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L to R: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

Aug 19, 2020 By Steve King Photography by Adam Schultz for the Biden Campaign

I guess I should have prepared this before the announcement but the feeling is fresh and raw, and hot, so I figured, let’s just brazen through it and see what happens. Let’s be honest. Throughout the so-called “veepstakes,” it was never not going to be Kamala Harris.

After she dropped out of the primary race and endorsed Biden, she was easily the frontrunner. Biden and Harris set up a fundraising pact soon after her departure from the race. And for all the talk about Abrams, Whitmer, Warren, Bottoms, and Bass, it was all a lie. It was gold-shined bullshit. It was always Harris. She checked every box Biden needed. The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests may have changed some people’s minds that Biden needed a Black woman, but it was never really in doubt. Biden needed a younger, Black, female, dynamic, and attractive VP in order to balance out his… shall we say… dried up old man vibe. And to, of course, be ready to be president in the event of his incapacitation. Biden’s vice presidential pick could have easily been someone like Stacy Abrams or Keisha Bottoms. Maybe it should have been, I don’t know… They would have riled up the base of the party, no lie, but they also would have faced the same qualification issues as Sarah Palin. Everyone jumped on their perceived lack of experience, so the choice was clear from the jump, and if we’re being real, for the first time, in this godforsaken, shit-ass, go-fuck-yourself, omnishambles year, something in the news put me in a good mood for once.

No, I haven’t read the recent stories and profiles… I don’t need to. I will and all but I don’t need you to tell me what I’ve been thinking. Anyway, I read everything I needed to years ago, and followed Harris’ career from San Francisco DA and California Attorney General, celebrated when she got the Senate in 2016, knowing full well that she had finally reached her final springboard. It’s surreal to watch something like this happen. The historic nature of her candidacy was almost lost on me, because I’d been pulling for her for so long. The overwhelming feeling of vindication and contentment won’t last, but for now, I’ll cling to it.

The only politician I’ve supported for a longer period of time than Harris has been Obama. A good politician needs to win, burns for it, wakes up with it, goes to sleep with it, lives and dies with it, and is willing to drown themselves in their opponents’ blood. I like liberals with a killer instinct and sympathetic eyes. Democrats need someone who can say they love you, and make you believe it as they murder you…rhetorically, of course.

That’s why it’s so important to savor these little, fleeting victories. This kind of thing doesn’t happen very often. Watching the VP selection announcement was like seeing Star Trek: First Contact premiere in theaters. We had lived with The Next Generation and the Borg on TV for years but now it was a big cool movie and everyone saw it in all its glory. Resistance was futile. It is futile to resist Harris. It’s also poignant, noted, and appreciated that Biden picked the three-year anniversary of the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” terrorist attack to announce his Black female vice presidential pick. Finally! Well done.

Gary Hart said that Hunter S. Thompson “never trusted anyone if they were elected. That was the irony. To be estimable in his judgement, you had to be a loser. A noble loser.” All due respect to the late, great doctor, but fuck that shit. Just win, baby. And moral, Sanders-style victories don’t mean anything without the actual FUCKING VICTORY. I don’t have many heroes left in politics but Harris is one of them.

And forget any of the formerly principled Republicans like Perry, Cruz, or Pence. They were wrong but decent men. but one by one, they all fell in line behind our confused Nazi president. They’re all collaborators now. Kasich is the only one left, it seems. You can’t count on Republicans—assume they will always let you down and you will never be disappointed. The only good ones left these days are the reformed strategists.

Harris is a natural. She has a spark. She has IT. During Biden’s vice presidential nominee announcement, she actually started mimicking his speech patterns. I like hustlers and witches. Harris is, from this writer’s perspective, a natural witch. Game recognizes game. She was born under a spell. She has an intrinsic magnetism, a magic. I see it, appreciate it, and wish more of them could be that way. But they can’t. That’s what makes Harris so special.

She was always a unicorn, like Obama. She exudes warmth, but again, like Obama, she can swing a sledgehammer into her opponent’s skull like a true assassin. You need look no further than when she tore former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ elfin body limb from limb, or when she scalped douchenozzle Brett Kanvanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. She’s a good person but fuck around and find out.

Biden needs a shiny running mate who will take a little attention away from him, and firmly and repeatedly place it on Trump’s failed administration. He needs a woman who can smooth his rougher edges, calm people when he inevitably misspeaks, explain it all away, energize the base of the party, and pay it forward to all of the Black women whose support saved Joe Biden’s campaign, and finally, and most importantly, hand Mike Pence his ass in their one vice presidential debate.

Harris will do all of these things and more, but she’s also a signal to the party. Joe Biden, if elected, will be a caretaker president. He has one mission: stop Trump now, and restore some semblance of normality.

A “Return to Malarkey,” if you will.

As president he has the compassion, comportment, and know-how to heal the country as much as is possible after the national crisis that is the Trump Administration, and then lay down his burden and usher in the next generation of progressive politicians.

She’ll have the leftwing ankle-biters calling her a “snake,” a “cop,” or whatever term they just misread in one chapter of a Naomi Klein book. But the pandemic has a way of reorganizing your priorities.

Harris is an opponent that Trump and his collaborators still haven’t figured out how to attack effectively yet. But one thing Biden/Harris can’t be branded as is “socialist,” considering Biden beat the holy sweet baby jesus out of the only socialist in the race so… I mean he beat him like a dusty old rug on a clothesline.

Now, say the Biden/Harris ticket loses in November; then Kamala Harris stands atop the emerging 2024 Democratic field, providing, of course, that the United States is still a functioning country after eight years of Trump. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be old enough to run for president by then. That’s when the real fun starts.

But for now, Kamala Harris is the future of the party, for a little while longer. I just want the future that was promised me by Ilana Glazer, where everyone is caramel and queer. I recognize that I might not always get what I want, but this is a start. The future and the candidate I’ve been waiting for have finally arrived.

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