The Valkyries of Democracy
In praise of three extraordinary women.
Trigger warning: Emo JVL is here. I’ve got a lot of feelings and I’m going to share all of them with you. Sorry. But that’s where I’m at.
1. The Triad
By the time you read this Sarah will have concluded moderating a conversation between Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney. If you missed it, you can watch it here. And in a few minutes, I’m going to sit down with Sarah and have her unload on what this moment was like. It’ll be on the site the minute she’s able to get on camera.
Before that, though, I want to say a personal word about these three extraordinary women.
On Liz Cheney: I was wrong. I can’t say this often enough. When Cheney broke with Donald Trump after January 6, I was dismissive. I didn’t understand why it took her so long, or how she could have stayed on-side during COVID and the 2020 campaign.
But as she methodically blew up her own career in order to defend our democracy, I realized I’d underestimated her. This was a woman of real conviction, who was willing to put it all on the line.
Liz Cheney has been a workhorse. She’s been willing to do as much as anyone, and more than most, in the service of elevating country over party.
On Kamala Harris: I am not in the Yass Queen camp. My view is that Kamala is a standard-issue, ambitious politician and that she might be a good president, or a bad president, or a middling president. There’s no real way to know ahead of time. I do not have any illusions about her being a savior.
But I also do not believe that any sane person would want to be the Democratic presidential nominee in the Year of Our Lord 2024.
The stakes are too high; the pressure too great.
I believe that for all her political ambition, Kamala Harris is carrying this burden for us. She’s not Barack Obama, basking in the warmth of a cultural moment en route to becoming a cultural icon. She’s more like Frodo Baggins, walking toward Mordor while carrying a millstone around her neck, in an attempt to save all of Middle Earth from a dark fate.
Here are two things I truly believe: (1) Kamala Harris has wanted to be president for a long time; and (2) Kamala Harris never wanted to run for president with the fate of democracy on the line.
When Howard Stern interviewed Harris, he asked her about the pressure and she answered that she literally loses sleep over it. That she goes to bed every night wondering, “Is there anything else I could have done?”
I cannot imagine that burden. And I am grateful—in my heart—to her for bearing it.
Finally, there’s Sarah Longwell.
I cannot properly convey the depth of my affection and admiration for her. I would run through walls for Sarah. I’d take a bullet for her.
When the Harris campaign called and asked Sarah to come to Pennsylvania today and sit down with Harris and Cheney, I kvelled.
Knowing that other people see the same things in Sarah that we see? Absolutely bursting with pride.
But it’s not just pride.
It’s relief. Look: None of us wants to be living in this moment.
But history chose us. It is our burden and the burden is, itself, a form of privilege.
And there is no group of people I would rather fight through this moment with than those three women: Liz, Kamala, and Sarah.
As Coach D’Amato once said, the inches we need are all around us. And when I look at these women, I see people who will go that inch with us. Who have been willing to sacrifice for that inch. Who are going to fight for every inch.
And I’m ride or die with them. I hope you will be, too.
14 days to go.
2. In Defense of Charlie
Over the weekend the New York Times did a story on our friend Charlie Sykes.
And I’m pretty forking mad about it.