Kamala Harris, or the illusion of change

US Democrats surf a wave of catchphrases and consensus

The selection of Harris as presidential nominee has put a spring in the Democrats’ step and left her opponent Donald Trump flailing. But set aside the feelgood factor and it’s hard to say what she stands for.

In remarks to the Democratic convention back in August, former first lady Michelle Obama described ‘the anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day’. The crowd was ecstatic. But to some, this line came off as a terrible faux pas, even an insult: after all, the current president in Washington is a Democrat – Joe Biden, a lifelong partisan soldier who had made his own, less polished speech to the convention just the night before. If you were a loyal Democrat, your standing orders up until that moment were to think that the day was quite bright already; that what the Biden years represented was the zenith of political possibility.

But in another sense Michelle Obama was just telling it like it is. There was exhilaration and energy in the air in the convention centre in Chicago, it was everywhere and it was intoxicating to be there in the building with the suddenly hopeful Dems. A few weeks earlier, the approaching gathering had seemed like a pointless waste of time. Now the building was filled to capacity at prime time; even the bad seats were occupied and all around me as I sat there with my steno pad stood thousands of cheering, shrieking Democrats. It was starting to look like replacing Biden with his vice-president, Kamala Harris, was an all-time brilliant chess move.

Just a month before, these same Democrats had been watching their TVs in frustration as the hapless Joe Biden fell further and further behind Donald Trump. Yes, Donald Trump! That nightmare Republican, that villain of villains, combination of buffoon, criminal, plutocrat, fool and tyrant, was thrashing poor old Joe both on stage and in the polls.

And then everything was reversed. Now it was Trump who was spinning his wheels, gaping haplessly with no idea how to meet the political challenge. Now it was Kamala Harris who was moving to occupy the broad centre and taking the lead in the polls. It was the Democrats who were holding enormous rallies around the Midwest. And it was the Democratic Party that had on its side the glamour, energy, ebullience, momentum – even an air of youthfulness.

Harris’s economic programme is a hash of everything-for-everybody promises and statements of generic support for the achievements of Joe Biden. She’s against things that are bad and in favour of things that are good. Nothing is hard to figure out. It’s all going to be OK

Was it all just because the Dems had finally found someone who could beat Donald Trump? In the soaring enthusiasm of the convention centre I began to think that maybe there was more to it than that. As I watched the old party warhorses come out and make their trite and bellicose remarks, I thought to myself: we are finally done with this tiresome bunch, with these passionless leaders who got to run the party and country for so many years. Done with the obscure obsessions of the 1960s. With the older generation’s cringing fear of rightwing backlash. With their brilliant triangulations that turned out to be devastating own goals. With their admiration for banks and ‘financial innovation’. With their callous indifference to the fate of working people; their tender love notes to the ‘creative class’; their unwillingness to challenge Republicans directly on everything from war to welfare reform. Those Democrats blundered us through four decades. And now they are being ushered off the stage.

If it is true that spring is coming to the Democratic Party, these are the harbingers:

– Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor whom Kamala Harris chose as her running mate. An old-style populist Midwesterner, he embodies the combination of cultural averageness and workerist economic policies that has been absent from the Democratic Party for far too long.

– Union leaders. Many of them, delivering remarks from the stage in Chicago, most notably the fire-breathing Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers. At one point, there was even a brief but very welcome presentation about the hopeful original meaning of the word ‘populism’ (1).

– Optimism. Kamala Harris’s irrepressible cheerfulness. My serious friends dismiss this but I myself approve of it. I think it’s a tonic after all these years of pandemic, inflation and the social-media war of all against all.

On second thoughts, that’s not really much of a list. It is mainly a matter of appearances – just a slightly savvier approach to marketing. In reality, the Democrats will almost certainly remain Democrats, the corporatists will stay on top and continuity will reign as it always does. After all, how many times have Americans heard exciting tidings about a new generation in Democratic politics, full of youth and idealism and new ideas, that then turns out to be even worse than the old generation?

In the same Chicago auditorium where the Democrats anointed Harris, they had nominated Bill Clinton for the second time back in 1996. I was in the audience then too and watched as the Man from Hope, brimming with youth and idealism, promised the nation that he would build a ‘bridge to the 21st century’. The moment was electric; what a fantastic vision, full of futuristic promise. He was youthful and intelligent and optimistic, and he got himself reelected. And then, in his second term, Clinton went and built that bridge: trade agreements that deindustrialised huge parts of the country. A programme of Wall Street deregulation that made the global financial crisis inevitable. Thanks a lot, idealists.

