But What If Kamala Harris Won?

What the first video ad of Kamala Harris's 2024 campaign.

For years, especially in 2016 and 2020, I often started each day listing, discussing, and complaining about Donald Trump's latest transgressions. It felt toxic, like being slowly poisoned. It turned my brain into hypersensitive sludge. I've had to take breaks from it periodically—including the entire year my son was sick—because it eventually gets to you. The negativity can take a toll.

What's happening now with Kamala Harris is different. Trump remains a serious threat to democracy, but what if—instead of focusing all our attention on the dangers of another Trump administration—we focused on the possibilities a Harris administration might provide? We experienced a brief period of this with the Biden administration, but the pandemic robbed us of much forward-thinking hope. We were just trying to survive, and before long, the discourse devolved into debates about vaccines, masks, Fauci, and DeSantis.

I'm sure we'll soon turn our attention back to the danger posed by Trump, but right now: Harris is raising substantial funds. Nearly 40,000 new people registered to vote in the 48 hours after Biden dropped out—the biggest such period during this election cycle—with most of these new voters being young. Harris is giving speeches that not only outline the threat Trump poses but also offer an alternative vision for the future.

The future! Did you even remember it was possible to think positively about the future without those thoughts being tainted by Trump's potential political vengeance? What if Kamala Harris won and the government refocused on healthcare? What if she won and interest rates finally fell enough for us to take advantage of Biden's EV tax credits? What if she won and passed meaningful gun control legislation? What if she won and persuaded Congress to pass a federal law protecting abortion rights that the Supreme Court couldn't override? What if she won and the media busied itself with her pantsuit colors instead of constant chaos? What if she won and we didn't have to confront a thousand tiny emotional paper cuts every morning while scrolling through our social media feeds?

It sounds promising. I'm sure we'll be inundated with negative ads in the near future, but let's bask in the glow of positivity and possibility for now. This is the kind of campaign I'd love to experience for the next four months. This is how you kick off a campaign.

When she says freedom — as the voice of Beyoncé sings out — what she’s really saying is freedom, finally, from eight long years of Donald Trump, which will feel like the silence of a room after an industrial-sized fan that‘s been running for the better part of a decade has finally been switched off.

This is the timeline America deserves.