By Jared Mondschein*
After three weeks of pained debates in the media and within the Biden administration itself, the 61% of Americans who wanted Joe Biden to step aside have had their wish granted.
Only a few minutes after announcing he would no longer be seeking re-election, Biden made clear he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, while major Democratic Party stalwarts – including the Congressional Black Caucus as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, though notably not Barack Obama – quickly followed suit.
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison has promised a “transparent and orderly process” to select Biden’s successor, though further details have yet to be made available.
Regardless, the significant endorsements for Harris’ candidacy – combined with the Democratic fear of weakening a presumed nominee in the face of what they deem to be an existential threat in Donald Trump’s candidacy – makes Harris the most likely to be the next presidential nominee.
On behalf of the American people, I thank Joe Biden for his extraordinary leadership as President of the United States and for his decades of service to our country.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 21, 2024
I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.
Who is Kamala Harris?
Harris’ ascent from the first Black woman and Asian American to be vice president to now likely to be the first to lead a major party ticket is historic, to say the least.
The daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, Harris began her career as a prosecutor, spending almost three decades in law enforcement. She started as a local prosecutor, then became district attorney of San Francisco before being elected California attorney-general in 2011. Her 2003 district attorney race saw her win more votes than any other candidate running for a city-wide office that year in her defeat of a two-term incumbent.
Her first run for statewide office in 2010 was not called until weeks after election day, and Harris won by less than a percentage point (but was against a favourite).
To this day, Harris has never lost a general election, including her Senate run in 2017. Only the second ever Black woman elected to the US Senate, Harris won her seat under unique circumstances: for the first time since California began voting directly for seats in 1914, no Republican placed in the state’s electoral runoff for the Senate seat. In other words, Harris only had to defeat another Democratic candidate to win.
A Senate stint and her first electoral loss
Once in the Senate, Harris was appointed to the homeland security and intelligence committees and later the Senate Judiciary Committee, which gave her a platform to grill Trump’s judicial nominees. Whether it be questioning then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on whether the government had ever made laws related to the male body, or the Mueller investigation’s of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia, Harris became known for using her prosecutorial experience to advance Democratic priorities.
Yet as much as some of her Senate performances became well-known among political pundits, her most well-known moment in the national spotlight was before being elected vice president. And it was at Biden’s expense during her campaign to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.
She had already caught the country’s attention with a heavily publicised launch in Oakland, California – this was near where she was born, her parents had worked and she had worked as a district attorney. But at the first Democratic Party debate, Harris directly targeted the then-former vice president, criticising Biden for positive comments he had made about pro-segregation politicians with whom he had served in his 36 years in the US Senate.
While Biden had long postured that his willingness to work with diverse politicians was a political and legislative strength, Harris countered that;
You also worked with them to oppose bussing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day. And that little girl was me.
As compelling as her launch and debate performance was, Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was widely reported to be beset with disorganisation and the absence of compelling policy proposals. Sliding polls and funding numbers led to her suspending her campaign months before the Iowa caucuses, and long before a single vote was cast in Democratic primaries.
Nonetheless, her viral debate performance established her as a formidable politician and debate opponent – such skills were particularly well-reviewed when she deployed them against then vice president Mike Pence in their 2020 debate.
Biden’s vice president
While Harris vacated her Californian senate seat after assuming vice presidential duties in 2021, a Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans saw Harris spend much of her first two years in office back with her Senate colleagues as a decisive tiebreaker on key legislation supported by the Biden-Harris administration.
But outside of her senatorial duties, Biden decided to give Harris a few key portfolios to carry out. This most notably included immigration – a particularly challenging issue that remains a key electoral weakness for Democratic candidates across the country. That the issue remains challenging is telling of Harris’ performance. She has been widely criticised for her ineffective efforts trying to address the “root causes” of the record-breaking immigration influx into the United States.
Harris has found more success in championing other political causes, most notably in relation to abortion. An issue that Biden, a practising Catholic, notoriously felt uncomfortable with, Harris in many ways led the administration’s efforts on the topic after the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v Wade ruling that had legalised abortion for decades beforehand.
NEW: Small-dollar donors raise over $27.5 million on ActBlue in the first 5 hours of Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign. Grassroots supporters are energized and excited to support her as the Democratic nominee.
