Tag Archives: #Harris

Harris shines in the debate, but Trump remains a potent candidate

This op-ed was published by The National on September 11, 2024

The presidential debate performance on Tuesday night by US Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t perfect, but the glitches were rare and unimportant, as she executed a well-crafted, relentless attack on her Republican opponent, former president Donald Trump. He could certainly still win the election. But he was constantly, and most unusually, on the defensive.

Ms. Harris is now bolstered by a crushing victory that accomplished virtually every goal – many in complex tension with each other – that the occasion demanded. The campaigns are battling for a few remaining persuadable voters in six or seven swing states. It’s unlikely many switched to Mr. Trump after his dismal performance.

Ms. Harris faced especially daunting challenges. She had to demonstrate “presidential” mettle by standing up to him, yet avoid seeming snippy, obnoxious or unpleasant. This is especially challenging for women, who are typically judged harshly for assertiveness often considered admirable from men.

She rattled him immediately, confidently marching into his stage space and forcing a handshake that he evidently neither expected nor enjoyed. It was a subtle exercise in the physical dominance Mr. Trump well understands. She initially overdid her incredulous facial expressions at his rhetorical excesses. But even these became increasingly effective, almost seeming concerned for him, in stark contrast to his scowls and smirks.

 

TV debates are often best evaluated on mute. Ms. Harris appeared relaxed and confident, while Mr. Trump looked alternately irritated, infuriated or uncomfortable, a stereotypical grumpy old man. She smiled broadly as he fell into trap after trap. Her attacks were so effective that she essentially transformed him into the incumbent, and herself into an upstart challenger, even though she’s in the White House and he isn’t.

She launched stinging salvos against his criminal convictions, dependence on lies, and key vulnerabilities such as reproductive rights. She consistently baited him, so successfully that he sometimes appeared to lose his temper, barking “quiet!” at her and several times being reduced to shouting.

Ms. Harris was clearly well prepared, continuously pivoting to directly address voters, explaining what she would do for “you”, while insisting that Mr. Trump has nothing to offer “you”. He seemed unprepared, although when she lured him into relitigating the 2020 election, he apparently suddenly recalled that was a mistake, quickly affirming the past is unimportant. It was an unconvincing correction.

The debate was predictably short on substance, but Ms. Harris made the only serious efforts to talk about policy ideas, and several times appealed for a discussion about their proposals. Mr. Trump variously claimed she has no plans, that she intends to “destroy” the country, and even, mystifyingly, that she has now embraced his governing philosophy. The incompatibility of the three appeared lost on him.

Mr. Trump returned almost compulsively to his signature issue, immigration. But he handled it clumsily, relying on outlandish hyperbole and even regurgitating a racist urban legend about Haitian migrants eating other people’s pet cats. When moderators noted that officials in Springfield, Ohio – the purported site of this mythical feasting – flatly deny the fabrication, he responded that he had seen it on TV. He thereby botched a potentially potent issue.

Ms. Harris, by contrast, gave an artful response regarding Palestinians and Israel, a dangerously divisive issue among Democrats. She denounced the Hamas attack of October 7 and pledged to defend Israel against Iran or its proxies. But she bemoaned the suffering of Palestinians and strongly endorsed a two-state solution, insisting Palestinians must enjoy “self-determination, freedom and the dignity they so rightly deserve”. That gave as much to each side as plausible. Mr. Trump’s response – claiming that she hates Israel but also hates Arabs – was incoherent, ad hominem and hostile.

Mr. Trump tried to corner Ms. Harris on the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but he ended up defending his own record of dealing with the Taliban. He refused to say that he wants Ukraine to defeat the Russian invasion. And he repeatedly praised and cited the “strongman” Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.

Ms. Harris repeated her convention pledge to maintain the US military as “the most lethal” in the world, hawkish phraseology atypical of Democrats but appealing to many independents.

She hammered him on issue after issue, didn’t “lose” a single exchange and carried most of them decisively. He appeared particularly irked when she questioned the size and enthusiasm of his rally crowds, once again demonstrating his predictability. Indeed, one of her strongest selling points is that she offers something new and different, an opportunity to turn the page on a political environment defined by Mr. Trump, US President Joe Biden and their generation.

Stylistically, despite her determination to demonstrate “strength” by being assertive and even combative, she managed to be forward-looking, offering voters a new era in US politics. A glowering Mr. Trump, by contrast, was unrelentingly negative. Swing voters may prefer her optimism and the opportunity to move away from ongoing divisions, although economic discontent could prevent that.

She was especially effective in her response to his attacks on her mixed ethnic heritage, urging Americans to put racial and other divisions aside and unite as a single people. This is something Mr. Trump has never even hinted at in his political career, which has been based almost entirely on dividing the country.

