Harris And A Nod To History

[Twin Tiers Living 489]

By Adeline Von Drehle

August 20, 2024

 

On Monday night, the Democratic Party honored Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of the Rainbow/PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) coalition, as its newly anointed leading lady, Kamala Harris, hopes to evoke the spirit and employ the playbook of those black politicians who shattered glass ceilings decades ago.

“With Harris and Walz, I feel good that in a few short months, we will put an end to the mean spirit that exists in this nation,” said Jackson’s son, former U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson Jr., at an event honoring Jackson Sunday night. “We will see the rainbow coalition of Jesse Jackson come together and change the face of this nation and the spirit of our world.”

Jackson, a civil rights icon who worked with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave his “Rainbow Coalition” speech 40 years ago at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco during his first run for president.

“Our flag is red, white, and blue, but our nation is a rainbow – red, yellow, brown, black, and white – and we’re all precious in God’s sight,” Jackson said of America and its citizens four decades ago. The first black man to run a competitive primary campaign for a major political party, Jackson said that a vote for him was “a vote of conviction, a vote of conscience.”

Conscience. A diverse yet unified coalition. Putting an end to “the mean spirit” plaguing our nation. Jackson won five primaries and caucuses in 1984, garnering 18% of the Democratic vote in a bold progressive challenge to the Democratic Party establishment. By 1988, when he ran an even stronger campaign, Jackson had made his cause part of the Democrats’ agenda. His efforts at parlaying his success into a vice presidential nomination were unsuccessful, but made a lasting mark on the party.

“They ask what do we want,” Jackson told 5,000 followers who greeted him in a public park on the eve of the Democrats 1988 Atlanta convention. “It’s so basic. We want to share.”

Jackson’s legacy echoes in the speeches and advertisements of Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to gain the nomination of a major political party. Harris is running with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on what they say is a joy-fueled campaign. Some question how far “good vibes” can propel a candidacy, while others are convinced joy is just what America needs.

“Are you able to keep up the joy campaign? You’re able to keep up joy a lot longer than you can keep up anger and divisiveness,” civil rights leader Nate Miles told RCP. “You keep putting it out there and this country will keep eating it up, because we’ve had so many years of this gloom and doom. Joy is what this country has been missing.”

The Harris campaign is contrasting the background of Harris, a mixed-race daughter of immigrants, with the background of Walz, a white Midwestern football coach, touting the ticket as proof that diversity in unity is a potent recipe.

The Harris campaign, a month-old apparatus that is largely a reimagining of President Joe Biden’s now-abandoned reelection campaign, is borrowing from and nodding to not only Jackson but other black political pioneers like Shirley Chisholm and Barack Obama.

When Harris announced her candidacy for president on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2019, she paid homage to the 1972 Chisholm campaign – the first time a black person sought the nomination of a major political party – by using a similar color scheme and typography in her logo and promotional materials. Chisholm ultimately lost the nomination to George McGovern, but Harris herself said in 2020 that she “stands on the shoulders” of Chisholm’s trailblazing campaign.

The Democratic Party’s reverence for Chisholm was on display on night one in Chicago as DNC Chair Jaime Harrison and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, among others, made a point to commend Chisholm’s unapologetic kick-the-door-down nature. The late congresswoman spoke often about the difficulties of being a black person and a woman in politics, calling it a “double handicap.”

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair,” Chisholm’s famous saying goes.

Harris, who has been dubbed a “DEI hire” by the Trump campaign, does not often speak of the barriers she herself has had to overcome being a black and South Asian woman in American politics. Her TV ads in swing states instead emphasize her work as an attorney general, a college summer job at McDonald’s, and her record of taking on Big Pharma, as images of her standing alongside cops melt into snapshots of her chumming it up with men in hard hats.

Yet one piece of advice she shared while speaking at a health forum for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander organizations evoked Chisholm’s attitude toward barriers:

“We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open,” Harris said. “Sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that f***ing door down.”

It has been 52 years since Chisholm launched her campaign for the Democratic nomination, and it is largely thanks to Chisholm, Jackson, and former President Barack Obama that the door was wide open for Harris.

“The reason why the road forward is being made straighter is because of the work that they constructed,” Atiba Madyun, the President of Party Politics US, told RCP. “My great-grandmother used to say, always hang with the construction gang and not the wrecking crew.”

The Harris campaign is modeling itself in part off the blueprint Obama spoke into existence at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, back when he was a little-known senator from Illinois. Obama famously moved delegates and media members alike to tears by orating on American identity in a speech that propelled him to stardom and, in turn, two terms as the first black president of the United States.

The product of a Midwesterner and a Kenyan, Obama felt Americans had more in common than not. America, said Obama, was founded on a “belief that we are connected as one people.” It was this collective that “allows us to pursue our individual dreams yet still come together as a single American family. ‘E pluribus unum.’ Out of many, one.”

The Harris campaign has similarly tried to contrast unity with division – and her base thinks her successful.

“Harris is saying, ‘We’re not a black family, we’re not a white family, we’re an American family.’ That family attitude is exactly what we have here, and it’s been great,” said Miles, referencing the sunny atmosphere in the Windy City. “All over the country now, people are excited again. They’re smiling and they’re laughing and they’re all excited about the fact that they’re being pulled together as opposed to being torn apart. Who likes being torn apart?”

Between the lines in big, bold letters reads the name Donald Trump, perhaps one of the most divisive figures ever to take hold of American politics. Harris seeks to deepen the contrast between herself and Trump by harnessing the lessons of her predecessors: the diversity of Jackson’s rainbow coalition, the spirit of Chisholm’s glass-shattering, the hope of Obama’s message of unity.

“Guided by our love of country, knowing we all have so much more in common than what separates us, let us fight for the ideals we hold dear,” Harris said Monday night, met with a roar of adoring fans.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

 

[Pvt Snowball 44]

Go Harris and for the record respectfully Jesse and Al isn't the spokes person for black people or POC but it time like they said to change the face of politics 

[Ann 439]

Being the first doesn’t make you the best.  I’m more interested in policies than someone being the first anything.

[Hal 553]

Harris has had the last , almost , four years to make a difference and has done Nothing at All to benefit the American People ! Anyone thinking otherwise has not bought Groceries or a Home in these last years . So what has she done for the Black Community or the POC , other than do , again , Nothing! So just what makes anyone think that she will do Anything on “Day One” ?!