Colum McCann

Because We Need to Keep Kamala and Carry On

The origin of the phrase, “Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” is difficult to pinpoint, exactly: it could be biblical; it could be derived from the English proverb, “Opportunity makes the man”; or it could be from the admirers of Winston Churchill. But it has seldom been made more appropriate for readaptation than last month when Kamala Harris became the presumptive candidate for the American presidency.

“Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.”

In the past couple of months, we have witnessed a stunning turnaround. The Democrats were slumped in a corner. The door was locked. The windows were sealed shut. It seemed as if a great darkness had come down with no escape. But then Joe Biden performed not so much an act of bravery but an act of necessity, and suddenly the door was thrown open, the curtains drawn back, and, with almost cinematic aplomb, there stood Kamala Harris in a shaft of light that seemed designed entirely for her. One could almost hear the orchestra striking up.

But “Cometh the hour, cometh the woman,” does not mean that Kamala Devi Harris arrived out of the blue. She worked a long time for this still unfinished strike of fate to occur.

That all this has occurred so quickly is not so surprising anymore. We are, after all, living in the exponential age. Things occur with alarming speed. There is so much that can still happen in the next sixty days that it’s not a bad thing to take a quick glance backward at the woman who has given us the possibility, and not just a faint one, of looking forward.

She was born in California, in 1964, to an Indian biologist and a Jamaican professor of economics. She was, therefore, a child of “everywhere,” although she was immediately thought of as Black, as if being Black was a place rather than a race. Her parents worked in multiple universities which meant that she had a stroller-eye view of the world of African American intellectuals and human rights activists. Her parents divorced when she was just seven years old, and, at the age of twelve, she moved to Canada. She graduated from a fancy high school and then moved back to the States, where she went to Howard University, a historically Black college where the ethos was to cultivate young leaders of color. 

Kamala Harris took what seems now to be a very focused path. She went to the Hastings College of Law in California and graduated in 1989. She became a deputy district attorney. In other words, she was a young lawyer with her eyes on a much deeper prize. She dated Willie Brown (the former mayor of San Francisco). Brown was the emperor with far too many clothes. She was twenty-nine, and he was sixty. He who once noted that while he had helped many politicians make their mark, “Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I ‘so much as jaywalked’ while she was DA. That’s politics for ya.” 

Harris went on to become a star in the prosecutorial world because, as she famously said, “I did the work.” She took on cases that included homicide, burglary, robbery, and sexual assault. It was the time of the three-strike rule—after three felonies, it was a jail cell for the rest of your life. Even in this oppressive environment, Harris showed a penchant for being smart and progressive. It seemed obvious that she knew where the lanes were from the very beginning. She could compromise. She could negotiate. She could take care of any political swerves with a controlled verbal skid. All the time, she appeared unafraid.

But here’s the reality rub. She was a woman. A Black woman. An Indian woman. Barriers were put in her way at every turn. She had to fight to shatter those glass ceilings. She became the attorney general of California. Then US senator. And then vice president: the highest-ranking woman in US political history. She did not, indeed, “fall out of a coconut tree.”

So why then was it a surprise that Kamala Harris seemed to “burst onto the scene” just last month? Part of it has to do with mythmaking. We need our myths, and we need someone to step into the role of mythmaker. All the myths around her were tired and used. Something new and fresh was needed, even if she had been busy polishing parts of her own myth for quite a while. We make our own stories, and they sometimes fit into the coat of the times. There was a need for a new sort of American hero.

Harris was willing over the course of the past few years to remain in Biden’s shadow. This is no small point. She Biden-ed her time. There was a generous amount of respect and, it seems now, a fair amount of guile in her ability to dwell in this shadow-time. She used, in James Joyce’s construction, silence, exile, and cunning as a way to prepare herself for the moment when the spotlight fell on her. What seems inevitable now was carefully thought out.

The sigh of relief that came with her nomination cannot be underestimated: a whole half of the country suddenly seemed to bounce out of bed, reinvigorated, caffeinated. If she had become heir apparent even weeks beforehand, it would most likely have been a totally different story. But the Goliath that was standing in the room was suddenly toppled. Trump was stunned by her appearance. Almost immediately he looked old and fat and sad and orange and damp and dour. He had a how-dare-she look about him, and the Democrats suddenly had a gotcha moment. That this energy still remains weeks into the campaign is remarkable. Trump looks like a tired, old man desperately pulling up his trousers. He is, for all the world to see, still fiddling with his fly.

Somehow Harris—even though she has been around for years—was new. But it was a new newness. It didn’t have the naivety of a sudden arrival or deer-in-the-headlights glare. It was a chrysalis moment—she was the same thing and yet she was entirely different. She was sharp and tough and experienced, and she arrived with a supportive hand on her shoulder. Make no mistake about it. Despite what the polls say, Biden was liked among a sizable portion of Americans, and Harris had been loyal to him. She had not attempted a coup. She was prepared to thank him as she stepped briskly out of the shadows. There was no sense of a “smash and grab.” The times asked for her.

“Cometh the hour, cometh the well-prepared woman.”

The initial question was, how long would the rosy glow last? How would she stand up against the aggressive and neanderthal attacks of Trump? Would Gen Z come out to play? Could she capture those votes still on the fence? Most of these questions have been answered in the last few weeks as Harris has cleverly solidified her position without creating drama. “Piano, piano,” as the Italians might say. But perhaps the most prominent question asked was whether America was prepared for a female president. According to Ben Rhodes, one of Barack Obama’s most astute advisers, the former president admitted toward the end of his term that he might have arrived about ten or twenty years too early. Not anymore. In many ways, much as the surprise of Harris still resonates. Perhaps, now, Obama arrived at the exact right time. We needed the past few years to grow nostalgic for depth and vision.

Things can still change at lightning speed, of course. There may come a turnaround. There may well be a gaffe. Or, God forbid, another act of violence. But one thing is sure: the belly-white, conservative, Trumpist ethos that seemed so inevitable early in the summer is threatened. Trump made a tremendous mistake in appointing Little Boy Blue as his vice presidential nominee; JD Vance, as the nursery rhyme goes, is already under the haystack fast asleep.

This is all compounded by the stall-worthy work of Tim Walz as Harris’s running mate. The Minnesota governor has continued to give Harris an edge. He’s the folksy, down-home deal that she needed in order to ground her image. He balances her in so many ways. He is distinctly midwestern. He was a high school teacher and football coach who spent twenty-four years in the Army National Guard. He is a gun-owning Democrat who, at the same time, proposed restrictions on gun ownership, including universal background checks. He is seen as a candidate who might be easy on the Republican heart and yet, at the same time, he has initiated significant progressive legislative wins, including universal school meals, legalized marijuana, and abortion protections in his home state.

More than this, he also seemed to inject a sense of humor into the Harris campaign; he is a candidate who can set a crowd alight and spin a sound bite on a dime.

All of this points in the direction of a brand new, all-embracing Democratic tent. I haven’t seen the T-shirts yet, but I’m sure they’re out there. 

“Keep Kamala and Carry On.” 

“Come Walzing with Kamala.” 

“I Did the Work!” 

“The Kamala After the Storm.”

It might be easy to be overcome with optimism. Harris is still neck-and-neck with Trump, and how this election eventually shakes out will be in the stories of our times.

The president you get is the country you get.

Roll on the next few weeks. Anything can happen. And it probably will.

Colum McCann is a National Book Award-winning author and cofounder of the global nonprofit Narrative 4.