Mainly a test of endurance

All four days of the Democratic Party’s 2024 convention were held in a basketball arena west of the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. Attending it might sound like fun but I assure you it was mainly a test of endurance. Food was expensive and bad. Seats were uncomfortable and hard to find. The Democrats established a confusing official hierarchy among attendees and then overlaid that with an even more confusing unofficial hierarchy – a ‘means-tested caste system’, as journalist David Sirota put it – the Dems’ philosophy of government translated into the very seating arrangements at their convention.

It was like living inside a never-ending TV commercial. Days would pass without anything spontaneous ever happening. There were no questions from the floor and no disagreements, even. Every sentence, every minute was scripted. The audience cheered on cue and chanted the same catchphrases again and again (‘We’re Not Going Back’ and ‘When We Fight, We Win’).

I suppose there is something quite remarkable about this. News stories published in the months before the convention warned that disagreements over Gaza and climate issues might make for nasty floor fights among the Democratic faithful. Then there was the candidate herself, who was chosen less than a month before the convention; every speech had to be rewritten with her as the focus, not Joe Biden. In the event, however, there were no traces of dissent, no problems with the presentations. The machinery functioned perfectly.

But to experience it as a spectator was to be overwhelmed by the flashing lights and the mind-numbing repetition. A long parade of minor-league politicians who marched across the stage and read their brief remarks off a teleprompter: a beauty contest in which it was impossible to keep the contestants straight. By Day 2, taking notes on what they had to say felt like a waste of good pencil lead.

What sticks in your mind after it’s over are the glitches in this slick programme made possible by the glitches in the Democratic Party’s own politics. At one point, for example, the popstar Pink came out and sang ‘What About Us?’, a poignant anthem about being betrayed by your leaders. ‘We are billions of beautiful hearts,’ went the words. And what is to become of us after we are sold out? ‘What about all the broken happy-ever-afters? / Oh, what about us? / What about all the plans that ended in disaster?’

As I listened to Pink’s sad, sad song, I actually started to think that the Democrats meant it; that they were about to have someone come out and acknowledge the party’s screw-ups over the years. But no. The instant Pink was done, the programming went to a video about Vice-President Harris’s commitment to a strong military and ‘global stability’, whatever that means. Seconds later, Arizona senator Mark Kelly spoke about his many combat missions and urged the audience of enraptured Dems to recommit to martial toughness. Minutes after that, former defence secretary Leon Panetta quoted Ronald Reagan and looked forward to keeping our military the ‘strongest in the world’. Later that evening, Harris herself admired them as the ‘most lethal fighting force in the world.’ May the endless wars roll on.

‘Democracy itself’ was the convention’s paramount theme. America’s way of life was said to be under threat from this monster Trump, the friend of tyrants and racists, the aspiring dictator who supposedly wishes to prosecute his rivals, suspend elections, censor the press and unleash violent mobs when things don’t go his way. (Actually, there’s some pretty convincing evidence for this last accusation.) ‘You’re not voting for a Democrat,’ is how one speaker put it; ‘you’re voting for democracy.’

But here’s the thing. Political conventions aren’t just places where you listen to speeches about defending democracy; conventions are democracy; they are where Americans go to debate the issues, to decide what their party stands for, to choose their leaders. Conventions are part of the democratic process. Democracy, you might say, begins at home. Or, rather, it used to.

Despite his infirmity, President Biden faced no serious challengers in the Democratic primaries this year. There were no primary debates and several of the contests were actually cancelled. Then, when his physical deterioration became impossible to deny, Biden withdrew from the race, handing his place to Vice-President Harris. Until then, Harris had not been a well-known figure nationally – she had dropped out of the 2020 Democratic contest before the first vote was cast – but Democratic Party officials came together around her in a matter of days, making her the party’s nominee well before the convention and closing off the nightmare possibility of something other than total unanimity in Chicago.

One of the recurring references at this precisely staged pageant was the historic heroism of Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist who challenged the official proceedings of the Democratic convention back in 1964. Needless to say, nothing like Hamer’s bold intervention happened this time around.

What we got instead was the elaborately choreographed spectacle that I am describing here. The actual business of political conventions – you know, the voting – was treated as a matter of levity, almost as a joke. A ‘celebratory roll call vote,’ they called it, in which delegates would perform a ritual nomination while a disc jockey on the main stage, in sunglasses and a huge hat, played favourite songs and shouted out his encouragement. (‘My name is DJ Cassidy and this is the Democratic roll call!’) Lights flashed from every seat. Delegates cheered. Dissent did not materialise. The convention was more like a parody of democracy than the thing itself.

The purpose of the Democratic convention was not to choose party leaders, but to allow the leaders of the Democratic Party to tell the world about themselves. This was a one-way conversation, from them to us, in which we paid attention and learned what they valued.

