Volume 5, Issue 43: Made in America

"Damn! We're gonna win this thing!"

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It is a longstanding tradition—one, that goodness, has now gone on for more than eight years—that, in an even-numbered election year, I write an electoral endorsement post. Here’s 2016, and here’s 2018, and here’s 2020, and here’s 2022. This year, during a time when there is nothing most people want to talk about less right now than politics, I have decided to write two.

Last week’s, Part One, attempt to grapple, hopefully one last time, with the Trump era. You can read it right here. Today’s: An endorsement of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Ninety percent of life is showing up,” some man whose name I can’t remember once said. Source of this quote aside, I’ve long found this an invaluable life lesson—perhaps the most important lesson of all. The key to the lesson’s wisdom is two-fold.

1. You have very little control over what happens in your life. Good things will happen, bad things will happen, and in many ways, you just have to hope, when good things do, you are standing in the right place, and when bad things do, you have to hope you’re standing somewhere else. But key to this is that you do have to be standing somewhere. If you don’t put yourself in position to be in the right place for good things to find you, they won’t.

2. When the stars align, when you’re blessed with the kismet of positive fortune, when everything comes together at the precise moment and opportunity, history, finds you, you have to be ready. You have to meet the moment. Showing up is the 90 percent part. What you do next is the 10 percent … the only 10 percent that matters.

I do not know how this election is going to turn out. But I do know a history-finds-someone moment.

This election has been going on for years now, so long I’m not sure the last one ever stopped, but for all intents and purposes, this election began on June 28, when Joe Biden confirmed many people’s worst fears—and confirmed what his detractors and opponents had been saying about him for months—with a debate performance so disastrous that it became immediately obvious that there was no way this man could serve as President for the next four years. (It is remarkable how impossible it has been to miss this every time any of us have looked at Biden in the months since. It is a reminder that ignoring reality because it benefits you politically is not something exclusive to the right.) It was also obvious that if Biden remained the nominee, he was going to lose. I would have voted for him, because I would pick a name out of a phonebook to be President before I would vote for his opponent. But if someone was too alarmed by Biden’s clear deterioration to feel comfortable voting for that person to be the President until 2029, it would have been difficult to blame them.

At that moment, immediately: Everyone looked at Kamala Harris—in many ways for the first time. We knew who she was, of course, she was the Vice President, but those terrified by Trump, those flabbergasted by his political comeback, those desperate to keep him out of the White House and keep the Republic standing, had to look at her in entirely new, profoundly urgent way. She was no longer a person, or a politician: She was the last chance—the final stand.

Can you imagine that sort of pressure? An entire nation—a nation that had been skeptical of you for years—looking at you to save them? How would you handle it? Would you crumple? I think I would crumple. I think most people would.

It has been four months since that debate, and three months since Harris officially became the Democratic nominee for President. Because Covid-19 may have semi-permanently broken our understanding of time and its passing, it seems like longer than that. But in three months, with the entire planet staring at her, Harris not only risen to meet that moment, she has shown the precise qualities we should want in a President. She is better than we thought she was. She is the exact right person for the moment. She was standing in the right place, at the right time. But what she did next is what matters. I believe it to be one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen a public figure do. She went from being a Vice President with a mostly underwater approval rating to not just uniting her own party in a way it hadn’t been even under Biden but passing nearly every single test thrown at her under unfathomable pressure. And I think it’s why she’s going to be the next President of the United States.

(Side note: I know that the “vibes”—and, to a much, much lesser extent, the polls—seem to have pointed in Trump’s direction over the last week. I think there are many reasons to be skeptical of that, but it doesn’t matter, I stopped doing the “refresh 538 every few hours” bit a while back. It doesn’t do any good, it doesn’t help, and it doesn’t tell you anything. Want to get out some anxiety? Go find someone in your life who isn’t planning on voting and get them to go out and vote. Do something useful.)

I don’t want to turn this into hagiography: Harris has some stances I don’t agree with, which is what is supposed to happen because she is not a cult leader to be blindly followed, and I do not think she has been perfect, because she is a human being and no human beings are perfect. But I think, independent of the loathsomeness and imminent danger of her opponent, she will be a terrific President, during a time when we will very much need one. I will just keep this endorsement simple and tell you five things off the top of my head I very much like about Harris, each, I’d argue, worthy of voting for her on their own.

She’s a normal politician. This is surely a strike against her for many people, though that’s likely because other people’s definition of “normal politician” is very different than mine is. Here is what I want from a politician, and what I believe most politicians, on both sides of the political aisle, provide:

• Legitimate dedication to public service.

• An understanding that the world is complex, and that the people who live in it are better served by moderation and flexibility than dogmatic zealotry and intransigence.