The closing arguments summarized the evening: Ms. Harris appealed to Americans for unity and optimism for a new future, while Mr. Trump bitterly denounced his opponent, her administration and the supposedly “failing” and wretched state of the country.

Mr. Trump suffered a devastating defeat, and he knows it. He’s claiming he prevailed despite it being “three on one”, suggesting that the moderators were biased for occasionally correcting some of his falsehoods. When someone is complaining about the moderators, they know they’ve lost.

Mr. Biden’s meltdown on June 27 demonstrated that debates can reshape elections. If Ms. Harris wins in November, this debate may be recalled as a key inflection point moving late-breaking voters into her camp.

She clearly won the debate. That doesn’t mean she’ll win the election. But her chances seem better than ever.

If nothing else, Ms. Harris has just executed one of the finest and most effective debate performances in US political history.

The energy of the Harris campaign has reframed the US election

This op-ed was published by The National on August 1, 2024

In just a week, US Vice President Kamala Harris has transformed both the 2024 presidential election and the entire American political scene. President Joe Biden’s withdrawal was no surprise, but her ability to secure the nomination in days, unite the party and inspire a new political and cultural atmosphere was stunning.

She grasped the nomination unchallenged, almost immediately gaining the support of thousands of convention delegates and all leading Democrats, seemingly effortlessly.

When Mr. Biden stepped aside, Democrats proved every bit the suddenly-unleashed coiled spring I described in these pages a few weeks ago. Ms. Harris raised an amazing $100 million in small donations, many from first-time donors, in the first 24 hours of her campaign. Within a week, she passed the $200 million mark. She has also evidently inspired a wave of new voter registrations around the country. In a few days, she reversed Mr. Biden’s collapse and drew even with the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in the polls.

More importantly, her display of unexpected political skill, including several devastating speeches against Mr. Trump, has clearly shocked him and other leading Republicans.

Mr. Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, privately acknowledged Ms. Harris’s striking political skills and described the switch at the top of the Democratic ticket as a “sucker punch”, that has created huge problems for Mr. Trump. That’s putting it mildly.

Not only is Mr. Trump now facing a completely different opponent than the ageing and declining Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris’s sudden emergence as an American cultural symbol has, arguably for the first time in the former president’s political career, sidelined him on the popular cultural, rather than political, stage he is used to dominating. Moreover, the prospect of losing to an African-American woman may be more than he can emotionally tolerate.

At the very least, the campaign is already back to a 50-50 proposition with the Democratic convention, vice presidential nomination and second debate all yet to come.

Mr. Trump doesn’t seem to know what to say in this new context, but Ms. Harris has already unveiled several damaging contrasts.

First, she is running as the tough, seasoned prosecutor facing a convicted felon she wants to paint as a habitual violator of the law. She boasted that she had taken on “perpetrators of all types”, including “predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type”.

Second, and in contrast to Mr. Biden, she is running as a symbol of the uplifting future, contrasting the nostalgic message of return in Mr. Trump’s “make America great again” rhetoric with her own “we are never going back” insistence.

Moreover, the age issue suddenly belongs to Democrats, because while his decline is not as dramatic as Mr. Biden’s, the 78-year-old Mr. Trump is showing unmistakable signs of ageing badly. He, too, lapses into incoherence, forgets and confuses names and frequently makes no intelligible sense in his rally speeches.

Third, she is running as a “normal” candidate against a Republican ticket that Democrats are now systematically calling “weird”, and sometimes even “creepy”. It may prove surprisingly easy to paint both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance as extremist oddballs.

Mr. Trump may now be regretting his selection of Mr. Vance, who was the one option strikingly to his political right. Mr. Vance’s week was as devastatingly disastrous as Ms. Harris’s was breathtakingly successful.

He got into particular trouble when he stuck to his inexplicable and deeply misogynistic assertion that because of Democratic and corporate leaders, the country was being run by “childless cat ladies”. He insists this is substantially true, and that Republicans are pro-children and pro-family, whereas it is Democrats who have been pushing for legislation to help parents and aid children that has been largely blocked by Republicans, including Mr. Vance.

Mr. Trump’s own proclivity to extremism was on full display when he told evangelical Christians that they would never have to vote again if they help him win in November. It was one of his typically vague but unmistakably sinister comments that, in the context of his extensive and unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election and remain in power despite losing, appears to threaten the abolition of the electoral system if he returns to the presidency.

Moreover, Mr. Vance has previously described his running mate as potentially “America’s Hitler”, and even referred to Mr. Trump as “demonic”. Now, however, Mr. Vance is one of the biggest proponents of Mr. Trump’s populist demagoguery he once referred to as “political heroin”. Along with his political extremism, this 180-degree transformation may prove hard to defend.