— ActBlue (@actblue) July 21, 2024
Lingering concerns
The Democratic embrace of the vice president has not come without concern.
After his first nine months in office – and most notably, the controversial US pullout from Afghanistan in September 2021 – Biden’s approval ratings never eclipsed 45%. While Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections fared far better than predicted and continued to outperform Republicans in special elections around the country, Biden’s approval rating has generally only trended in one direction. This was particularly so after his June 27 debate performance.
As low as Biden’s ratings sank in the three and a half years prior to June 27, Harris’ approval ratings consistently fared worse, making her one of the least popular vice presidents in US history. Over the past year alone, her approval rating has fallen from an average of around 41% in July 2023 to around 38% in June and July 2024.
Yet polling released in July 2024 indicated, for the first time, that she eclipsed Biden (now at 38%) in approval ratings. Most importantly for Democrats, polling in key swing states also indicated she would likely fare significantly better at the top of the Democratic ticket than Biden against Trump. In other words, Harris is the heir apparent to Biden not because she started looking better, but because Biden kept looking worse.
Kamala Harris will be the next President of the United States. I pledge my full support to ensure her victory in November.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 22, 2024
Now more than ever, it is crucial that our party and country swiftly unite to defeat Donald Trump and the threat to American democracy.
Let’s get to work.
The challenging road ahead
On many fronts, the road ahead for Harris remains uncertain. While the office of the vice president is often perceived as a stepping stone to the presidency, Biden, George H.W. Bush, and Richard Nixon are the only former vice presidents to have successfully won office through an election in nearly a century and a half. A total of 17 vice presidents have sought the office but only five have succeeded.
Harris will soon name her own vice presidential running mate – widely anticipated to be a moderate male figure who will be used to reassure voters concerned that she is more progressive than Biden. The effort to reassure sceptical conservative voters will also see her likely regularly referring to her many years as a “top cop” should she end up winning the Democratic nomination.
While Harris does not have an official lock on the nomination, her hours-old campaign will certainly make it look like she does. Similar to how the now-suspended Biden campaign fought off the prospect of intra-party challengers in the 2024 Democratic primaries, the Harris campaign will portray Democratic resistance to her as not only futile but also unnecessarily damaging to the candidate ahead of the general election against Trump.
Should she win the Democratic nomination, we can expect Harris to make a forceful counterargument to a Trump campaign that is so confident in its prospects in November that it named a running mate whom polling found is unlikely to boost Trump’s electoral prospects. Such forceful counterarguments were already on display in her media and campaign appearances in the aftermath of Biden’s lacklustre debate performance, in which she passionately defended the administration’s record while also highlighting the threats she deems a second Trump administration poses.
Given that Harris’ first comments to the nation after being endorsed by Biden saw her pledging to “unite the Democratic Party — and unite our nation — to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda”, we can expect the 2024 race will continue to be one defined by negative partisanship. With the vice president doing only marginally better than Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump, Harris has a lot to do in a exceptionally short amount of time.
As a senator prosecuting political opponents, a presidential aspirant questioning Biden’s fitness for office, and a vice president rallying voters on abortion rights, Harris has clearly performed well in the past. At this point, she will have to do far more and far better than ever.
*Jared Mondschein, Director of Research, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
81 Comments
Unfailingly being extremely poorly rated by the electorate is extremely bad baggage and it is doubtful that image and persona can be sufficiently improved. As well the history of her poor performance in the run up to for the 2020 nomination does not inspire confidence and a reasonably well deserved terrible reputation over immigration, a very strong (build a wall) plank for Trump will be food for the fare once the Republican dirt machine gets rolling. Her big chance though will be the debates and if she is composed and accurate she has the acumen to outclass Trump provided the moderators are fair and impartial. Might then do enough for the Dems to hold their Senate majority and possibly win back Congress. That would then be something of a rake handle through the spokes of Trump’s presidency.
Suggests he's scared of her and therefore bluffing?
I think her problem is Woke word-saladry. If she got concise, accurate and logical (none of which I've seen) she'd wipe Trump off the map.
But more likely the Dems know they're beaten, and nobody want's to spend their Brownie-points this time around. And she's already in the ring...
She can be concise, accurate and logical. The only problem is that she sounds like she is talking to 5 year olds.
“So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.”
What is with Democrate women? One called half the country "deplorables" and this one treats the entire country like they are intellectually retarded.