‘I vote because I’m American’

In performance terms, the best presentation at the DNC belonged to Oprah Winfrey, the beloved TV talk-show host who was thought, in her heyday, to embody the tastes and hopes of the American middle-mind. Winfrey described the election as a struggle to avoid being dragged backward in time (a reference to abortion rights, but also, she implied, to racial segregation in the South) and described liberal activists as ‘freedom fighters’. What was truly powerful about her talk was the way she laid claim to basic American values that the Republican Party has long assumed that it simply owned. Character. Optimism. ‘Decency and respect’. The Constitution. Voting, even, which Trump has hinted that he dislikes: Winfrey votes, she said, ‘because I’m an American, and that’s what Americans do.’

Kamala Harris herself started her presidential campaign as a mystery woman. Who was she? What did she stand for? The Biden agenda? Her own? Much of the convention was dedicated to descriptions of her as a person. How Kamala prayed for someone in their moment of sadness. How she phoned someone on their birthday and sang to them. How she once complimented someone, and did it exactly right. How, when she looks at you, she ‘truly sees you’. How she ‘can’t help herself from standing up for people and standing up for what she thinks is right’. And, of course, how she came from a sympathetic middle-class background (2).

Political conventions aren’t just places where you listen to speeches about defending democracy; conventions are democracy; they are where Americans go to debate the issues

Harris herself came before the convention on the final night, addressing an audience consumed by exaltation. She was disciplined, speaking for less than half as long as Trump had done the month before at his convention. She seemed serious and focused, her trademark laughter absent for the moment, her voice more like that of an emergency responder talking us calmly through a crisis.

And yet in her short presentation she covered an incredible amount of ground. She accused Trump of violating both democratic principles and the national interest, she outflanked the Republican on his right (stronger military, better border security, tougher on China) and then she proceeded to promise everything to everybody. For consumers, she would bring down prices. For startup business ventures, she would provide access to investment. Labour would come together with capital. Housing would become affordable. Also, she would crack down on gun violence, clean the air, resolve the Gaza war, get tough with Iran and stand up to ‘tyranny’ around the globe. By voting for her, she said, we would be embracing ‘the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American’.

Best president for organised labour

Making jokes at the Democrats’ promises is easy. But let us also remember this reality: the unglamorous Joe Biden has actually been the best president for organised labour in many decades. He caused enormous sums to be invested in infrastructure and in manufacturing. These things are true and we heard about them quite a bit at the convention. But one of the most ambitious and visionary things Biden did – enforcing the nation’s anti-monopoly laws for the first time since the early 1980s – was barely even mentioned. At the convention Biden’s Justice Department had just won a monumental antitrust suit against Google, the most consequential monopoly of them all, and it didn’t even come up.

What we did hear about in amazing abundance was the Democrats’ high regard for their own moral goodness. Democrat after Democrat assured us that they, like Kamala Harris, were people of extraordinary virtue. Their parents worked hard and had the right values. They themselves did the right thing in all situations; they kept their eyes on the prize; They won this honour and that. I could feel myself lose interest as each speaker started in on his or her resume of goodness.

Step outside the United Center and these spun-sugar laceworks of moral narcissism don’t last too long. Out in the Chicago air on Day 3 of the convention, a woman in a keffiyeh sat on the pavement with an oversized megaphone just behind the police barricade, reading what she claimed were the names of children killed in the Israeli attacks on Gaza. After every tenth name or so, she would insert, mechanically, an accusation: that the United States is responsible for their deaths. That the Democratic Party, specifically, is guilty. That these delegates have blood on their hands.

What does it feel like, I wondered as I made my way past the heckler, to absorb hours of sermonising in which you are called upon to admire your own moral goodness, and then to walk out the door and have the preaching turn on you so completely – to hear that you’re a devil, not an angel. Did it make the passing liberals think twice about what they had just heard? Did it complicate their understanding of their own goodness?

In her televised debate with Donald Trump two and a half weeks later, Harris repeatedly tricked him with provocative insults inviting him to waste his time on matters of pure vanity. She exaggerated Trump’s inheritance from his father and told how his fans are now ‘leaving his rallies out of exhaustion and boredom’. Trump fell for the ruse again and again. He is proud of his billions and his rallies – they are about him! – and he just had to reply at length. Harris laughed and grimaced for the spectators as Trump raged on, her expressions furnishing eloquent commentary as the Republican windbag vituperated fruitlessly on this and that.

Useful debate tricks

For the American commentator class, these moments of stage performance were what politics is all about, and one after another they celebrated Kamala Harris’s outmanoeuvring of Trump. But in fact the debate tricks Harris used were no more than that – tricks they teach in high school debate. They are useful for wasting an opponent’s time, yes, but the real purpose of a debate is something else: examining important public questions from all sides.

