Despite the ongoing excessive whining in the press about Kamala Harris not doing interviews and MAGA's laughable insistence that Trump won the debate and that it was rigged by ABC moderators, the truth is that the vice president is running an exceptional campaign. At every important juncture, she has met the moment and surpassed it.

Personally, I never understood the widely (but not deeply) held belief that she was a mediocre politician. As a Californian, I have followed Harris' career pretty closely from the time she made a name for herself as the San Francisco district attorney and then state attorney general. I happily voted for her for the Senate. She always struck me as a talented politician who was very likely headed for higher office if the breaks came her way.

So far she's doing something that is very difficult to pull off, but if she does it will be legendary — she's trying to excite the base while also expanding the coalition from Bernie Sanders to Dick Cheney.

She took a shot for president in 2019 and had a bad primary run, but she's hardly the first presidential aspirant to flame out in their first run. Joe Biden ran twice before he finally got the nomination. Even the sainted John McCain and Ronald Reagan failed in their first attempts. But even though she ended up being chosen as Joe Biden's vice president it seemed as though her failure in the Democratic primary was seen as possibly fatal and that dark cloud followed her through her first couple of years in the job.

Needless to say, a lot of this was fed by the right which went to great lengths to demean and demonize her. It is something they do to all Democratic women, particularly the Black ones. As vice president they knew she would run when Biden's term was over and their crusade to degrade her eventually seeped into the beltway ether.

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The last two years were quite a bit better as she was featured more in roles that got a lot of attention........

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