It’s probably too late for Mr. Trump to change his mind, while Ms. Harris has numerous potentially effective running mates. The extraordinary honeymoon she’s experiencing with anti-Trump voters will undoubtedly end, but perhaps not soon enough to save Mr. Trump from defeat.

A whole range of states that seemed totally unattainable for Democrats are again in play. Ms. Harris has already proven highly effective in painting Mr. Trump as a dangerous criminal but Republicans have not yet figured out how to effectively malign her. Dismissing her candidacy as a “DEI hire”, suggesting she is only their opponent because of her race and gender, doesn’t square with her impressive resume and is blatantly racist and misogynistic.

Their best bet is to cast her as an extreme “California leftist”, but she is already tacking decisively to the political center on issues such as fracking and support for law enforcement, which may render that, too, ineffective with swing voters. And her long-established leadership on abortion and reproductive rights could prove a trump card against Mr. Trump, who is trying to disentangle himself from the near-absolute prohibitionist stance Republicans adopted under his leadership.

The reframed campaign is now a sprint to the November election. It’s once again anyone’s to win, and Ms. Harris has all the political and even cultural momentum. She also has an obvious and potent gameplan, while Mr. Trump no longer does. Anything can happen, but Democrats are suddenly energized and inspired, and their new leader is definitely in it to win it.

Game on.

 

Kamala Harris should replace Biden and take on Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on July 10, 2024

The American presidency invests a tremendous amount of decision-making power in the hands of a single person. Presidential power steadily accumulated throughout the 20th century, and has recently been supercharged by a disastrous Supreme Court ruling that has created, out of whole cloth, wide-ranging immunity from prosecution for sitting and former presidents. Now the crisis gripping the Democratic Party has revealed yet another way in which, in the US system, one person can hold all the cards.

US President Joe Biden and most Democrats were quietly confident that as Americans re-engaged with former president Donald Trump, they would remember what they deeply disliked about him. When Mr Trump was convicted on all 34 felony charges in the adult film actress hush money case, Democrats became even more convinced that they had excellent chances for the White House, the House, and even the Senate.

However, after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance, their election plan appears shattered. While few elected Democrats have openly called for Mr. Biden to step aside, panic in the party is widespread.

The liberal press is virtually unanimous that Mr. Biden should make way for someone younger. Some even frame the conundrum as when and how, but not if, he will go.

The main worry is that his evident aging-related decline – which was already concerning voters before the debate – had now effectively balanced out Mr. Trump’s character as the key distinction. Swing voters will no longer be choosing between a convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser and serial fraudster, versus a president who has disappointed many Americans with inflation, high interest rates and similar perceived “kitchen table” policy failures. Instead, it will be between that same convicted felon and a president many Americans now fear may not be robust enough to campaign or govern effectively.

Alarmed Democrats doubt they can make the election a referendum on the conduct and character of Mr Trump, as they intended, when it may be also and even as much a referendum on Mr Biden’s perceived ability to perform for the next four years.

The US President, however, is dismissively insisting that only “God Almighty” can stop him from running and winning. He unconvincingly insists that polls are simply wrong. The voters, he says, have shown they will stand with him and want him to keep running.

Mr Biden’s jarring confidence comes from a career of being written off, only to bounce back. That certainly happened when he came from nowhere to win the South Carolina primary in 2020 and seize control of the Democratic nomination. He’s clearly relishing the opportunity to once again defy the odds and prognosticators, and create a “comeback kid” narrative of perseverance and ultimate victory in the face of daunting adversity.

Only Mr Biden’s opinion ultimately counts. In the primaries he won virtually all of the committed delegates to the upcoming Democratic convention – or an earlier vote on August 5 which has been scheduled to officially select the candidate earlier because of an election law in Ohio – and unless he releases those delegates, they are bound to him. There is nothing anyone else can do about it.

Mr Biden insists he will stay. Even if they wanted to, other Democrats cannot push him aside, no matter how alarmed they may be. So unless something dramatic happens, Mr Biden will apparently stay the course.

Republican leaders are not seeing the dangers of defending Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on January 16, 2024

The past fortnight marked the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, amid new signs that most Republican Party leaders are following former president Donald Trump down a dark and dangerous rabbit hole of radicalism. Key figures in the House of Representatives spent the weekend championing perpetrators of political violence and telegraphing strategies to overturn election results.

Mr. Trump’s worst demagoguery is thus no longer limited to a radical fringe but is rapidly becoming Republican orthodoxy.

Since Mr. Trump’s rise in 2016, political scientists have tracked the intensifying extremism of Republicans even compared with their European analogues. Even given overtly racist governments in Hungary and the Netherlands, and quasi-fascist parties in power in Italy and opposition in France and Germany, Trump-inflected Maga Republicans are strikingly radical.

