Kamala For President In ‘28! - A Poor, Deluded Woman, A Baffled Party, And The Final Turn Of The Screw

'There's always a next time', said LaShonda Markum, Kamala Harris' closest aide, selected for her loyalty, ambition and color.  She and LaShonda were the faces of the Democratic Party - golden brown and burnished by their ancestral African sun.  These were the faces of a pluralistic, multi-cultural, diverse world of community and peace. 

Of course no one on the juggernaut headed for Washington believed any of this, for the resounding victory of Donald Trump was an equally resounding and humiliating defeat for the progressive left and its faux-Hyperion dreams of sweetness and multicolored light.  That discredited fantasy was done and gone, tossed unceremoniously into the dustbin of history, a failed, disreputable idea of engineered happiness.  The new face of America would be high-performing white and Asian and the populist millions of the hinterland, forgotten and dismissed by the shills and claques of the Left, but raised to prominence by Donald Trump.

 

Almost a month after the election, the American Left is still shocked, dazed, and confused.  How could a woman of color, a proud progressive, and standard bearer for all that is right and good, have been so badly beaten? Worse still, how could all organs of power - White House, Senate, House, and Supreme Court - be in the hands of conservative Republicans?  Not only was their lady defeated, but the whole idea of progressivism was put on notice.  The country had in one fell swoop become the antithesis of moral rectitude, social progress, and historical destiny.  In the hands of an egocentric, authoritarian, anti-democratic rightwing bigot, the country would never become the land of promise and compassion progressives assumed. 

'Wait a minute', said Kamala loudly and sternly to her aide, LaShonda. 'I'm still here, and I haven't given up the fight.  I am still the leader of the Party, its torchbearer, its beacon, its....'

Here the lady stopped for breath and reflection.  Words alone could not describe the fierce passion she felt in her breast, the desire to lead, to make a difference, to be....noticed! But here she was, political flotsam, her name gone from the headlines, with not even a mention in Style or Metro.  'I need to get a team together'. 

 

Few people came running, for in American political terms, she was already a has-been, a supernumerary, better left and forgotten than to replay the past and remind everyone of her missteps, her ineptitude, and her arrogant assumptions.  Who remembers George Dukakis except a few old folks who can't forget the image of the fool poking his head out of an M-1 tank looking like a puppet barely big enough to see out? 

'No one will remember me', said the disconsolate, bruised, and shamed lady. 'Unless....unless...unless I act!'.  For a moment the adrenaline rushed through her veins and started her heart pumping fast. 'It ain't over till it's over.  I'm still Kamala Harris, proud black woman who will have her day'

The problem was, of course, that she still had no clue about running anything let alone a country, and could only think of her campaign speeches about 'Democracy In The Light Of Compassion', 'The Brave New World of Diversity', and her favorite, 'The Time Has Come!' 

Time for what? caviled her bedeviling critics.  Time for this propped up empty suit? This political arriviste?  This harpy?

'Yes', she said to herself.  'I must be more specific this time around'; but the future still was a foggy miasma with no definition, no signposts, no beacons or lighthouses, so how to even begin to frame it for the American people?

Democrats in Washington were scuttling around the floor of the House, banging on closed doors, and jamming the aisles to find some direction forward; but were clueless.  The twin messages they had been flogging for ten years - diversity, equity, and inclusion; and race, gender, and ethnicity - were now old chestnuts, cracked and hardening on dead coals with nothing there to replace them. They couldn't very well go back to the old days of progressivism, the era of Gompers, Brandeis, and LaFollette. She had only paid lip service to these heroes of yesteryear, champions of labor and the little man.  Things had changed.  The progressive struggle was one of new challenges. 

 

Everything she had proposed had gone down the tubes - abortion, the environment, racial equity, communitarianism, social justice, international compassion, and a welcoming, open, generously accommodating people; tossed aside like so many candy wrappers, trash, jetsam.  As far as new ideas were concerned, neither she nor her Party had any, and so looking out across the Potomac, they saw a vast, harsh, wasteland of rubes, crackers, and ignoramuses and could think of nothing to say to them.  

Maybe California will take me back, she thought.  Maybe not Washington, but Sacramento might do in a pinch, maybe get my old job back.  Or write my memoirs,  She already had a title in mind - The Conscience of a Proud Black Woman - and had even sketched out a few ideas for the opening chapter, something about the African forest, her noble tribal ancestry, the slave ships sailing from Dakar, and her ascent to power.  'Too much too soon', said her editor when he read Kamala's first draft, putting it on a back shelf. 

But Kamala was in a hurry to make something of herself, something to burnish her tarnished reputation.  Good Lord, Richard Nixon would have rehabilitated himself completely if he hadn't run out of time and died; but I'm a relatively young woman, she mused, just hitting my stride. 'You ain't seen nothin' yet'. 

 

Well, no licking wounds for her. No whingeing and whining. That was for followers, not leaders, and she would be - must be - on the prow of the New Left's galleon, a heroic female icon of strength, beauty, and passion.  Yet when she sat down at her desk with a White House pen and a blank piece of paper in front of her, she came up as empty as she had before.  Not one interesting, relevant, salient, or compelling idea came to mind. She was as vaporous as she ever had been. 

She had no children, no family legacy, and now no political one.  A footnote of history and a reproductive cipher.  She started to cry but caught herself.  A good thing no one was looking, me turning into a whimpering woman! and turned back to the blank paper on her desk; but after an hour of staring, all that was left was a few scribbles and doodles of space ships and bare trees.  Freud would make something of them, she thought, but no point in saving them for her memoir.  Let's be serious for once. 

So she sailed off into the sunset with no port in mind.  Life's a journey, she remembered, and given her good fortune and good looks, she would certainly find a place to lay her hat.  She fluffed her hair in the mirror, adjusted her jacket, touched up her lipstick, and click-clacked confidently down the corridors of the West Wing.