Mathews: Americans underestimate Harris like they misread California
We got this, America.
California is sending you the best possible person to weather whatever the next three-plus months hold.
Let’s be honest about Kamala Harris. We’re not giving you our most charismatic public speaker. Her sentences can be as awkward as Joe Biden’s.
We’re not giving you our most disciplined politician. She’ll crack an ill-considered joke, or make a mistake in a meeting that requires clean-up.
What we are giving you is someone who can emerge improbably triumphant from losing situations. Someone who will take more crap than anyone possibly could.
The best explanation of Kamala Harris came from a San Francisco political consultant, who compared her to Andy Dufresne, the main character of the 1994 film “The Shawshank Redemption.”
Dufresne was a falsely convicted banker who escapes Shawshank Prison through a 500-yard-long sewage pipe. “Andy Dufresne,” the consultant said, quoting a movie line, “who crawled through a river of s–t and came out clean on the other side.”
Because Americans don’t know Harris this way, they are underestimating her. Just like they underestimate California.
Contrary to the stereotypes, 21st century California is not soft or easy. It’s a crowded, competitive place where everything — even finding an affordable place to live — is a struggle.
The real California made Harris tough. It helps that she spent her early years in the late 60s-early 70s in Berkeley and Oakland, which might be California’s toughest city. As a mixed-race kid, Harris had to learn how to fit in, at a newly integrated elementary school, and at both Hindu Temple and the 23rd Avenue Church of God. After the divorce of her immigrant parents, she and her sister were raised almost entirely by their mother, who moved them to Montreal.
Harris attended law school not in the leafy Ivy League but at UC Hastings, in the middle of San Francisco’s Tenderloin. She worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and then San Francisco, on the sorts of cases — sex crimes and child abuse — that harden people.
She launched her political career in the hyper-competitive political culture of San Francisco. Her first election, for San Francisco district attorney, posed the trickiest challenge in politics — beating an incumbent (who was also her boss). She won an upset victory in a three-person race.
Then Harris, still little known, ran statewide, for California attorney general — against a popular Los Angeles Republican, Steve Cooley, who had the state’s law enforcement community behind him. On election night, she appeared to have lost. But when all the votes were counted, she had squeaked through.
When a U.S. Senate seat opened in 2016, Harris was hardly the most popular Democrat in the state. But she jumped into the race early, scared off other contenders and won the seat.
Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was a disaster. She didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses. But even after that embarrassment, she crawled through to the vice presidency.
Reviews have been dicey — staff turnover, difficulties with immigration policy. Her polling was lower than the president’s. Until it wasn’t. Now Biden has bowed out and endorsed her.
She doesn’t have the nomination yet. She may face a contested convention. And if she earns the nod, she’ll face a former president who is ready to attack.
Democrats are worried. Because Donald Trump is a constant font of lies and accusations. His strategy, as the now imprisoned Trump advisor Steve Bannon famously said, “is to flood the zone with s–t.”
But this time, his opponent is Kamala Harris. She survived all the b.s. of California. She’s heard every disgusting sexist insult. She sloughed off slurs against two different races.
She’s about to be submerged in it all again. Because American politics is a river of you-know-what.
Which is why this is her moment.
Who better to navigate us through all the crap than Kamala Devi Harris?
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.