Since Kamala Harris announced her campaign for president, I have felt about politics something other than despair and disgust. I wouldn’t call it hope, but I am engaged. I am curious about what is possible.
Yes, democracy is still on the ballot. The crisis we are facing remains existential. But after almost two years of talking about Donald Trump’s extreme ideologies and Joe Biden’s age, we are participating in a substantive examination of a leader’s vision for America. We have a real opportunity to vote for someone rather than against the opposition.
We’ll need imagination. In its infancy, the United States was an act of political imagination — the idea that people could live free from tyranny, according to a set of clearly defined principles. Even then, however, there were limits. The country’s founders envisioned a prosperous and free nation, a more perfect union, but they did not extend their audacious vision to everyone, including the very people from whom they stole this land and those upon whose backs America was built. Given what limited political imagination made possible, we must consider the bounty that could rise out of boundless vision.
But. To imagine extravagant things is to want extravagant things. We have become so accustomed to mediocre political choices that we have forsaken the idea of sweeping change. I understand why. We often forestall hope by detailing, at length, why the change we most want to see will never happen.
In recent years, people have declared that a second Trump presidency is inevitable. Now, with the Harris-Walz ticket, it decidedly is not. It never was. Those anxieties are not misplaced but neither are they productive. Such presumptions are, mostly, a form of self-soothing — imagining the worst so as to be adequately prepared, a form of voluntary capitulation to the unacceptable as a way to avoid mandatory compliance should the worst come to pass.
We’ve been forced to choose between freedom for some and the status quo for others. We’ve been told, by pundits and politicians alike, that we will never be able to circumvent the two-party system to which we have long been beholden. We’ve been told that our best choices are among the gerontocracy our political leadership has become, and that change takes time, as if the political class hasn’t already had ample time to nurture successors. We’ve been told we have to vote to save democracy, we have to hold our noses and choose between the lesser of two evils, we have to wait our turn, and we have to make intolerable compromises because the alternative is even worse. When these are the only political messages you hear, a lack of political imagination is inevitable.
During his interminable acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump showed the American people his own impoverished imagination. He recounted a story about a country in ruin, a hellscape overrun by immigrants, a shattered economy and a people who have strayed too far from ill-defined traditional values. There was, as is often the case with Mr. Trump, little discussion about policy. There was only scant, defiant mention of the legal battles he is facing. Instead, we were told Mr. Trump is the only person who can make this country “great again,” again.
The former president did not offer a vision for the United States because he could not. He proposed a politics of bitter nostalgia, because he has no original ideas. He knows that whatever the future holds, he, unlike most Americans, will be cosseted by privilege, power and wealth. And in choosing JD Vance as his running mate, Mr. Trump made it crystal clear that he was not interested in political vision; he is interested only in what all dictators crave — unwavering, uncritical loyalty.
In the tense days before Mr. Biden was finally cajoled into dropping out of the race, some prognosticators declared that Ms. Harris, the elected vice president, was somehow not politically viable. They immediately passed over her to consider other candidates. This country could never, the thinking went, elect a Black woman as president or any woman, for that matter. Ms. Harris wasn’t likable enough. She didn’t have enough time to mount a successful campaign. She laughed too much.
It was all well in line with the unfortunate tradition of circumventing open democratic processes to allow the wealthy and powerful to anoint candidates behind closed doors and expect voters to fall in line without question. This is as much a form of disenfranchisement as voter suppression, and while there was no realistic way of considering multiple Democratic candidates for this election cycle, this is, hopefully, the last time we treat a presidential race like a matter of succession.
We are, nonetheless, in an interesting and unexpected political moment, one reminiscent of 2007 and the rise of Barack Obama. Ms. Harris’s nascent campaign has inspired optimism and imagination and enthusiasm from a broad range of voters. When Mr. Biden withdrew and endorsed Ms. Harris, the idea of her as president of the United States became startlingly possible. Suddenly, we had a renewed sense of the power and reach of political imagination.
Ms. Harris’s choice of Tim Walz as her running mate also feels like an energizing act of political imagination. He’s a lifelong Midwesterner, born in Nebraska. He has lived in Minnesota for many years, serving first in Congress and then as the state’s governor. He was in the National Guard for many years. He is a husband and father, a former schoolteacher. He has been an incredibly effective governor, signing a universal school meals bill, restoring voting rights for formerly incarcerated Minnesotans and protecting gender-affirming care. He is affable but also more than willing to insult political opponents who are eminently deserving of insult. Yes, Mr. Walz is a “white guy,” but he also seems like the right guy for this moment.
Democratic politicians vie for the attention of an imaginary independent, moderate voter who must be pandered to at the expense of every other American. That fantasy allows politicians to stay the course and resist taking risks. The political class is firmly entrenched in believing we cannot change the system; we must merely endure it. But what if change really is possible now — not in four years, or eight or beyond?
The Harris-Walz ticket reminds us that when there is urgency and political will, change is possible. They have three months to introduce themselves to the electorate and articulate their policy positions, which tells us we don’t need interminable election cycles that force politicians into a perpetual frenzy of campaigning instead of legislating. Given the resistance to Biden’s re-election campaign, we can make it a regular practice to have robust primaries, even when there is an incumbent candidate. Since 1980, there has been a Bush, Clinton or Biden on the ballot — that’s oligarchy, not democracy — and now we can imagine something different.
We should reject bringing politicians into “stan” culture. Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz are not running to be our friends. They do not need worship and adoration. They are credible candidates, and we should respect them enough to treat them as such. Part of the work of earning our votes should involve listening to Americans about our visions for the country and our place in the world. We can and should ask difficult questions and grapple with answers that don’t necessarily tell us what we want to hear. Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz are not saviors and they will not solve all of this nation’s or the world’s problems. They are not perfect candidates and, if elected, they will not be perfect in office. For now, their ticket is creating space for our most extravagant imaginings. That is much more than we’ve had for a very long time.
There is so much at stake — a dangerously warming planet, threats to reproductive freedom and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, an inadequate federal minimum wage, a lack of affordable housing, an inequitable taxation system, too many barriers to citizenship, punitive border policies, crumbling health care, failing infrastructure, systemic biases and, most urgently, what humanitarian groups have called a possible genocide in Gaza. There is so much at stake but the problems with which we are contending can be solved. We can devise an expansive, inclusive political vision that doesn’t relegate anyone to the margins.
Wielding political imagination is not an act of delusion. It is not magical thinking or a search for utopia. It does not mean everything we imagine will come to fruition. It simply means we are willing to invest in the future and do the work of trying to transform our imaginings into reality.
Roxane Gay is the author, most recently, of “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s Gun Problem” and a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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