There are two prejudices that a good part of the Spanish left devotes itself to from time to time: neither the American Democratic Party is truly left-wing nor do Democratic presidencies—whoever holds them—ever live up to their expectations when they have already ended. Neither before nor after governing do Democrats satisfy the standards of the educated, well-read, cool and even a random one from Spain. The same thing could happen again in the face of the shake-up that Kamala Harris has given to the November presidential campaign, when no one gave her a chance four months (or even four years) ago, in view of a very blurred vice presidency, with perhaps overblown political and media errors and without a counterweight or visible continuity until Joe Biden resigns.
Today, the reproach is starting to work again: not a single programmatic word, not a clear left-wing measure, not a single message on economic, monetary, immigration or housing policy over the course of four days. The frowning left is critically evaluating the lack of consistency in Kamala Harris’s speech: a lot of fanfare, a lot of autobiographical confession, but there is no ideological embodiment or political discourse behind her explosive choreography halfway between Disney, Hollywood and the historic HBO. Pure shamelessness.
Kamala Harris has completely ignored all of them and appointed as vice president a balding man, with visible traces of white hair, expansive and expressive, a former high school teacher, former coach of children and who speaks with a clarity and self-confidence that grates on the thinking minds of the left. But he undoubtedly shares the ideological axis of this woman, as she tells in her wonderful memoirs, Our truth: Never accept the false dichotomies on which classical and modern conservatism is based, because there is always an alternative solution. But it must be conceived, assumed, channeled and executed, even if it does not satisfy everyone and even if it does not succeed in extinguishing the causes that lead to the savage mortality of fentanyl, or if it does not succeed in getting all poor young people with racial identities to attend secondary school, or if it does not result in the climate emergency being reversed by decree, or if it does not completely stop the US prisons from being filled with blacks and Latinos with irrelevant charges, or if it does not lead to families being hopelessly ruined by a medical accident. Yes, by the way, she is also in favour of the legalisation of marijuana (like Tim Walz).
Kamala Harris seems like a classic progressive lady of the Democratic Party, but to me she seems more like a left-wing lady with a left-wing mind and a full vocation for public service and pragmatic reformism (virtuously pragmatic and tied to material reality). Four years ago her memoirs were translated — the original edition is from 2019, the Spanish one from 2021 — but they passed, like herself until four days ago, without much fanfare. I would say that nobody paid attention to them, neither did I, among other things because we were hypnotized by the masterful autobiography of the icon of blackness of Democratic power, Michelle Obama, and that is impossible to surpass: neither iconic nor literary. Reading Harris’s memoirs now, the effect is very powerful and convincing. She may have had an army of editors to write them, edit them, revise them and amend them, and she thanks them all, one by one, but the book tells of an adventure of professional success without renouncing the ideological convictions of a black woman, middle class and with a clear social conscience about the duties of class privilege or talent in the face of those who suffer all kinds of pandemics when the greatest pandemic is the acceleration of inequality. That is why she also asks that the rich pay the taxes they do not pay.
Part of her personal genius stems from an unlikely but fulfilled professional expectation: getting the job of district attorney in San Francisco, then the position of attorney general of California and finally becoming a senator — as always, with the help of a lucky shot. None of this was foreseeable or even conjecturable given his social and family profile, but when he reached that position he behaved like someone who has received an unprecedented gift, and he went to ask questions, make inquiries, travel, interrogate and consult in order to promote changes, many changes, and discover how to use this privilege effectively, how to do things better so that the poor and the middle classes most harassed by the 2008 crisis – deceived and manipulated by the banks, with whom he does not mince words – do not remain so forever, how to do it so that junkies and small-time drug dealers are not thrown in jail without further ado and by default, especially if they are black, how to do it so that women do not succumb again and again to mistreatment based on race, gender and class because of the way they look.
Getting to those positions was first and foremost a family celebration, and Kamala Harris also does not mince words when talking about her life as a family celebration, with a wonderful peculiarity: the vast majority of her enormous family is chosen, they are friends, and that is the truest family, including the string of uncles and aunts she mentions and who are not blood relatives, but personal friends who helped her mother get ahead as a cancer researcher in a public institution when she separated from her husband – he Jamaican and a professor, she Indian and brave enough not to return home to Delhi as a graduate and disobey the paternal mandate of an arranged marriage. The fight for the civil rights of women, blacks, Latinos and gays is part of her social cradle and almost from her cradle she was taken to the demonstrations of the late sixties when she was a child, including attending a Martin Luther King rally. Nothing is by chance (not even her passion for jazz, Max Pradera tells me) in the profile of a combative woman convinced that institutions are the true instrument of social transformation and that only from institutions, such as a prosecutor’s office, or a US presidency, can something be changed step by step, reform by reform, fight by fight, as the only truly existing left has always done. And there are plenty of these, micro-fights and micro-victories, in her book, well documented, precise, detailed and vivid, pedagogical… and proud, nobly proud of having conquered a space of power that allowed her to turn around a few things in the most populous state in the United States, and also the strangest of all: a bit like herself.
That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given 10 minutes to speak at this Democratic convention is not a mere gender concession: it is a declaration of principles, and an ideological bet by a black woman, emancipated, married for more than ten years to a divorced man and who has adopted —in addition to the multitude of important decisions she has made— his two daughters. No, the girls do not call her stepmother because that epithet is ugly as hell. They call her Momalaalthough it must be impossible to know how to pronounce it. Today we know how to pronounce Kamala, thanks to the convention and to the two black girls who played at teaching how to pronounce the name of the person who has been vice president of the United States for four years. It could very well be that in a couple of months even those who hate her for being black, a woman, a Democrat and a leftist will know how to pronounce Kamala.
#Kamala #Harriss #Left