Where does Kamala Harris stand on the biggest of issues? Ever since she became the Democrats’ nominee, my leftwing friends have complained that she says little or nothing about the subjects that matter to them. Republicans have complained that she changes positions as is convenient, campaigning in 2019 as a leftwinger and in 2024 as a moderate.

The confusion is everywhere. Harris is boasting these days of receiving the endorsement of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, a man once regarded by Democrats as a kind of evil genius. The name Harris has chosen for her economic plan – ‘the opportunity economy’ – is remarkably similar to the name that Republicans Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich gave to their signature proposals a few decades ago: ‘the opportunity society’. Over Harris’s campaign hangs the distinctive scent of a rush job: a slapdash thing, a contrivance thrown together without thought or conviction.

In her debate with Donald Trump, there were only two subjects where Harris came alive and spoke powerfully to the point. One of those, of course, was the menace of Trump himself, who has been Subject Number One for the American punditburo for nine years now; Harris made the case against him with crushing brevity.

The other was abortion. On this, Harris showed passion, empathy, understanding, even some rhetorical brilliance. Two years ago, Supreme Court justices chosen by President Trump struck down America’s liberal abortion rules, and in many states today, Harris pointed out, ‘A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body next. That is immoral. And one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.’

By contrast, anything having to do with matters of ownership, distribution, trade or inflation – you know, the economy – seems to make Harris uncomfortable. The debate’s very first question was about inflation, and Harris dodged it by (among other things) insisting that she really loves small businesses – because when she was a child, her mom had a close friend who ran a small business!

My own suspicion is that she doesn’t really care about these things. Her economic programme, as outlined on her website, is a hash of everything-for-everybody promises and statements of generic support for the achievements of Joe Biden. She’s against things that are bad and in favour of things that are good. Nothing is hard to figure out. It’s all going to be OK.

There is an objective way of measuring a Democrat’s commitment to the politics of vapidity, and that is how much they talk about ‘innovation’. Barack Obama loved the word, as did both Clintons, and that is because ‘innovation’ permits one to smuggle in a bank-pleasing economic agenda under a concept that sounds progressive and even radical. After all, everyone in the commentary class loves ‘innovation’, and so under the protection of this magic word our leaders have cut taxes, cut taxes some more, deregulated Wall Street, done massive favours for Silicon Valley and written trade agreements that protected Big Pharma while exposing less favoured industries to ruinous competition.

Obsessed with innovation

Kamala Harris hasn’t yet had time to build up a record on ‘innovation’, mentioning it only once in her debate with Trump. Nevertheless, she is ‘obsessed’ with the subject, commerce secretary Gina Raimondo assures us (3), desiring desperately to encourage startups and small business and make ‘billionaires and big corporations pay more’ in taxes.

A more detailed account of what Harris’s innovation obsession might entail was published by the New York Times (3 August 2024); its author, the venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, assured us that Harris, thanks to her knowledge of Silicon Valley, is the true pro-business choice. The ‘populist’ Donald Trump, Hoffman wrote, threatened antitrust actions against Amazon when he was president; he criticised ‘iconic’ corporations and harmed business by starting trade wars. Under Biden’s presidency, by contrast, we have enjoyed a bull market on Wall Street and seen the enthusiasm of venture capitalists return. Other Biden efforts – notably, his vigorous antitrust enforcement – have supposedly been less positive for ‘innovators’, but Hoffman implied that these would diminish under an ‘innovation-friendly’ Harris administration.

To anticipate what Kamala Harris might do as president we must simply offer guesses, and here is mine: what was visionary and refreshing about the Biden administration will slowly disappear. With Trump permanently vanquished – it seems unlikely he will run again in 2028 – the pressure on Democrats to emphasise their populist tradition will lift. Biden’s neo-Rooseveltian initiatives on labour and antitrust will fade into memory as ‘innovation’ once again takes centre stage. We may look forward to robust defence spending, legislative favours for Silicon Valley, and a Democratic Party that is focused ever more closely on the tastes and views and righteousness of the highly educated.

I hope that’s not what happens, but I’ve learned from previous Democratic efforts not to expect too much. At least it will be the end of the Trump era. And maybe that’s enough.

(1) See Thomas Frank, The People, No: a Brief History of Anti-Populism, Metropolitan, New York, 2020.

(2) Middle class meaning professional middle-class. Harris’s father is an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University. Her mother was a biologist PhD who worked at a famous Federal research laboratory. Kamala grew up in several different college towns around the country but mainly in Berkeley, California, home of the University of California and renowned worldwide for its bizarre variant of liberalism.

(3) Tim Hains, ‘Harris campaign: “I don’t think the American public are interested in the minutiae of the mechanism of how she’ll increase taxes on billionaires’, Real Clear Politics, 9 September 2024.