Kamala Harris Wants Us to Save Ourselves

It’s barely been a week, and already Kamala Harris is doing something unprecedented. Sure, there’s the extraordinary burst of energy that her surprise candidacy has inspired, the multiple historic firsts she represents, the eye-popping fundraising numbers, and the deluge of memes, but none of that sets her campaign apart. Because what’s truly stunning about her approach and her message is the way she tells us that she can’t do this alone.

“We” is the word that has shaped much of Harris’ campaign since her ascent to the top of the ticket. She repeats it often enough that the use of first person singular — “I” and “me” — sounds a little discordant. And it’s no surprise as to why: As an unexpected candidate on a compressed timeline, Harris is more reliant on others than any candidate in recent memory. She hasn’t spent the better part of two years talking herself up as the singular option, pitching herself to voters, making long lists of policy initiatives she wants to push through Congress. Instead, she has accepted the nomination on an emergency basis, on behalf of the incumbent president she serves, inheriting his achievements, failures, infrastructure, and support, while having to carve out her own niche minute by minute as the campaign gets underway.

To consolidate support in these urgent circumstances, Kamala Harris has had to put her ego aside and assure the hundreds of officials whose names will appear below hers on the ballot that she can deliver for them. Without their support, she knows that she cannot succeed. And without our support, they will fail. So unlike so many other presidential candidates over the years, Harris has cut to the point: We will make her possible.

It’s not entirely different from the campaign that activated most millennials who engage in politics, the “Yes we can” of Barack Obama in 2008, who dared us to aspire to a different kind of country. But even that was centered around his particular gifts and abilities as a once-in-a-generation talent who could convince us that a first term Senator could successfully steer a nation that had been stalled in disaster after years of Republican mismanagement. Even as he called on us to make a difference, we were still waiting on him to pick up the slack.

This is how it has been for most presidential campaigns for the better part of the last half-century. Candidates have sold themselves as singular figures, either taming an adversarial Congress or dragging a compliant one in on their coattails. Reagan was the rising sun in the “morning in America.” Bush the Elder and Al Gore were next in line, inevitabilities. Clinton could sell ice in the arctic — all the better to find common ground in Congress. Bush the Younger was “the Decider.” Kerry had the war record to challenge the chickenhawks; McCain was the maverick; Romney had the numbers; Hillary was the icon; Biden was the only one who could beat Trump. And Trump himself has declared that he alone can fix what ails the country, and we can either choose his form of “greatness” or accept oblivion.

Harris, in comparison, is just making the best out of a bad situation. It is not optimal that President Biden has lost the trust in his ability to serve another full term. It was devastating to have the Democratic Party publicly split on his leadership. It isn’t what she — or any of us — would have wanted as the starting point for a campaign, let alone 100 days out from the election. Harris knows that, and has asked us to try anyway. Not for her sake or her needs, but for our own. If we want a country with more freedom and more choices, if we want a government that listens and supports us over one that rejects and abandons us, if we want to orient ourselves towards the future and close the door on the past, Harris will act on our behalf. She has accepted the role as an avatar of our repudiation of Trump and Republicans and all they stand for. If we bring the energy, the desire, the drive, the determination, Kamala Harris promises us that she will be the conduit.

The result has been the most organized and coalesced version of the Democratic Party in recent memory. Almost every lawmaker in the big tent is on the same page, reading the same message, focused on the same goal: Defeating Donald Trump and his party in November. And at the very front, giving us guidance, leading the way, is Vice President Kamala Harris, knowing that with all of us behind her, she doesn’t need to be perfect — she just needs to be enough.