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Kamala



I bet that Kamala Harris makes it through the storms of definitions and labels and arrives safely in the White House. Political enemies have branded her characteristic laugh as inappropriate or indicative of craziness and have even created caricatures in television commercials. So that has been an early rhetorical challenge, one she is handling by toning it down.

 

Radical liberal is an oxymoron not intended to explain anything. It is merely intended as an insult. Kamala doesn’t sound like a radical if that means calling for an extreme restructuring of society. As she says, she is a child of the middle class, was a former officer of the court, has been elected to office in two branches of government, and presents her economic vision as one that focuses on strengthening the middle class. This is not a call for workers of the world to unite or to push the bourgeoisie into the sea. We’re not yet sure of her full economic vision because the term middle class isn’t so easy to define. No universal description exists as to what it is. Money? Occupation? State of mind? But I imagine that she’ll clarify the term enough to be elected. 

 

She is indeed a liberal, a reformist Democrat---a needed one at this moment. We should all be liberals to some extent if liberalism means concern for voting rights, cultural pluralism, and democratic process. But political philosophy is not really the issue here. In the absence of sophisticated discussion, liberal is synonymous with aberrant and nonsensical. In any event, the status of “most liberal senator,” which is how some ads make sure to describe Kamala, is the same one that Republicans made sure to point out about Barack Obama in 2008. It may be a good luck charm.     

 

Failed border czar is a damaging label that is going to diminish in power when more light is focused on Kamala’s role in the lessened migration from El Savador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and if people scrutinize the bipartisan immigration bill that Trump torpedoed.  

 

The issue of Black should have been a nonstarter. Nothing to deal with for a daughter of a Jamaican named Harris (initials D. J), a girl who sang in a Black Baptist church in Oakland, an undergraduate who pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha, and a graduate student who served as president of the campus chapter of the Black Law Students Association. In what world should her identity be questioned by an opponent who can’t accept his own identity as a defeated politician, convicted felon, and loser of sex abuse lawsuits? Kamala’s ethnic identity is not a real question. Black is an appeal to Blacks who have supported or have been thinking of supporting Trump to stay the course. After all, in Trump logic, he has been their best friend.

 

Of course, to intentionally mispronounce Kamala’s name is a rhetorical move meant to demean and denigrate. Nancy Mace slipped for a moment on CNN before she caught herself, fell in line with the Trump pronunciation, and then became intransigent about it. She wouldn’t even answer a simple yes-no question about respect that Michael Eric Dyson asked her. I wish Dyson had said to Mace exactly what Mace said to former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle during the recent congressional hearing.    

 

Eventually, Kamala will prevail in the verbal contests. She has important move-in date on January 20. I hope she can enjoy it. And laugh a little.


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