Mr. Trump has long celebrated the January 6 riot and the rioters as “heroes” and “patriots” filled with “love” and “unity”. He now calls the about 1,200 Americans convicted or facing charges over the mayhem – primarily for attacking police – “hostages”, undoubtedly inspired by widespread concern over Israelis held in Gaza.

This goes far beyond championing violent insurrectionists. It rejects the legitimacy of the US judicial and law enforcement systems, portraying courts and police as hoodlums and criminals as their victims. This is especially absurd coming from a party that indignantly portrays itself as staunchly pro-police and “law and order”.

Asked if “the people who stormed the Capitol should be held responsible to the full extent of the law”, the third-ranking House Republican, Elise Stefanik, replied: “I have concerns about the treatment of the January 6 hostages.” In the rhetoric of many Republican leaders over three years the insurrectionists have steadily morphed from “tourists” in 2021, to “political prisoners” in 2022, and now “hostages”. The hypocrisy and hostility towards the US government and constitutional order this rhetorical degradation evinces is astounding. Anyone holding hostages is, after all, clearly an evildoer.

Even at the height of liberal doubts and left-wing alienation from the American system in the 1960s and 70s, top Democratic Party leaders did not describe arrested Black Panthers or Weather Underground members as “hostages”, or suggest that the authorities were the real criminals. Even an obvious and shocking atrocity like the savage 1969 murder of Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago, who was drugged, shot and killed in his bed by the Illinois police, did not provoke an analogous response among top Democrats. The federal government declined to investigate itself, or the state and local police directly responsible for the assassination but was ultimately compelled to pay millions of dollars to Hampton’s family in the largest ever settlement of a civil rights violation lawsuit.

Ms. Stefanik shamelessly refused to commit to accepting the election results next November, saying she would only do so if the election were “constitutional”. She claimed the 2020 election was “unconstitutional” because of how election laws in some states were changed, and cited gerrymandering in her own New York state as legitimate grounds for rejecting the results of an otherwise free and fair election. She’s brazenly and openly auditioning to be Mr. Trump’s vice presidential running mate, even defending his hate speech about immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America “poisoning the blood” of the country.

Gerrymandering is unquestionably a severe and widespread political blight in the US. Democrats in New York, Maryland and elsewhere have abused this power, but Republicans have been, if anything, even worse in states such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Either party could cite gerrymandering to overthrow virtually any election without any real constitutional or other legitimacy.

House Speaker Mike Johnson denied being an election denier while simultaneously echoing Ms Stefanik’s spurious claims that the 2020 election was “unconstitutional”. On several occasions, he has implied that he, too, is prepared to reject the November election results if he’s unhappy with the outcome.

These Republican leaders are not merely parroting Mr. Trump’s ”big lie” about widespread fraud in 2020, they are preparing their party and the public for another effort to overturn a free and fair election in 2024 when, as they seem to fear, he will probably again lose to President Joe Biden.

Mr. Trump has threatened “bedlam” if he’s disqualified from the ballot on plausible constitutional grounds and his supporters have been increasingly threatening prosecutors and his critics, including Republicans, with growing instances of “swatting” (attempting to cause a violent attack on a target by misinformed police).

The normalization of political violence at the top ranks of the Republican Party isn’t just a pressing crisis of the moment. It’s a profoundly toxic historical inflection point, with the first generation of Americans since the Civil War coming-of-age politically in such a contaminated environment. Radicalism in the 1930s and 1960s became powerful fringe movements, but as Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and mentality becomes not merely tolerated and defended by Republican leaders but embraced and mimicked, today’s dangers have few other parallels.

Conservative evangelical columnist David French recently lamented that “in the upside-down world of Maga morality, vice is virtue and virtue is vice” as “vice signaling” is how “Trump‘s core supporters … convey their tribal allegiance”. “They’re often deliberately rude, transgressive,” he wrote, and broadly attracted to political violence.

The worst excesses once ascribed to fevered ravings by victims of “Trump derangement syndrome” have long since been fully met and far exceeded.

Eight years under Mr. Trump’s leadership has eviscerated the moral core of the Republican Party and untethered it from virtually all core principles of American democracy. That won’t be easy to reverse, especially since much of the base appears convinced that key national institutions, including law enforcement and the military, are comprehensively corrupted because their leader says so.

The indispensable first step in a long and difficult road back to sanity for the American right in general, and the Republican Party in particular, will be yet another, and presumably the final, defeat for Mr. Trump at the ballot box in November. All Americans desperately need that to happen, but none have more at stake than conservatives.

In the immediate aftermath of Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, in these pages I observed that “the biggest losers are ideologically traditional conservatives. They now have no party … ” With the Republican Party now unbalanced at the most senior levels, the crisis of the US right has become considerably more dire than anyone imagined eight years ago.