by JOE ESKENAZI JULY 22, 2024 (MissionLocal.org)
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The Democratic Party has wrapped its month-long summer stock review of “Julius Caesar” — Et tu, Nancy? — and a parade of upwardly mobile would-be candidates is rapidly lining up behind Vice President Kamala Harris. Everyone, it seems, loves a parade.
The nation and the party are in a nigh-unprecedented place. But for Harris, yet another veteran San Francisco politician in the national firmament, there is a strain of familiarity here.
She has been a fixture of public life since 2003, when she defeated incumbent Terrence Hallinan and Bill Fazio to become San Francisco’s district attorney. Like every “properly ambitious” politician, she has always sought “the next thing.” And she’s gotten it: Millions of voters in 2010 enabled her to escape the gravitational pull of San Francisco politics and ascend to California attorney general. Millions more in 2016 backed her to win Barbara Boxer’s old Senate seat, a race she clearly had “wired.”
In 2020, her own presidential bid fell short, but unprecedented numbers of voters went on to select the Biden-Harris ticket.
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As ever, friends and foes alike are now highlighting her voluminous dossier — but, as ever, Harris has (almost) always succeeded and ascended not because of her record but, in many ways, in spite of it. It’s not necessarily Harris’ record that has won her election after election. It’s her ability to generate excitement and her appeal — she has “it.”
So, that’s familiar. And, once again — as in 2003, when she topped Hallinan and Fazio and in 2010, when she beat Steve Cooley — Harris finds herself pitted against a deeply flawed opponent. Things have changed. But this thing hasn’t.
And now, it’s far more than her own career that’s relying on it.
Many years ago, your humble narrator obtained a copy of a trove of opposition research amassed by one of Harris’ deeply flawed opponents. And it was massive; it was the size of an encyclopedia or phone book or any number of word-on-paper items that young people have never seen.
But there was nothing revelatory in there, not for anyone who’d bothered to pick up a newspaper (also a word-on-paper item increasingly seen as an anachronism). A highlight reel:
Her former romantic interest Willie Brown placing her on $95,000-a-year commissions and buoying her career; rampant ineptitude and dysfunction and cover-ups at the police DNA and crime labs; the San Francisco DA’s office inexplicably applying for — and receiving — millions of federal dollars earmarked for border counties it was forced to pay back; her initiative to cite the parents of truant children … and much, much more.
All of this happened, more or less. It feels a bit far-fetched to imagine GOP oppo researchers striking gold with arcana about Harris’ tenure as San Francisco district attorney a generation ago. But it is not hard to imagine salacious Republican broadsides involving her relationship with a powerful older patron like Brown — and Brown probably isn’t helping by jumping in front of a phalanx of cameras and microphones and holding impromptu press conferences on her behalf.
To borrow an apt passage from the movie “Anchorman”: “Take it easy, Champ. Why don’t you stop talking for a while? Maybe sit the next couple plays out.”
Over the next four months, Harris will likely suffer through the most toxic, misogynistic and racist campaign in American history. We can also anticipate stories of San Francisco chaos, filth and disorder, already a cable TV and online staple, to reach a whole new level.
That’s what we can expect from the Republican Party of Donald Trump. But Harris — or any Democrat — remains competitive, even after a month of nonstop Democratic circular firing squads. And that’s because, once again, Harris is facing a deeply flawed opponent. In fact, she is now facing two.
“six way parlay. i want Biden step down on Sunday. i want Kamala at the convention. I want trump pennsylvania and arizona, kamala electoral, kamala popular. read it back to me” pic.twitter.com/pqPKUGgA95
— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) July 18, 2024
The selection of extremist and anti-abortion crusader Sen. J.D. Vance as the GOP’s vice-presidential candidate hits differently with Joe Biden out of the top slot; Vance has proposed essentially reconstituting the Fugitive Slave Act to punish women who travel out of state for an abortion. The erstwhile Republican talking point that age and erratic public behavior make one unfit to seek higher office has also boomeranged.
It’s always better to face flawed opponents exercising bad judgment than tough ones who make good decisions. And, unlike the post-George Floyd era in 2020 — when candidate Harris had to twist herself into a pretzel with the ludicrous claim that she was a “progressive prosecutor” — in 2024 candidate Harris can run as a truer version of herself.
In this campaign, her record may actually match her rhetoric.
On the eve of Harris’ easy 2016 Senate victory over Rep. Loretta Sanchez, polling revealed the former San Francisco DA’s most appealing features. She had created “a very vague, broad positive feeling” about herself; she had done a “decent-to-good job” as California AG, and she is a Democrat.
Sometimes, that’s all it takes. The forthcoming campaign does not figure to be a deeply intellectual or substantive exercise. It figures to be a wholly vibes-based election (which is something it feels like you could say about every election from here on out, along with “this is the most consequential election of our times”).
Watching the ongoing ascent of San Francisco politicos like Gov. Gavin Newsom and Harris — and, now, seeing Harris placed in the role as the last, best chance for ongoing American democracy — is, itself, a strange and terrible experience. It harks to the Jack Benny bit in which a robber tells him “your money or your life,” and he responds “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”
But sometimes you don’t need to think too hard. “A very vague, broad positive feeling” isn’t an ideal campaign slogan; it’s probably too many words. But you could do worse. And you nearly always have.
MORE KAMALA
Kamala Harris’ actual record never seemed to matter before. Will it now?
Kamala Harris is the woman for her time and place
JOE ESKENAZI
Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