- Sent 1500+ people to jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.
- Blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so
- Kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the State of California
- Fought to keep a cash bail system in place that discriminated against poor people
that was her job - to be a hard nosed prosecutor. all men are rapists, didn't you know. pro bono defense lawyer she ain't - still, she runs rings around Trump, however 50% of the population can't understand her when she speaks and prefer the dulcet tones of ignorance and prejudice.
Who is Harris?
A bumbling moron that will fail with the “passage of time….”
https://youtu.be/r1RmWKA5Vaw?si=jYubZe6T9N_8bp3V
And the Dems did it to themselves, can’t run anyone else thanks to their moronic identity garbage, otherwise it’s rAcIST.
Hilarious well deserved position they’ve put themselves in.
There was a concerted effort to 'diss', orchestrated out of Nact. The timing, and the source, weren't hard to ascertain.
Misogynistic? Maybe - more likely angled to tap into that vote (Nact supporters are a pretty narrow type).
But don't forget, she failed. As Harris will. The human species is in overshoot, traversing the Limits to Growth. The Overton Window (and I'm prepared to allow that she and Robertson may have known all that I know, but could only pull so hard on the rope) says they cannot do what is needed, in the time remaining. Nobody can. The System is a bus with no driver, indeed no driver's seat. And it's nearing the cliff.
If Ardern had come out and told the truth - maybe... And she was more likely to do so that this lot - who start by peddling a lie (that economic growth is a valid target). Labour at least tried 'wellbeing'- not a whole answer, but a step in the right direction. Would it have worked? Probably not. Too many folk kept in the dark by the MSM. Fed the same Bull---t.
Roll on a leader - of any sex - who can tell it like it is; put us on a war footing, save what we can, discard the rest. All this attempting to solve siloes (Reti today is typical, Gluckman ditto) on an 'all else being equal' basis, is doomed to fail. And as far as I've heard, that's Harris; we can magically eliminate poverty (for an unspecified number) while 'saving the planet'. Same with J.A.
Misogyny is the least of our worries....
You raise some good points that I agree with.
One common pattern that has emerged is the tendency for smear campaigns to tap into existing societal biases and divisions.
Attacks on female politicians, for example, often leverage misogynistic tropes and stereotypes, while campaigns against racial/ethnic minority candidates may stoke xenophobia and racism.
Understanding these underlying social dynamics is crucial to recognizing and countering these tactics.
Another dynamic is the role of media ecosystems in amplifying and legitimizing smear narratives. When mainstream outlets uncritically report on or validate dubious claims, it can lend them a veneer of credibility, even if the allegations are unfounded.
Politically-motivated disinformation campaigns have also become an increasingly common tactic, enabled by the speed and reach of modern digital communication.
Also foreign actors or domestic political ffactions that function under the umbrella and guise of so called "news" have leveraged social media and other online tools to sow discord and undermine democratic processes.
She was born in America, from parents that were not American citizens. There are some constitutional issues involved here, as the US constitution does state that only "natural borne citizens" can be president (I recommend reading the US constitution where this is referenced so as to gain full context). Anchor babies should not be eligible for presidency if one reads carefully.
This is an interesting quirk that has been rather ignored of late. As the political party that nominates the candidate also certifies that the candidate meets this requirement, it is an easy constitutional requirement to get around if the party supports your bid to become president.
I'm not a right-wing mysogenistic racist and I think she has the intellectual horse power of a Feijoa. I can see it right now, if anyone challenges her on anything from her upbringing through to policy, they are going to be called a "right-wing mysogenistic racist"
The uncertain usually have more inclination, find it easier to vote for what they don’t like. Like it or not Trump still got a hell of a lot of votes in 2020. Those voters most likely have not changed their mind but the Democrats have demonstrated enough confusion and vacillations to turn off voters that may have swung the Democrat way last time.
I struggle with the "black" description. Her heritage is Indian (dot, not feather) and American. I find it curious that "black" is how she is described. Nobody describes Gandhi as being "black", it is curious that the appellation is now commonly used to describe Kamala Harris.
Then again, her start in politics via the California political power broker Willie Brown is rather well known. Well, at least to me as I lived in California way back then.
