Kamala Harris For President
In just a few days, the most consequential presidential election of my lifetime will take place.
And that’s saying a lot. I’ve been around for a minute.
I’ve lived through President Gerald Ford running for election in 1976, after his boss, Richard Nixon, resigned in disgrace in the wake of the Watergate scandal. I was a kid at the time, but I took it all in. Ford had been Nixon’s vice president, and he’d been installed to finish Nixon’s second term.
Ford went on to pardon Nixon of all associated Watergate crimes, virtually flushing his own election campaign down the toilet. Governor of Georgia and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter, little known on the national stage, became our next president.
I voted during the ‘84 campaign, during which President Ronald Reagan won in a landslide over Carter’s former VP, Walter Mondale, who’d chosen Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. It was my first time voting in a presidential election, and I was proud to cast a vote for what could have been a history making ticket with our first female VP.That wouldn’t finally happen for almost 40 years.
By the way, Reagan had originally gotten elected in 1980 with the help of this slogan: “Let Make American Great Again.”
Sound familiar?
I helped elect President Bill Clinton in ‘92, ending a 12 year Republican presidential reign in the U.S., and reelect him in ‘96. Even the Monica Lewinsky scandal didn’t deter me from my support for Clinton. A lot of men have lied to their wives about receiving sexual healing (thanks, Marvin Gaye) from other women.
But I digress. Let’s get away from Monica’s box and back to the ballot box.
I voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, and did so again in 2012. Just after his election, I raised an American flag outside of my home for the very first time.
Those were years that my father had always insisted would never come. Having been born in 1937 in rural Mississippi, Dad just couldn’t see a world where this country would elect a black man as President of the United States. If he had only been able to fight off cancer for another handful of years, he’d have lived to see that day.
And I was one of the people who helped Hillary Clinton win the popular vote while losing the electoral college, and thus the election, to President Donald Trump.
I still can hardly believe that our country was stupid enough not to install Hillary as president. I wasn’t her biggest fan, especially after her “ducking under sniper fire” catastrophe, but she’d have been an amazing president. Several more Americans would be alive today had she been behind that resolute desk, instead of Seńor Combover, during the COVID years.
Eventually, Trump lost reelection in 2020 to President Joe Biden, who had been Obama’s VP. Biden’s biggest claim to fame may be selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris stands to finally shatter the glass ceiling about which Hillary Clinton spoke so eloquently when she admitted defeat to Trump in 2016.
Which walks us right up to next Tuesday, November 5, 2024. It’s rare that you get a “do over” in life, let alone the country gets one. Next week, we’ll have a chance to correct the travesty that was 2016.
But next week’s about more than just correcting that.
Vice President Kamala Harris represents a new era, and a new generation of leadership. She’s pledged to restore reproductive rights and freedoms to the women of this country. She stands by the middle class, working class people, and people of color, instead of tossing rolls of paper towels to us, or pandering behind sneakers embossed with her name on them.
And I won’t lie: Harris won my vote when she eviscerated Trump during their only televised debate. Why just one? Because Trump is too chicken shit to do it again. And he’ll live for the rest of his racist life knowing that a women of color bested him in front of an international viewing audience.
Harris speaks of turning the page, of getting back to “locking arms” and “holding hands” in lieu of “pointing fingers.” She is smart, accomplished, and caring, three of the things that her opponent is decidedly not. And she’s promised to name a Republican to her cabinet.
Let’s just hope that Harris doesn’t take that pledge too far, and appoint Trump to a cabinet post. We fired him in 2020. I hope she doesn’t give him another job.
Nah. Not gonna happen. If he doesn’t get reelected, the “J” in 34-time felon Donald J. Trump’s name will stand for “jailbird.”
Michael P Coleman is a freelance writer who takes pride in writing what he thinks and like he talks…when he’s not serving as a ghost writer, at least! Connect with him at MichaelPColeman.com.
