Note: This column was written 10 days before Biden announced he would not run for re-election and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
It’s time to cross that bridge. Time to stride across that bridge Joe Biden constructed four years ago while standing on a stage before Democratic leaders in Detroit. Standing as the party’s presidential nominee.
Earlier that night on the stage with him were New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and California Sen. Kamala Harris — the trio then said to be under consideration to be the vice presidential nominee.
Biden was 77 years old.
“Look,” he said that night. “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
Well, sir, that future is now.
Biden chose Harris to be his vice president and now, she should be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. Right now.
I didn’t always feel this way. For many days following President Biden’s debate debacle, I believed the knee-jerk hypertensive fretting among Dems was premature, that most Americans had long made up their mind about whom they were going to vote for and would not be swayed by one bad night on a stage in an event that never should have happened. (Whose idea was it anyway for him to debate Trump? Oh, that’s right, it was Biden’s.)
I believed pushing the now 81-year-old out of the Oval Office just four months ahead of the election—the most vital presidential election in all our lifetimes— would be desperation. Panic.
Would be humiliating—like taking Granddad’s car keys.
It also would make, I believe, the other guy salivate like Pavlov’s pup.
You might as well hand him the Bible and started swearing.
I admire those who’ve rallied around Biden, including Alabama’s only Dem in Congress, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell and Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin. It’s the right thing to do. Publicly.
When your quarterback has a rough first half, you pat him on the backside and pep-talk him up. You don’t yank him at halftime of the national championship game and toss in the backup. Oh, wait, never mind.
Yes, you do.
Indeed, Biden should do more than say he will no longer seek nor accept the party’s nomination for president of the United States. Do more even than in so doing emphatically pass the mantle to Harris. (Skipping her for a rabbit-chasing dog race at this stage would be a joke.)
Biden should turn the Oval Office keys over to Harris.
He should stand with pride and put a period on 52 years of public service. In so doing, Kamala Harris would become the 46th President of the United States.
The first female president in our nation’s history.
It’s an embarrassing shame this hasn’t already happened. We pride ourselves on being a global leader while being a global laggard in electing a female leader.
Women have led nations since the 1940s, and history is strewn with iconic female leaders around the globe: India’s Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir of Israel, Isabel Perón of Argentina, and Great Britain’s Margaret Thatcher are just four we all should know.
Now, there are 27 female elected or appointed chief executives around the world. That doesn’t include two presidents-elect — Halla Tómasdóttir of Iceland and Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum Mexico — who won races earlier this year and will soon assume office.
That’s almost 30 nations that have done what we have not. Not officially, at least. It’s easy to forget Sen. Hilary Clinton got more votes than the other guy in 2016— 65,853,514 to 62,984,828 —yet lost due to our outdated election Abacus, a.k.a. the Electoral College. (Imagine the ensuing storm if the other guy receives more votes but flunks Electoral College.)
Let me be clear about this now: I believe Biden could do the job if re-elected. I’ve written before that I believe he’s done a good job as president . Not a perfect job. No one has ever done the job perfectly.
And I emphatically believe he is a far, far, far better choice for our nation than the other guy.
Perception is reality, we all know. And increasingly, bit by bit every day, the perception of Bidon is clear: He’s not up to the task. Not through any fault of his own. Time waits for no man, wrote an English poet.
And “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose,” notes scripture.
And to every person.
It is the season, the time for Biden to hand over the keys. Now.
Let me be clear about this, too: Harris is not perfect, either. She was a disastrous campaigner when running for president, and the revolving door crowded with staffers even during the early years of her vice presidency was a troubling sign.
And few jobs suck more than VP. Too quiet and you’re irrelevant; too loud and you’re a threat. You’re assigned unsolvable tasks then trashed when they remain unsolved.
Yet the wind has shifted slightly since Harris began to step out of the shadows of the office a few months ago.
She’s has been a vocal advocate for women’s reproductive rights, a position Republicans abdicated forever with their assasination of Roe V. Wade. (Pay no attention to the recent moonwalk by some in the party.) She was lauded in March for emphatically calling for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza due to the “immense scale of suffering” while in Selma for the annual commemoration of the heroic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for Black voting rights.
And as some African Americans expressed dissatisfaction with her boss, she unabashedly spelled out how his positions and policies have benefitted Black Americans.
Most recently, in the days since the debate dumpster fire, she’s had to walk a tightrope—proving she’s up to the task while not yanking the safety net from beneath Biden. Some Democratic leaders have noticed. Quietly.
President Harris would be a Hail Mary, no doubt.
One fraught with risk. While the other guy has been uncharacteristically silent since the date, Republican contract character killers have taken their shots at Harris. Their talking point: She’s a “DEI vice president.” (So was Geraldine Ferraro a DEI pick? Sarah Palin? Or just the Black woman? Just asking for some friends.)
Folks, please. If they didn’t fear her, they wouldn’t attack her.
Because they know President Harris would ignite women voters and galvanize Black women voters like nothing this nation has ever seen—and that’s a lot, given the ballot-box power Black women have already wielded to the Democratic party’s benefit.
On Wednesday night, Harris stood on a stage before thousands of Black female fellow members of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. in Dallas and declared: “We know when we organize, mountains move. When we mobilize, nations change. And when we vote, we make history.”
And presidents.
President Harris is also—and this is perhaps even more important to Democrats—best suited to stir young Black voters, the constituency that scares me the most, from their somnolence. From their apathy over the gray choices in front of them now.
She’s best suited to stir young voters. Period.
There are clear and committed efforts to light a match under young Black voters. Among them, the Regenerate Society in Birmingham. Yet I’ve been in rooms with many young people in recent weeks and this is what I often hear: I’m not excited about either one of these old jokers.
It’s time to cross that bridge. Time for Dems to link arms and cross that bridge Biden constructed four years ago with the brave boldness of the late John Lewis and thousands of others who crossed Edmund Pettus on Bloody Sunday in 1965 and marched for their rights.
It’s time to cross that bridge for right.
It’s the right time for President Harris.
I was raised by good people who encouraged me to be a good man and surround myself with good people. If I did, they said, good things would happen. I am a member of the National Association of Black Journalists’ Hall of Fame, an Edward R. Murrow Award winner, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.
