Are Democrats ready to defend Kamala Harris from the misogyny Geraldine Ferraro faced?

The polit­i­cal rise of Kamala Har­ris in Cal­i­for­nia was fueled in part by one Don­ald Trump, who gave a total of $6,000 in 2011 and 2013 to her cam­paigns for state attor­ney gen­er­al, with first daugh­ter Ivan­ka Trump chip­ping in $2,000.

Har­ris will, how­ev­er, be sub­ject to unre­lent­ing, and like­ly shift­ing, attacks from Trump, his min­ions and FNC pun­dits over the next eighty-three days. They will des­per­ate­ly seek a line of assault that “sticks” against the Cal­i­for­nia senator.

“Any­one who wants to detract her based on any­thing is going to face a wall of Black women like they’ve nev­er seen,” MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid hap­pi­ly pre­dict­ed min­utes after Joe Biden select­ed his run­ning mate.

Hope the pre­dic­tion holds. Some­thing very dif­fer­ent hap­pened in 1984.

The day and night Geral­dine Fer­raro hit Seat­tle was a joy­ous expe­ri­ence in our house­hold. I helped cov­er a gigan­tic Fer­raro ral­ly at the Pike Place Market.

More than 8,000 peo­ple turned out on a sun-splashed day.

My part­ner Mick­ie was able to afford the evening’s Fer­raro fundrais­er, and came back pumped at the brassy, enthu­si­as­tic can­di­date. She regaled Jen­nifer, our black stan­dard poo­dle, far into the night with descrip­tions of the event.

The enthu­si­asm quick­ly turned to anger.

Fer­raro was described as “aggres­sive” for her assertive style. The Wash­ing­ton, D.C., press corps were soon in a feed­ing fren­zy over her husband’s busi­ness deal­ings. Fer­raro stood and took it in a long, awful news conference.

Vice Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush, the morn­ing after his TV debate with Fer­raro, told a con­struc­tion union leader: “We kicked a lit­tle ass last night.” Bar­bara Bush described Fer­raro with the words: “I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”

The tough­ness of Ger­ry Fer­raro was turned against her. At our home in Madrona, Mick­ie seethed that nobody was com­ing for­ward to her defense.

Sen­a­tor Har­ris will face fire on sim­i­lar grounds.

She is, by train­ing, a pros­e­cu­tor. While most mem­bers of Con­gress deliv­er ram­bling mini speech­es at hear­ings, and read ques­tions writ­ten by staff, Har­ris has been the inter­roga­tor, the Sen­a­tor who fol­lows up. It has been that way in the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, and lat­er in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.

The rap is com­ing together.

Har­ris is “aggres­sive” and per­haps “too ambi­tious.” Scoff if you wish, but it’s a line long used against women seek­ing high­er office. It was appar­ent­ly a wor­ry of ex-Sen­a­tor Chris Dodd, who helped Biden with his vet­ting efforts.

Cable tele­vi­sion pro­grams, ear­li­er today, were filled with sto­ries about women’s groups prepar­ing to fire back at the “ambi­tious” charge.

Wise to note, far more pro­grams are host­ed by women (like MSNBC’s Joy Reid) than was the case thir­ty-six years ago, when cable was a young medium.

But don’t lean back and expect fem­i­nist groups, or Har­ris Howard Uni­ver­si­ty soror­i­ty sis­ters from Alpha Kap­pa Alpha, to car­ry the freight. The defense of a no-non­sense woman, on the nation­al stage, must be car­ried out on the local level.

How to go about this?

Steel your­self and call in to chal­lenge a right-wing radio host who is den­i­grat­ing Har­ris. The obvi­ous ques­tions: Do you want a dumb vice pres­i­dent? Do you want some­body not smart enough to smoke out an over­ly opti­mistic aide or duplic­i­tous Cab­i­net sec­re­tary? Think of recent dis­as­ters that have befall­en the coun­try when, say, Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney was run­ning unchecked.

Tack­le what is defined as “loy­al­ty.” “I am for Pres­i­dent Rea­gan – blind­ly,” V.P. George H.W. Bush once exclaimed. The feal­ty of Mike Pence, par­tic­u­lar­ly as Trump has spewed inac­cu­ra­cies on the coro­n­avirus, is a bench­mark in the march of folly.

Wouldn’t it be bet­ter to have a Vice Pres­i­dent who is briefed? Who cuts to the quick when Biden has a ten­den­cy to ramble?

(Fresh­man Sen­a­tor Barack Oba­ma, hear­ing Biden run on at a 2005 Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee hear­ing, passed a note telling an aide, “Shoot me!”)

Amer­i­ca is neck deep in the big muddy.

It will take an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly cool-head­ed, com­pe­tent Biden admin­is­tra­tion to find a way out. What Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion has not left the coun­try in a morass?

It’s won­der­ful to have an African Amer­i­can (and South Asian Amer­i­can) woman on the tick­et. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et looks like America.

But the abil­i­ty to gov­ern is the acid test of pol­i­tics, the acid final test (words bor­rowed from Adlai Steven­son). Kamala Har­ris brings the abil­i­ty to mas­ter what­ev­er port­fo­lio she is giv­en. She can find her bear­ings in a New York minute.

Amer­i­ca needs such a part­ner in a new president.

Kamala Har­ris will be attacked for her com­pe­tence. Have her back over the next eighty-plus days. No nas­ti­ness should be allowed to detract from those abil­i­ties rec­og­nized by Don­ald and Ivan­ka Trump as polit­i­cal donors in the last decade.