#999: In Sanskrit, "Kamala" (कमल) Means "Lotus"; In America, It Means "POTUS"

It’s simply amazing how much the world can change in a mere 168 hours (1 week). A week ago, Trump was riding high on the iconic moment when he rose bloodied and with a defiantly raised fist from an assassination attempt, pulling away in the polls. President Biden, meanwhile, was struggling to recover from his dire late June debate against the Republican nominee and an unconvincing performance in the days since. Then, on Sunday, July 21, President Biden’s press office sent out a brief message telling the world that he would be leaving the 2024 presidential race. In the note, which many of us received via email, he wrote, in part:

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.

Within a few more hours, he would publicly endorse Vice President Kamala Devi Harris for the Democratic nomination to face off against former POTUS Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The Vice President hit the ground running: by the next day, the Harris campaign had raised in excess of $50 million in smallish donations, and sent a massive steroidal infusion into the body politic. As of today the campaign is still in the deliriously happy “Honeymoon” stage, and has raised in excess of $200 million. (As an unexpected side benefit, viewership of the 2012-2019 cable TV show “Veep” has gone up more than 300 percent within a week.) For people all across the country, Vice President Harris’ entry into the race put smiles on faces, tears in eyes, and hope - until recently, a pretty rare commodity - into souls. Her polling numbers began creeping upward. At the same time, her entry into the race - along with an avalanche of endorsements - sent MAGA-world scurrying in anger, fear, and resentment, the resurrection of racist and birther memes, and above all, dire uncertainty. Suddenly, the campaign they were oh so comfortably running - the one against “Sleepy Joe” - had to be revamped; they would have to create a new game plan containing a new strategy, along with new lies and brand-new epithets.

Within the past 168 hours, Trump has called Vice President Harris “a bum”, “lazy,” and a “crazy liberal,” accused her of wanting to “defund the police,” claimed she was a “terrible prosecutor who never won a case,” and most recently, in a rally held in St. Cloud, MN, roared “she has no clue, she’s evil.” He told a rally in South Florida he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced her name, (he repeatedly proclaimed that there were “at least seven different ways” to say Kamala). Obviously, he was becoming even more unhinged than the norm; at a rally in Florida this past Friday night organized by the far-right Christian advocacy group Turning Point Action, Trump not only went personal against the Veep, but once again appeared to threaten American democracy:

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it anymore. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians,” he said at the event in West Palm Beach, not far from his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. Trump also promised to create an anti-Christian bias federal task force, as well as to defund schools "pushing critical race theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto the lives of our children." Madame would have called this “crapola.”

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post got into the anti-Harris attack by claiming that the V.P.’s step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, had personally raised more than $8 million for Hamas, and “does not consider herself to be Jewish.” A bit of research shows that Ella Emhoff did not raise $8 million to support Gaza. She did share a link to a fundraiser created by the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. That fundraiser has generated more than $8 million from hundreds of thousands of donors, including one donation from Ms. Emhoff herself. The Trump campaign has used this untruth - along with Harris’ public position vis-à-vis Israel’s response to the October 7th attack, to “prove” that the V.P. is an “anti-Zionist, anti-Semite.”

The same Republican sources have reported that Harris “refused to attend” Israeli P.M. Benyamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress. What they of course left out is that both President Biden and Vice President Harris had a private meeting with the Israeli P.M. As such, Trumpsters are doing everything in their power to wrest Jewish votes away from the Democrats. I for one (who, despite being both an ordained rabbi and a Hebrew-speaking practicing Jew) have been accused of being both an “anti-Semite” and “anti-Israel”) because I refuse to condemn those who cannot or will not approve of each and every pronouncement of the Netanyahu government. Likewise, Kamala Harris - like Joe Biden - is, and will long remain, a strong supporter of Israel . . . despite - like yours truly - not agreeing with Bibi Netanyahu or his war cabinet on everything they do.

Ed Luce, the observant and perspicacious US editor and columnist of the Financial Times notes the rapidity with which Kamala Harris’ “capture of the Democratic crown has changed the political weather. A funereal Democratic party has rediscovered its zest.” I for one applaud her for also bringing a sense of “fun” to an election campaign that felt, until 168 hours ago, like a “death march.” Can Kamala Harris and whoever she taps to be her running mate win in November? Without jettisoning our current and much-needed gush of giddiness, we must leave room for political reality. The Harris campaign has quickly outlined the content of their campaign strategy: the seasoned prosecutor versus the convicted felon; the youngish forward-looking progressive versus the oldest presidential candidate in American history who wants to eliminate virtually every bit of progress since the New Deal; a candidate with a full slate of issues and proposals versus one whose strategy is nothing more than the denigration of his opponent; a woman who wants to expand human rights versus a man who wants to make America a land of and for white Christian males.

Kamala Harris, Democrats, Independents and lovers of freedom and democracy everywhere face 100 days of the most serious political knife fight in all American history. MAGA-world knows and follows the famous line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: “There are no rules in a knife fight.” Want proof?

Already, we have seen Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter, which I abandoned the day he announced his purchase) break his own rules by retweeting a parody Kamala Harris campaign ad without labeling it as misleading. Segments of video in the altered content — such as Harris speaking to crowds, and general videos of her supporters — were used in a recent Harris campaign video on YouTube. Most notably, the altered content used a voiceover that sounds like the vice president, making it seem she is calling President Joe Biden senile and herself an incompetent presidential candidate. There has also been a carload of false claims about Vice President Harris ranging from her not being eligible to run for POTUS due to citizenship issues, to having an affair in the 1990s with the then-married Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown (he had been separated from his wife for nearly a decade before they saw one another) to her not really being Black. Each of these claims (and more) has been fact-checked; all have been found to be total fabrications.

And lest we forget, in the eyes of MAGA-world her biggest negative is SHE LAUGHS TOO MUCH! When, I ask you, was the last time we ever heard the Sir Donald of Queens laugh?

In Sanskrit, Kamala, a very popular Indian name, is the lotus flower. Despite their delicate nature, these resolute plants can survive being submerged under ice and can even bloom in extreme heat. Some lotus plants can live for nearly a century! They symbolize both rebirth, (due to its blooming pattern of opening with the rising of the sun and closing as night falls), and persistence (because they're most commonly found in swampy, difficult terrain and emerge from the dark, muddy water looking pristine and beautiful).

For the sake of our future as a freedom-loving democratic republic, let’s do everything in our power to ensure that 100 days from today, LOTUS will become POTUS.