• Intelligence, and enough of it to know when intelligence is not enough.

• Compassion, with an understanding that sometimes it is the job of a President to make difficult decisions in which there are no right answers.

• A love of this country driven by an attempt to live up to its ideals.

• A willingness—a need, even—to admit one’s mistakes, failings and shortcomings, to acknowledge when you have been wrong and shift course accordingly.

• An ability to work alongside people who agree with you and people who don’t, to come together to, you know, do things.

• An understanding that part of the role of a politician is to be a public figure who comports themselves in a fashion that allows them to serve as a role model to people who look up to them and may also want to be a part of public service. Athletes don’t have to be role models, and neither do celebrities. Public servants should at least strive to be.

• A belief that the arc of history is long, and that decisions we make today will affect the world, and the people we love, long after we are gone.

• To do their job in such a manner that, if we entrust them with this position, we can maybe focus on our own lives and ignore politics for a while and not have to worry that they’re going to burn the place down.

• Dress nice, for crying out loud, the buildings you work in are very old and very hallowed and deserve some respect, you’re not on your couch, Fetterman.

There are other things, but those are my basics. There are people out there who want to blow up the entire system. I am not one of them. There are many reforms, major reforms, that need to be done, but I do not believe—nor should any reasonable person believe—that you can do these by just kicking all the chairs over and stomping fits. Harris made a commitment, early in her life, to try to work within the system, with all its limitations and systemic issues, to try to make a difference. I, as someone who tends to find bomb throwing more about self-aggrandizement than a dedication to the common good, believe this to be the correct approach. Kamala Harris is smart, skilled and rational. It’s a lot harder to find all three of those things in one person than you’d think. She has all three.

She is a deft and even inspiring communicator. The most dispiriting thing about the Biden debate was not just that Biden looked so terrible; it’s that he lacked the capability to prosecute the case against Trump. There were so many moments when a hanging curveball was floating for him, waiting for him to whack it, and he just let it hang there. The basic replacement-level job of anyone running against Trump is to make the clear, and correct, case of why his Presidency would be (and, don’t forget, was) disastrous for the American people. Biden was unable to do it.

That’s one of the many reasons Harris’ debate with Trump was so thrilling, and the primary reason Trump won’t do another one. She did everything you would want from someone in that position, under such pressure: She came in fully prepared, she had a clear plan and she was able to think on her feet. The highlight of that debate remains her response to Trump’s absurd, deranged assertion that babies “in blue states” were being murdered after birth. She calls out the lie but then pivots, passionately, about what Trump’s policies have put women through.

Harris is not the stemwinder on the stump, or while facing the nation, that Barack Obama is: No one ever has been. But she has gotten much, much better, to the point that her acceptance speech at the DNC was at times legitimately moving. Harris is able to communicate in a straightforward fashion in a way that both speaks to all people but also is not constantly confrontational—you can imagine trusting her in a crisis and also feeling calmed, even bored, by her ability to handle the day-to-day obligations of the role of communicator-in-chief. She is someone who walks into the room looking prepared, calm and in control. That’s the job.

She has a relatable, fascinating background. I highly recommend the “Frontline” documentary “The Choice 2024,” which tells the stories of both Trump and (especially) Harris in a way I had not seen done before. You can watch it all right here:

The documentary tells the story of Harris’ fraught, if not entirely dysfunctional, relationship with her father, and the example set by her mother, a brilliant biologist whose primary lesson was to tell her children, when they were faced with hardship, not to look for someone else to solve their problem but to instead learn from it and be stronger for the experience. Harris grew up middle class—including, briefly, in Urbana, Illinois—in a loving but transient household, and her rise was a result of her personal drive and intelligence rather than having everything handed to her. She, like Obama, had to learn how to fit in across many, many different environs, places where she, as a woman and a Black person of Indian descent, was desperately outnumbered. She has worked shit jobs, she has had to emerge from situations in which she was powerless, she has had to learn how to connect with and get along with people from entirely different backgrounds from her own. There have been rooms where she is the most exceptional person in them; there have been rooms where she’s had to sit back and learn everything she could. She has gone through many phases in her life, and she has changed and evolved and grown. She has had to discover who she was in real time—like the rest of us.

One of the things I like most about Harris is something that can make her seem vague to some: She has risen and thrived because of consistent sustained excellence rather than through a sweeping cult of personality. You don’t think of there being A Harris Person the way there is A Trump Person, or even An Obama Person. This is a good thing. The one consistency of Harris’ career has been its vast spectrum of influences, its diversity, its openness. She has gotten where she has because she has had to work with people different than her and come to some sort of common understanding. I can’t think of anything I’d want more for a President than that.

