The Democrats and the Way Forward
The Truths We Hold: An American Journey
by Kamala Harris
Penguin Press, 336 pp., $30
The Democrats have a self-esteem problem in addition to a marketing problem. Meanwhile, we keep hearing that we should be wary of establishment-backed leaders like we are forever hearing that we should steer clear of gluten. The preference we on the left have for grassroots politicians, those for whom words like “energy” and “enthusiasm” are popular descriptors, who either aren’t in consideration for the big presidential prize in 2020 (a recent Axios/Survey Monkey poll shows that 74 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democrat would vote for Alexandria Ocacio-Cortez, who is not yet eligible as she is under thirty-five), or won’t likely win (Bernie Sanders, as recent history suggests) speaks to an implicit cowardice all too convenient for the politically faint of heart — invested, tellingly, in those not yet ready to play on the big-boy courts as it were. And the assurance with which the party brass declares its “electable,” if potentially ineffectual candidates speaks to an incrementalism which seems wholly at odds with what is expected of politicians in this agitated era of sound-bites.
Fair enough. But what is “incrementalism,” say, to an electable Black woman whose raison d’être amounts to a success story with…
