Here's A Song For Kamala Harris Because Wow, Is That Election Happening
An indie pop song for that one POTUS candidate who enjoys music.
Here’s a song from our indie pop group 12 Valentines, drawing from the text of Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention 2024.
Here’s an extended version of the song which pivots from the first section into a breakup song.
The parallel of the 2017-2020 presidency to a broken relationship may be dubious, trite, or ill-chosen — the breakup song model makes sense, in my head, as a symbol of delusional action with good and ill intentions, from both/all perspectives in the dissolved relationship. The POTUS election is a ritual we keep returning to, as part of the civic experience of living in the U.S.A., even when the process repeatedly may seem not to nourish or improve us, and fails in a recognizable recurring way, as with a drawn-out doomed romance.
Kamala Harris is pretty well-established as a musically-inclined person. She played French horn in the high school marching band! She likes Stevie Wonder, Prince, George Gershwin. For “November Stanza” I borrowed a bit of a progression from “Summertime.”
It happens that I really like the idea of Kamala Harris becoming president. It’s complex and it’s not. The other guy is Donald Trump.
It’s really important that Trump doesn’t become the U.S. President again. The racism will be rampant and terrible. Plus, have you seen him speak in public lately? His pretty weak mental state has gone to, well, gone.
Election Day U.S.A. is in less than two weeks, so early voting is underway in lots of places. Voting is a cool concept, I reckon. Even though the electoral college makes our presidential election kind of a scam of randomness, there are lots of local elections which aren’t subject to that guff and involve issues which probably affect every individual’s daily life in a more crucial way than does the POTUS. Voting on any of those local issues is a way better idea than voting for Trump.
The honorable thing to say is something like “vote, because our best try at representative democracy is better than no try.” But seriously, for those who plan to vote for Donny, skip it. It’s fine if you don’t vote for president. Doesn’t mean you have to vote for the Democrats. Vote for somebody else, or on some local issue that really matters. Or don’t vote. Same as it was in 2016 and 2020, voting for Trump is a terrible idea.
And, okay, it’s not cool to say so, it’s not righteous or nice, obviously many people voted for Trump and plan to do so again.
But still, voting for Trump is a a vote for racism, mediocrity, dumbass dictatorial delusion. He’s a really terrible person.
My understanding is that the peaceful transfer of power is an awesome feature of the U.S.A., and a lot of countries have rituals for transferring power that are not great at all.
And we need to have a woman president one of these days, to catch up. Might as well start now!
Add 12 Valentines on Spotify here, or peruse our singles and preorder our debut album at Bandcamp. Did you hear that concept albums are a big thing again?