Yesterday, Kamala Harris’ official Bluesky account posted a video promoting her new book, and a lot of people had feelings about it. I was one of those people, and I expressed my feelings as fully as I could manage given the asinine character limit. This morning I woke up to several notifications, largely taking issue with my comment. Two I blocked because they were nothing but dismissive image memes. A third was angry, A fourth was sarcastic. I responded to the latter two; one blocked me immediately, the other didn’t respond. All were about race.

So since I’m new here, it’s probably a good idea to lay some context: I am a white man. I recognize that this puts me at two major axes of privilege. I know that there will always be nuance to a white man criticizing a black woman, and it’s possible I didn’t handle it as well as I should; I’m still not sure how I could have said it better, but let’s accept that there were possibly better ways to do it.

Saying nothing is also an option; it’s one I choose fairly often, to be honest, and it’s often the wisest course. But let me be plain: A voter being told that they are not allowed to criticize a politician, an elected official, someone they voted for, because that politician is a black woman is a dangerous precedent to follow. We should always be allowed to criticize the public actions, or inactions, of those we collectively choose to lead us.

Because Kamala Harris is not just a black woman. Those are only two axes of privilege out of the many that apply. She’s also educated, well-known, respected and probably at least moderately wealthy. To be it plainly, she has power. She has power given to her by the people that elected her and supported her through her growing career, and by the people who voted for her for President, even though she lost. She was granted that power because she made promises. Asking her to keep those promises is not unreasonable, and it certainly isn’t equivalent to “demanding that she do my will” or “get in the kitchen”.

I want her in the White House. Still. I believe she was triply robbed: one by Biden’s late withdrawal of his candidacy, leaving her to attempt a miracle in an unprecedentedly short amount of time; two by the (almost certainly largely white and male) liberals and democrats who didn’t show up to the polls; three because the evidence is fairly strong that this election, unlike the 2020 election, was deliberately and illegally manipulated to give Trump wins he didn’t actually get.

Many people on the left refused to vote for Kamala, or held their nose as they voted for her, because of some issue or another. I actually voted for her with pride and enthusiasm. It’s not that I think the Israeli-Palestine conflict is unimportant, or any of the other reasons I’ve seen people give for not supporting her. It’s that I believed in the promises she made; it’s that I believed that no matter how important you think Gaza is, she would be 1000% better on that issue than the alternative, as we have seen borne out these last 7 months. It’s that she inspired hope, and joy, something I’ve not seen a politician do in quite some time. I don’t think she would have been perfect, and I would have continued to criticize the decisions she made had she been elected as I am supposed to do as an American citizen.

She lost the election for whatever reason, but she did not lose her power; if her promises were conditional based on her winning, I am allowed to be disappointed by that.

Now, all of this happened before I saw her interview on Colbert, and these thoughts have been rattling around in my head all day. After the Colbert interview… I get it. Stepping back to take a breath, to gauge the people and to avoid having all of those interactions be transactional to win a vote is an extremely reasonable stance. Disillusion with the systems that are failing is rational. Her statement that she’s not out of the fight gives me hope. But it also gives me fear; How long is this going to take? As she also said, the capitulation to all of this horror is unexpected and concerning. We need a leader, something the left has lacked for… approximately 8, 9 years now. Biden wasn’t it. He did a good enough job, but he didn’t inspire. He was merely an acceptable alternative to Trump. Kamala is the only person I see who could maybe have stepped up and done it. Maybe AOC will be the one, or Jasmine Crockett; time will tell, but right now they’re rallying people, but not yet leading the party. If Kamala is gonna come back swinging as hard as she did during her campaign, I will be here for it, full bore.

I just hope it’s not too late.