She is a woman—and a strong voice for women. It has been strategically smart for Harris, I think, not to emphasize the historic nature of her candidacy, that she would be the first woman President. Part of this is surely learning the lesson of Hillary Clinton, who put that so much at the center of her campaign that it may have caused people to overlook all the other reasons she was running. But this should not change the fact that not only would having a woman President be massively historic, it would be obviously, self-evidently, good for the country. Not only would it at last correct a historic wrong, and not only change the world for millions of women and girls across the country and billions across the world, there is also increasingly overwhelming research that women are in fact more successful leaders than men are, in just about every way. (I am not sure this is something we necessarily need research on, I’m just staying the research is there, if you want it.) Harris may not be emphasizing how much it would mean to finally have a female President. That doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t. Because it would be a big, big deal.

She’s a sensible person. I think this is what I want more than anything else, out of my politicians, out of my friends, out of anyone I come across in my life. I want them to be sensible. Obama famously said a large part of his job was “don’t do stupid shit.” We are a strong country. We are a wealthy country. We are a good country. We just need to make it better as best we can, and not do stupid shit to make it worse.

Matthew Yglesias made this case for Harris well this week:

She’ll preserve people’s health care, defend a woman’s right to choose, defend the rule of law, and try to increase financial support to parents with kids to reduce child poverty. These are good ideas! They are not incredibly distinctive because she’s a sensible person. But she recognizes the need for a course correction from Biden’s “transformational” aspirations toward the idea of a return to normalcy. She’s younger and has a more forceful personality than Biden, and her identity gives her greater authority to push back against bullying from inside the coalition. She has correctly identified the main actual problem in the American economy, and if she wins, we get a chance to put our politics back on track.

I think this is a good country. I think it can be better. But I do not think it needs to be blown up. I want someone who believes in it, who is dedicated to it, who will do everything in her power to evoke positive change in ways that are rational, sensible and sane. I know that isn’t the most stirring oratory that I could give you. Others can surely do that. I can only come from where I am coming from. If you are a normal person who sincerely believes in this country and wants it to be a place that’s stable, to be place that messes up a lot but does ultimately bend toward justice, to be a place where children can be proud of and someday raise families of their own, you absolutely must vote for Kamala Harris. This is her moment. She has met it. The notion of seeing her in the Oval Office is a deeply inspiring one to imagine. I pray we get to see it.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Election Year at the Tailgate, The Washington Post. This, kind of hilariously, was posted at almost exactly the same time Friday as the announcement that the Post would not be endorsing a Presidential candidate this year. So, suffice it to say, this was not the most heavily trafficked piece on their site yesterday.

2. The Star-Riddled World Series, New York. Obviously, lots of World Series content.

3. The Must-Watch World Series, MLB.com. I would write this much if it weren’t NYC-LA.

4. Eight Pivotal Players in the World Series, MLB.com. But does it hurt?

5. Saturday’s World Series Game Two Preview, MLB.com. It does not.

6. Friday’s World Series Game One Preview, MLB.com. You know does hurt, though?

7. Sunday’s NLCS Game Six Preview, MLB.com. Love. Love hurts.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we reviewed “Rumours,” “Woman of the Hour” and “Brothers.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we recapped that crazy Texas game.

Morning Lineup, I did Tuesday and Friday morning’s shows.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The Guardrails Are Already Failing,” Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark. Many people took Jeff Bezos’ decision to pull The Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris as an ominous sign for press freedom, and it was. But JVL gets to the larger issue: This is exactly what happened with Putin in Russia 20 years ago. And we’ve seen how that turned out.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Someone to Pull the Trigger,” Matthew Sweet. As many have heard by now, Matthew Sweet suffered a “debilitating” stroke this week while on tour in Toronto. A GoFundMe page has been set up for him, which I have contributed to and, if his music meant as much to you as it meant to me when I was younger, I encourage you to contribute to. I saw Matthew Sweet play here in Athens in September 2019, and wrote a whole newsletter about it. An excerpt:

"Girlfriend" came out shortly after my 16th birthday, and I spent the next summer listening to it constantly. The songs were the exact mix of alternative rock and pop for a 16-year-old figuring out what he liked, and they were always longing, yearning for some elusive love that any teenager can instantly relate to. "Girlfriend" is one of those albums that I know every note by heart. It lives in my bones.

I’ve had “Girlfriend,” “100% Fun” and “Altered Beast” on repeat all week. Hang in there, Matthew.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

I’ve had a few people ask if they can track my progress during the NYC Marathon next week. (A week from tomorrow! Ack!) You can!

You can do it right here:

My bib number is 12808. I will remind you all of this next week, when I send you a newsletter from NYC, the day before the race. [tugs collar nervously]

Have a great weekend, all.

Best,
Will