Kamala Harris’ Immigrant Song
“I believe in America” is the first line you hear in The Godfather. A troubled funeral home proprietor by the name of Amerigo Bonasera has come to see Don Corleone to seek revenge for his daughter, wronged by two young Anglo-Saxon men. The movie at its core is an immigrant’s story shorn of bootstrapping Horatio Alger fantasies or any notions of smooth integration into society. The film and book tell rather of old world traditions mingling, enhancing, and corrupting the democratic experiment with often spectacularly bloody results. The America of the Godfather was not so much the melting pot described by middle school teachers everywhere but a roiling cauldron of special interests, parochial beliefs, and — most of all — cutthroat strivers. It was the real story of coming to a foreign land and trying to make good.
In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris told a wildly different version of that story, when she spoke of her mother’s struggles coming to America. But The Godfather’s author Mario Puzo or its director, Francis Ford Coppola couldn’t have done it better. Her immigrant mother and father from disparate backgrounds, eventually separated. She spoke of the tight circle her mother built around the family — taking in an abused young friend of Harris, encouraging her daughter to fight back to protect her friends. The five-foot Shyamala Harris’ accent may have made her sound unlike other folks, but she wasn’t going to take shit from anyone. Her daughter told the DNC audience how Shyamala worked as hard as she could to provide but times were hard and resources limited. They got by, but maybe not by much, and still she opened her doors to those in need.
“My mother understood the importance of taking care of people, especially when they are exposed to hurt or pain,” Harris recently told Rolling Stone’s Alex Morris. “And I was raised to feel that same way.” (It’s unimaginable to think of slumlord Fred Trump offering any such lessons to his son Donald.) Harris described the sort of neighborhood with open doors and parents working together that is ingrained in our collective imaginations of what this country is supposed to be all about. “I grew up in a community where people took care of each other,” Harris told us.
In telling her personal story, Kamala Harris has once again taken the narrative of the American Dream and made it that of the Democratic Party. She’s made it OK to be a proud Democrat again, or at least more acceptable in polite rooms. For all Joe Biden’s legislative accomplishments, he’d lost the confidence of most people. He was, as the first presidential debate showed, demonstrably too old for the job. His performance had so shaken the party that one operative told me that during the first presidential debate he felt like he was “watching someone die.”
At the DNC, Harris spoke forcefully. She wrapped herself in the flag, spoke of economic opportunity, and a strong national defense. She talked of prosecuting criminals and the threat of Iran. She was persuading gettable voters and trying to win an election, like a normal politician. Social issues aside, if you didn’t know better, this could have been a speech from a Republican National Convention of, say, any time before 2016.
The stark contrast with Donald Trump and his bizarre RNC was devastatingly effective. Harris laid out a vision of the country that is almost comforting in its familiarity and unapologetically patriotic. She loves this country and wants to make it better. Trump’s apocalyptic fever dreams look like just that — twisted fantasies stirred up in Breitbart keggers or Steven Miller’s basement dungeon.
Trump has a narrative of failure, fear, and carnage. He wants to deport millions. Abandon allies. Start trade wars. The country he describes, from the safety of his gated and gilded palace, is not recognizable or even close to reality. We have all kinds of threats, problems, and struggles, no doubt, but his scenarios are the paranoid delusions of a nativist and narcissistic mind. He ignores the climate crisis and scapegoats the most marginalized. After four years in office, his legislative accomplishments amount to a massive tax cut for the very wealthy and little else.
An immigrant supplicant like Amerigo Bonasera would likely never get past the front gate at Mar-a-Lago, nor would he ever seek justice for his daughter from a man who has openly boasted about molesting women and been a found liable by a jury of sexual abuse. But if Amerigo could find his way to Harris, he’d find a sympathetic and a righteous ear bent on finding justice within the law.
Whatever happens in this election, Kamala Harris made clear she believes in America too.
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