[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.[/perfectpullquote]
Philadelphia — Kamala Harris was virtually flawless last night, turning in one of the most impressive debate performances I’ve ever seen by a presidential candidate.
From the very beginning, when she approached Donald Trump and forced him to shake her hand, she took command. Then, she stayed on offense all night long and simply gave Trump the rope to hang himself. And he did.
While Harris spoke about her plans for new families, first-time homebuyers, and small businesses, the angry, petulant Trump raised his voice, yelled, and screamed, and looked unhinged as he took the bait she fed to him at every question, whining about his grievances from the past, relitigating the 2020 election, and fighting against a candidate who is no longer in the race.
As Harris wisely introduced herself to the audience and talked about her middle-class upbringing, Trump revealed a total lack of message discipline and a wildly inappropriate temperament, refusing even to look at her.
“And this…former president,” said Kamala Harris with a pregnant pause as she spoke, letting the audience know that she wanted to call him something else but had the restraint not to do so.
Harris needled Trump about Project 2025 and kept referring to him as the former president, apparently to remind voters that he represents the past. And Trump dutifully played into the role by taking every opportunity to talk about ancient grievances, argue about his crowd sizes, and introduce every petty issue he could bring up.
The debate covered the economy, abortion, immigration, fracking, the January 6 insurrection, Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan, race, health care, and climate change, and Kamala Harris came out on top of every single issue.
I still think it’s problematic that we allow a twice-impeached, quadruple-indicted, criminal, insurrectionist, and adjudicated sex predator to share the stage with the vice president of the United States, but former prosecutor Kamala Harris proved more than capable of handling the convicted felon Donald Trump.
Toni Morrison once said that the function of racism is distraction. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again.”
Maybe that was Trump’s debate strategy, if you can call it that, tonight as the 78-year-old former game show host spent the evening rambling on about his greatest hits.
He blamed immigrants for taking “African American jobs,” a claim that was debunked months ago.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]He repeated a debunked racist lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio.[/perfectpullquote]
He claimed not to care about Kamala Harris’s racial identity but then repeated the same false accusation moments later. “I read where she was not Black,” he said. It was a farcical assertion for an old White man to make about a self-identified Black woman with a Jamaican father, a Howard University degree, and an Alpha Kappa Alpha membership.
And he claimed that Harris is soft on crime, but she would not let him forget that Trump, himself, is two months away from a potential ankle bracelet or a prison sentence.
Trump had a lot of nerve coming to Philadelphia, the place where he tried to throw out thousands of votes in this largely Black city after he lost the 2020 election and manufactured bogus claims of election fraud. But he repeated those claims tonight, echoing language from the past that votes in Philly, Detroit, Atlanta, and Milwaukee were “fraudulently or illegally obtained” when he accused those cities of being “politically corrupt.”
Kamala Harris responded to Trump’s lies with a cool, calm composure. She did not take the bait to make personal attacks against Trump on race and instead used the question to bemoan the “tragedy” that a former president had “consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people.”
She cited Trump’s decades-long history of racism even before he was elected — housing discrimination in the 1970s, vilifying innocent Black teenagers in the Central Park Five Case in the 1980s, and birtherism in the 2010s.
And Trump made it clear that if we let him back in office, things will only get worse, as he repeated a debunked racist lie that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Ohio. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats.”
How on earth can Tim Scott, Byron Donalds, or any self-respecting Black person defend this racist, old White man spewing dangerous lies about Black and brown immigrants eating White people’s pets?
So, these are the options, America. One of these two people will be the next president of the United States, and you, the voter, get to decide.
Do you want four more years of old man Trump and his circus of chaos, crises, court cases, and corruption on your TV every night? Or do you want a president who will lead and behave with dignity, respect, and maturity?
I don’t know about you, but I’m not going back.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.
The post Kamala Harris’s Time Has Come appeared first on Word In Black.
About Post Author