She has one grandparent that can trace a lineage to Africa. The rest of her grandparents cannot. Her primary lineage is Indian, as her mother is Indian, and her father has significant Indian lineage. Then again, in current times, it is identity politics that prevails, especially in current MSM.
The current woke paradigm has it that if she identifies as "black", then she is indeed "black". I struggle with this concept myself, especially when self-selecting for convenience.
I am quite impressed with her parents credentials. A high achieving family. Her credentials are somewhat more nuanced.
Curious as to where you are getting this information about her father? From what I read, he - and both of his parents - are Afro-Jamaicans. In any case, it seems a bit odd to suggest that the only reason a person with (at least one) black grandparent might describe themselves as Black and Asian American is something to do with wokeness and identity politics. Someone with that ancestry would have been identified (by others, and likely to their detriment) as black in America long before 'wokeness' and 'identity politics' came along. So it seems a bit strange to think there is some kind of problem with Harris calling herself black, which is what you seem to be implying...
It wasn't very hard: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/girl-senator-harris-vice-president-bide…
Do you think it's a problem that she calls herself black? Or that other people describe her as black?
The US specialises in fear porn.
Has done for a very long time.
Bernays has a lot to answer for
But it's BOTH echelons - the established Elite, and the maverick Elite. Not to be confused with the political parties they have infiltrated to the point they control them. As we have seen with out own current Government - bought and paid.
You think the decades of forced apartheid and now genocide in Gaza, sanctified by the US, is OK?
Or are you one of those who lie to themselves via truncated calendars (starting the clock at a tat rather than a tit) because it suits your narrative?
Or what the US did to Guatemala in the Nixon era (trumped-up reds-under-the-beds excuse to undermine) or maybe murdering Allende?
The US has been the biggest thug on the planet, ever since WW2. That we have benefited, and therefore like to avoid the inconvenient, is a given. That we point at others as being 'worse', is predictable. But wrong.
Exactly how is he a danger to anyone? I keep hearing he's a "threat to democracy" which is just propaganda up there with "safe and effective" and "warm and dry" (ie. if you repeat it enough times, in enough places, everyone will assume its a general truth instead of a lie) Last I checked, Trump was President for 4 years and America is still a democracy. So is most of the rest of the world. He did nothing to nobody. People can now see through lies like this, which is why he is leading in the polls. Trump may be many inconvenient things, but a "threat to democracy" or "a danger to us all" is not one of them.
I don't think it's just 'propaganda'. If you take for example the 'Stop the Steal' campaign and the Capitol Riots, those seem like two pretty good reasons to be concerned that Trump is a threat to democracy. I don't think it's crazy to think that (a) there was no good evidence that there was mass voter fraud, but (b) Trump was pushing that idea to serve his own agenda and (c) undermining confidence in elections in this way is bad for democracy. And it's also not crazy to think that Trump has at least some responsibility for the Capitol Riots, and that they were bad for democracy. Or do you think people who hold those views are just victims of propaganda?
Trump had nothing to do with the J6 riots. That was more propaganda and lies and part of the Lawfare that is being weaponised against Trump. As if (a) Trump organised that ragbag group of idiots to go to seize the capital or (b) that that ragbag group of idiots even intended to seize the capital when they got there. Who tries to mount an insurrection whilst unarmed, in America of all places? It was a protest that simply got out of control after security opened up the Capital and invited all of them inside.
As for the election fraud - it has been proven that there was widespread fraud, however what was not proven was whether it happened on a large enough scale to have affected the outcome of the election. As such, it was a valid question to ask. And as it couldnt be proven otherwise, everyone was forced to accept that the answer was no.
The only threat to democracy I see is the Democrat controlled states that are allowing non-Citizens and illegal immigrants to vote in the elections by not requiring voter ID and mail in ballots. So once again, there will be fraud, and once again, it will probably be impossible to prove that it occurred in sufficient numbers to fix the election result.
So, I didn't say that Trump 'organised' the J6 riots. There's a lot of space between 'organising' something and 'having some responsibility for.' (For example, you might think that there are things he could have easily said to stop something which, fairly predictably, got really out of hand.
As for it being 'proven' that there was widespread fraud, and it being a 'valid question to ask' and people 'accepting the answer was no' - well, those claims are the claims that look like propaganda to me! But I guess that's the issue isn't it - what you take as being good evidence to prove something, I think is propaganda, and (I'm assuming) vice versa. To me this seems like the real problem - it's really hard to get people to agree on a set of basic facts any more. But I guess that's part of the strategy - flood the zone with shit, and you make consensus about just about anything impossible.
