this condition This book was produced by Capital & Main, and published in association with Rolling Stone magazine with permission from the company.
Objectively, this represents an astonishing advance in black history in a short period of time. In 2008, Barack Obama, a Democrat, was elected the nation’s first black president. Sixteen years later, Kamala Harris is poised to become the party’s first black woman to be its presidential nominee.
But much has changed in sixteen years. The historic significance of Obama’s candidacy was hope, and the symbolism of a black man in the White House was inspiring enough to move millions and prompt us to think differently about ourselves. But Kamala Harris’s rise is no such symbol. She became the nominee by virtue of her vice presidency, handed the baton by an aging white president who was more or less forced to step aside as the presumptive nominee because there was so much concern about his ability to get the job done. Harris’s color is not as important as her ability to do the job—not just to take Biden’s place on the ticket but to carry Democrats across the finish line in order to salvage the desperate, fading hope that the entire nation will right itself in the storm of right-wing recklessness. This brazen plan, repeated in detail in the 2025 Project, continues to hammer away at the very foundations that hold the Democratic project together.
This is a much greater task than Obama had ever had. He set himself the task of winning. And while he was running, the country also faced a crisis: the collapse of the housing market that led to the Great Recession. This crisis certainly swung the election in Obama’s favor, but the hope that was at the heart of his campaign never lost its power; when he won, the joy and optimism that erupted across the country was real.
What Harris’s supposed campaign faces is an existential crisis that is not galvanizing but paralyzing. This crisis stems not from joy or hope but from anxiety about whether and how well-meaning people, not just Democrats, can take power again. There is a growing cynicism that the GOP’s gimmicks, from coordinated voter suppression laws to a stacked Supreme Court that grants Trump criminal immunity, will continue to play out, no matter the outcome of the vote. The election won’t matter at all.
That’s why Kamala Harris feels right for this moment as a candidate. She wants to fight. Trump has made fighting a centerpiece of his campaign, especially since the assassination attempt, even though the tone of MAGA has always been aggressive, direct, and a mockery of “consciousness” and its radical idea, hope. Harris, a former attorney general, is already in battle mode, declaring at her first rally that she knows what kind of Trump he is, and she’s ready for it. She offers what Democrats desperately need: an aggressiveness that matches, or at least counters, MAGA. They don’t need an embodiment of hope but an embodiment of giving them hell.
Harris seems to relish the prospect. All the past missteps, embarrassments and public struggles to convey a core ideology, as vice president and before that in her failed 2020 presidential campaign, could be forgiven if she campaigned with a sense of obligation to strike back. It would be satisfying to have a black woman strike back, especially since Trump has been openly racist over the years—describing the Proud Boys as far-right, praising the Nazis in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” and claiming that Mexico sends rapists across the border. He has repeatedly shown contempt for black women who dare to criticize or hold him accountable—Fani Willis, Judge Tanya Chutkan, Georgia election officials, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Harris would have a platform like no other. As a presidential candidate, she would be on par with Trump, his Democratic counterpart. As a black woman, she can brilliantly convey the legitimate anger felt by many other Americans, from women of all colors to gay and transgender people to the poor and immigrants, who all find themselves caught in the crossfire of the “Make America Great Again” movement.
For all the darkness and dangers of this moment, there is some individual magic. Harris has had a golden career in California, rising from San Francisco district attorney to state attorney general to U.S. senator with relative ease. She describes herself as a progressive, and while critics have taken issue with that, especially regarding her career as a prosecutor, she is at the very least a solid Democrat. The failure of her 2020 presidential primary campaign only briefly halted her ambitions; Biden chose her as his running mate, the first black and South Asian woman on the presidential ticket. Having broken that barrier four years ago, she is ready to break another barrier and realize a dream she never thought would come true in this way. The drama is exciting certain sectors of the party, especially black women, a key Democratic constituency that must take to the streets for the party to have any chance of winning in November.
One catalyst for the record-breaking wave of financial support around Harris that continues to build was the already legendary “Black Women’s Phone Call” that occurred immediately after Biden’s announcement, when thousands of Black women joined a Zoom call hosted by the organization Win With Black Women. It raised $1.5 million in three hours. This is good political planning, but it’s also inspiration and racial pride that dates back to Obama’s first campaign. A lawyer friend of mine who was on that call called the rally, which grew to include thousands more women than expected, “a real thing to watch.”
I have no doubt about that. But never forget that Harris is being embraced so quickly not because of who she is, but because of who she is not: Trump, and on the other side, for different reasons, Biden. She is the presumptive Democratic nominee who, for those who fear the prospect of another MAGA administration, will be a lifeline, and if her being of color makes her a better lifeline, that’s a good thing. But of course we don’t know if that’s the case; what hasn’t changed, and has gotten uglier, over the past 16 years, is the fact that racial divisions are rife. There are a lot of storms ahead that we’re all going to have to weather.
