and baseness that have become all too common features of our public life, tearing apart communities and even families. This is a particularly brave move for a female candidate, who can expect to deal with stereotypes that portray women as too “soft” for the rough-and-tumble of politics and governance.
Even with the talk of joy, however, Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz, through their own comments and what they have allowed their media teams to say, have shown that they can hit hard, often with humor, when the occasion warrants.
Who Ms. Harris is as a person matters greatly to what has taken place over the past few weeks. Her background perfectly suits her to this moment. Born in the United States to immigrant parents, a Jamaican man of African descent and a South Asian woman, Ms. Harris embodies the story of progress in the United States. She is an African American and is also part of the story of immigrant life.
How immigrants have fit, or not, into American society has become a primary way of measuring progress in the country. Theirs has been far from an easy or universal trajectory. But the overall notion of moving from the status of outsider to insider is often portrayed as a quintessential American success story. Hence the hackneyed phrase, “Only in America!”
Similarly, Black people’s struggle out of enslavement, post-slavery oppression and into the era of civil rights is often presented as textbook proof of the country’s capacity for growth and change. Visitors to the United States, from Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s to Gunnar Myrdal in the mid-20th-century, have recognized the problems that the marginalization of Black people have created for a country that prides itself on having been founded on the principles enunciated in the American Declaration of Independence, proclaiming “the self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” with the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” That the man who wrote those words enslaved Black people even though he knew slavery was wrong is emblematic of the inner conflict the country has faced from its inception.
The Declaration as a creed for a nation is, at best, aspirational. It has, however, served as a marker. One can measure progress by how improvements in the status of disfavored groups pull society toward the equality referred to in the document. That is why every group that has fought for equal rights in this country has used the words of the Declaration to make their claim.
To be sure, the narratives about immigrants and African Americans leave a continent of issues out of the picture and prompt questions and raise objections that fuel whole subject areas of history, political science and sociology. But as an embodiment of the Black and immigrant family experience, Ms. Harris carries forward the basic message of striving for progress, which must necessarily carry the hope that these stories are meant to convey.
The thousands who waited in long lines to get into rallies and who so quickly formed online discussion groups — Black Women for Kamala, White Dudes for Harris, Dead Heads for Kamala and more — and those who gave small donations that added up to huge amounts of cash in a quick amount of time are rationally responding to our current circumstances, whether their actions result in electoral success or not. Process is as much a part of democracy as any particular outcome.
The past few weeks have shown that many Americans are eager to become a part of democratically electing a leader whom they believe will reaffirm their optimistic vision of the American experiment. These enthusiasts are participating in something that links them to the American origin story itself — mobilization in the face of a threat they find intolerable to live with.
That the person at the head of this modern mobilization is an African American daughter of immigrants is in perfect keeping with the aspirations that have been at the heart of the American national narrative.
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