Trump could have firmly pulled the horses off.
He chose not to, from a position of residual power. Remember this is narcissist devoid of empathy. His one saving grace is that he is not of the established neocon clique (Kagan/Nuland/etc.).
Which is why they have expended so much effort trying to put him out of action.
Except that he did. He told them all to go home. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-07/donald-trump-urges-us-capitol-pr…
And then all the social media platforms deleted his message.
He told them to go home - more than two hours after it started, while repeating the claims about fraud that fuelled the protest. And the social media platforms suspended his accounts after he repeated baseless claims of election fraud several times.
That's not according to me - that's according to the article you cited, which you seem to think exonerates him?
Dont say that he didnt say anything or try to stop it, when he did. Sure, he might have said other stuff, but that doesnt change the fact that he told the protestors to leave when he did. Then that message was deleted so that his opponents could claim that he didnt say or do anything to stop it. Which is now a lie accepted as "the truth" and repeated ad nauseum by ordinary people commenting in forums like this one.
Again. A lie. Timeline shows at 3.49pm "Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer issue a joint statement calling on Trump to demand that protesters leave the Capitol and its grounds immediately. (via the Wall Street Journal)". At 4.03pm Trump records his go home message, and at 4.17pm it was uploaded to YouTube. The National Guard was deployed to the Capitol at 5.40pm. The Capitol was cleared at 6.50pm - that's almost 3 hours after Trumps message.
It's interesting - you keep saying I'm lying, but what I think you are doing is misrepresenting what I say (whether deliberately or not, I don't know) then calling it a 'lie'. Then you post things which I think don't really support your version of events. But I think part of the problem is that we can disagree about facts and interpretations of facts until the cows come home.
Here is something we both seem to agree on - Trump told people to go home at sometime between 4:15 and 4:30 (I've read information that says it was a little later than you, which is why I am giving a window). Here's what I would like to ask you: I take it that you also agree that a lot of the violence happened well before that. Why do you think Trump didn't say something a lot earlier than that? The timeline you posted has Ivanka posting something at 3:19 I believe - so surely Trump himself must have known what was happening.
the first Black woman and Asian American
I've always wondered why someone having even a small %age of black blood, makes them automatically black, ahead of their other ancestry? Could the above sentence also read:
the first Asian woman and Black American ? Probably not, but why not ?
Does it not sound like that to you? If I hear that someone is the 'first (insert ethnicity/nationality) woman", I assume that means that there has already been a man of that ethnicity/nationality. For example, if someone said to me that Sally Ride was the first American woman in space, I would assume that some American men had already gone to space. Otherwise they would have just said that Sally Ride was the first American in space.
And if someone says to me 'So and so is the first Black American to do X,' I would assume they were the first Black American of any gender/sex/(whatever you want to call it) to do the thing.
Edit: sorry, I see the confusion. If we're talking about her being the vice president, she's both the first Asian American and first Black VP, so either way would do. But if we are talking about her (potentially) being president, I would definitely say she'll be the first Black woman and first Asian American President but not say she'll be the first Asian American woman and Black president, because to me that would imply that there hasn't already been a black president.
So apparently has several American presidents had Irish or Scottish ancestry, and thus could be classed as having a % of Celtic blood...
including:
- Andrew Jackson (7th president) - His parents were from Northern Ireland.
- James K. Polk (11th president) - His maternal grandfather was from Scotland.
- James Buchanan (15th president) - His father was from Northern Ireland.
- Chester A. Arthur (21st president) - His father was from Ireland.
- Grover Cleveland (22nd and 24th president) - His mother's family had Scottish roots.
- Theodore Roosevelt (26th president) - His mother's family had Scottish ancestry.
- Woodrow Wilson (28th president) - His mother's family were from Northern Ireland.
So in summary, presidents with verified Irish or Scottish ancestry include Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.
We must bring this to the attention of the media.
Race is not so much an issue as sex. Hilary lost the election because she though Trump could not win because of women voters. She forgot she could not win without men voters. The day I saw her onstage with all females, I knew she was in trouble.
Shouldn't matter , but in the USA , it very much does.
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