All Democrats Must Protect Kamala Harris – Right Now!

In an OpEd piece in the New York Times, James M. Blow raised a terrifying specter when he chose the headline “Democrats, All of Them, Must Protect Harris”.

Except he neglected to mention the obvious: Kamala Harris not only faces vitriolic attacks by racists and misogynists on the right. She also faces millions of crazed Trumpistas armed to the teeth and many of them perfectly willing to wield their weapons to counter the threat of her stealing the election from their beloved orange-haired candidate who, in their eyes, has been sent by God to save the country expressly from evil Democrats like her.

All they need is a clear field of fire.

The U.S. Secret Service, which is tasked with keeping candidates alive, has recently demonstrated their incompetence when they allowed a shooter armed with an AR-15 to climb onto a rooftop 500 yards from Donald Trump and let off a series of shots that somehow missed but killed an innocent bystander. The series of wrong calls and inept decisions has been amply documented over the past few days and has led to the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service director. The service is in chaos, and at this minute, the clear and present danger of multiple assassination attempts is manifest.

So what the country needs right now is a Plan B, a backup in case Harris dies on the campaign trail, taken out by a psychopath wearing a MAGA hat.

America has more firearms than citizens, and although I lack any reliable statistics, I strongly assume that the majority of these weapons are in the hands of the radical right from whom Trump draws his support.

In what is becoming a now all-too-familiar trend, former President Donald Trump’s far-right supporters have threatened civil war after news broke that the former president had been indicted on multiple counts by a court in New York City.

“We need to start killing these traitorous fuckstains,” wrote one Trump supporter on The Donald, a rabidly pro-Trump message board that played a key role in planning the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Another user added: “It’s not gonna stop until bodies start stacking up. We are not civilly represented anymore, and they’ll come for us next. Some of us, they already have.”

Yet Democrats blithely assume that this election will be like every other. It won’t be!

We must seriously beef up security for all candidates, but for Harris especially. Of course, this will directly contradict her wish to get out and press the flesh of as many voters as possible, and this will set up a conflict of interest with her bodyguards. They must prevail, realizing that getting their protégé across the finish line and into the White House alive is their absolute priority.

But what will voter think of a woman canvassing from behind a wall of human flesh in black uniforms and bullet-proof vests?

Given America’s pathological gun obsession, no one can tell where we will end up on November 6 and beyond. As we have seen, all it takes is a nut with an AR-15 to change the course of history. Yes, we have improved the way we protect our leaders since the guard at the door to Lincoln’s balcony at Ford Theater fell asleep on the job.

But violence is an ingrained part of the American political process, and to close one’s eyes to this fact would be to allow the way we chose our presidents to be taken hostage.

I have no alternative solution, unless we want to turn the entire election over to the TV cameras and in effect take the trend towards online democracy to the next logical step, with politicians operating from well-fortified studios. But if, as Charles M. Blow writes, all Democrats must protect Harris, then we should start taking his warning literally.