Charles M. Blow: Democrats, all of them, must protect Harris

Donald Trump has openly said that if he wins in November and returns to office, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1.” Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank that organized the potentially country-altering Project 2025, has said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” And Monday at a rally for JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, an Ohio state senator named George Lang said, “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved.”

Into this storm, Vice President Kamala Harris has been drafted as the new best hope for the Democratic Party and perhaps for democracy as we’ve known it; indeed, President Joe Biden’s replacement this late in the 2024 campaign could have been only she.

After Biden’s disconcerting debate performance in June, I, like many others, was concerned that the debate over changing the top of the ticket would be a pretext for Democratic insiders to swing open the door to multiple alternative candidates, that they were operating under a delusion and didn’t understand the stubborn math of the Democratic coalition.

Fortunately, Democrats appear to have avoided another intraparty skirmish. Exhausted by weeks of infighting over Biden’s withdrawal, they’ve quickly coalesced around Harris, who has collected enough delegate support to make her their presumptive nominee.

Democrats appear to have embraced the reality that Black voters, traditionally the most unshakable voting bloc in their party’s fold, will be crucial to their chances of victory. Republicans have been making a concerted and at times effective effort to peel away Black votes. And recent national polling suggests that Trump still has a slight edge in the race overall. But by selecting Harris – the first Black, Asian American and female vice president – Democrats are giving themselves the best chance to counter the Republican effort; skipping over her would have been politically catastrophic.

So here’s the Democratic Party’s next test: protecting Harris from the vile onslaught coming her way.

In just the past few days, we’ve already seen attacks on Harris that go far beyond the political and into the personal: Social media is swirling with smears about Harris’ past relationships. Tim Burchett, a Republican Congress member from Tennessee, called her a “DEI vice president,” a snide reference to diversity, equity and inclusion that carries the unmistakable implication that a woman of color can’t possibly be qualified to hold the second-highest office in the land.

They demonstrate that some in MAGA world won’t be content to beat Harris in November; they’ll try to destroy her.

Harris will, in this campaign, have to parry not only the sexism that was directed at Hillary Clinton but also the racism that was directed at Barack Obama. As Democratic strategist James Carville said about what Harris will almost certainly continue to face, “Racism is the periodontal disease of America.” He added, “It’s just with us and not going to go away, but it can be overcome.”

Louisiana civil rights activist Gary Chambers Jr. thinks that Trump’s attacks on Harris could be so egregious that they end up working in her favor. “He’s going to do way too much,” Chambers said, “and Black women ain’t going to tolerate it.”

And Black women, the most loyal constituency in the Democratic base, have already begun to rally to Harris’ defense.

For years, they’ve had to watch as prominent Black women like Ketanji Brown Jackson and Claudine Gay came under attack in the anti-woke, anti-DEI frenzy that engulfed the country largely as a backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement.

With Harris’ candidacy, Black women have an opportunity to lift up a prominent Black woman, and they have seized the initiative.

Last Sunday, more than 40,000 Black women gathered on a video call organized by Win With Black Women to prepare to defend Harris. Not to be outdone, the next night, more than 50,000 Black men joined a video call with the same mission. Each night, more than $1 million was raised.

As Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, likes to say about the power and potential of people of color: “We have to be the cavalry that we’ve been waiting on.”

But in the case of Harris, that cavalry, that line of defense, has to be a political force far broader than the Black community because her candidacy, a contest against a man who tried to overturn the results of the last presidential election, represents nothing less than the preservation of our constitutional order. Democrats – elected officials, campaign strategists, donors and voters – have entered a binding you-broke-it-you-bought-it pact with Harris: They must recognize that she’s on a “glass cliff,” a situation in which a woman is elevated to the top only in a time of crisis. And all Democrats must recognize that by pushing Biden out of the race, they’re now responsible for Harris’ success.

Trading Biden for Harris is too big of a gamble to be allowed to fail.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.