In August 2020, Joe Biden hinted at selecting his running mate from a group of Black women. Jotaka Eaddy, a former NAACP member, was troubled by what she saw as biased treatment of the candidates by the media and political Establishment. Potential candidates included Stacey Abrams, Karen Bass, Susan Rice, Val Demings, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Kamala Harris. Eaddy reached out to Minyon Moore, a Democratic National Committee official and member of a group of Democratic strategists known as “the Colored Girls”. Moore suggested Eaddy mobilize other Black women to support and advocate for these candidates. This led to the creation of the Win With Black Women call, a weekly virtual gathering held on Sunday nights, attracting 150 to 1,000 participants and featuring prominent Black women such as Oprah Winfrey, Dawn Staley, and various Democratic Party candidates from the past four years. However, the arguments for the calls were partially based on Harris’s historical presence on the presidential ticket.
Therefore, on Sunday, July 21 of this year, when Biden unexpectedly declared he would step down and back Harris as his replacement, Eaddy recognized that the call that night could attract a large audience. She was initially accommodating up to 3,000 people, but found herself negotiating with Zoom executives to accommodate tens of thousands more trying to join. Zoom enabled 44,000 participants to join the event, with 30,000 individuals gaining access through a Clubhouse link and another 10,000 joining via a conference-call line. Win With Black Women aimed to raise $1 million within 100 days. Eaddy shared a fundraising link at 11:10 p.m., and by the end of the call at 1 a.m., it had raised $1.6 million, contributing to the total of $81 million raised by Harris on the first day, primarily from first-time, small donations. Before the day ended, Quentin James, Bakari Sellers, Khalil Thompson, and Michael Blake, who had been organizing Black men following Eaddy’s strategy in recent months, started planning for another call on Monday. This call attracted more than 53,000 participants who collectively raised $1.3 million. Two nights later, in collaboration with Eaddy, the white women’s “Answer the Call” event attracted 164,000 attendees and raised $8.5 million. The following week, with Eaddy’s guidance once more, 200,000 white men gathered and collected $4 million in a meeting that lasted over three hours. The event included appearances by both the Dude and Luke Skywalker. There would be Evangelicals for Harris and Dead Heads for Kamala; when I spoke to Eaddy in August, she told me about Realtors for Harris and Cooking for Kamala. “Swifties for Kamala had 34,000 people last night,” she stated. It was hectic, odd, and thrilling. Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state senator, was told by a consultant that the calls were cringe. However, McMorrow viewed this cringe as integral to the significance and excellence of the gatherings. “They are not affiliated with the campaign,” she stated. “It is random groups of people creating them; it gives a sense of authenticity. The recognition that there are others who share your unique perspectives is an invaluable catalyst for forming alliances.” A male friend texted her during the white-women call on which she spoke: “‘You’re telling me that 150,000 white women are voluntarily on a Zoom call, for four hours, two years after COVID? Trump is fucked.’”
The Beltway has simmered this summer with the spicy tale of Nancy Pelosi as party puppeteer, deploying the sheer force of her terrifying will to knock a stubborn sitting president off a ticket and steer her party into a new and exuberant future. However, that story remains incomplete.
Pelosi could have used her significant influence to push Biden aside. However, it was not her who propelled Kamala Harris’s remarkable ascent as the Democratic nominee. Swift endorsements were made by Biden and prominent party members such as the Clintons and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And Harris wasted no time in forming a coalition, making approximately one hundred calls to legislators, governors, and labor and civil rights leaders within the initial hours of her potential campaign. However, the party members did not fully understand the level of public backing for a Harris presidency until their conversation with the Black women. At this pivotal moment, when the party could have splintered, the Black women’s sense of urgency, determination, and extensive fundraising efforts solidified Harris as the inevitable choice for the crown. It had been nearly six decades since a Democratic president voluntarily stepped down, making the party’s success in convincing Biden to do so truly remarkable. However, what followed was equally remarkable. Hundreds of thousands of everyday individuals engaged in intensive electoral activities, including organizing, fundraising, and rallying. This level of involvement has not been witnessed in American politics since at least 2008. In the tumultuous days of July, when the quest was to find a coherent alternative to Biden, even supporters of Harris likely anticipated her to campaign as a standard Democrat — and were content with that! The idea of massive rallies filled with enthusiastic supporters or a party exuding joy seemed unthinkable when facing the possibility of Trump returning to power. And this summer’s shocking turn of events was orchestrated not by a consultant or strategic mastermind, but by dedicated Democrats on the ground. It seems they recognized the lack of a solid plan from leadership to save them, prompting them to take matters into their own hands.
