Maintaining momentum

US President Joe Biden did a huge favour to his successor as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and their party when he clung to the nomination until July 21st. Between January 23rd and June 8th, Biden had secured the candidacy in state-level primaries across the country.

However, Biden, a faltering and forgetful 81, was seen as too old to hold down the job as president for another four years. This became all too obvious on June 27th when Biden seemed confused and unwilling to test Republican challenger Donald Trump during the televised debate. Opinion polls showed that if Biden continued campaigning, he would lose the presidency and a number of Democratic lawmakers would lose their seats in the House of Representatives and Senate. This election could be a rout for Democrats and a triumph for Trump who vowed this would be the last time US voters would have to waste their time going to the polls.

Biden conceded with a whimper – a letter posted on social media – allowing Harris to explode onto the scene. Suddenly the presidential race had stopped being predictable and boring. The Democrats had a new, energetic, 59-year-old candidate unlike any other who ever ran for US president. Harris is a woman who has been propelled by circumstances to join the race against the most frankly misogynist man to occupy the White House. She is of mixed race. As her mother was from India and her father was from Jamaica, she could count on support from, the Asian and Black communities, both being leery of Trump. Her husband Doug Emhoff is Jewish and Haris has two grown stepchildren so Jewish voters should feel comfortable with her. She is 59, almost 20 years younger than Trump, 78. She is a fresh face, exotic, handsome while Trump has a wrinkled face and double chins. Harris is a sturdy sunflower in full bloom, Trump a dusty, drooping weed.

Trump has decorated media pages for decades, launched his television career with “The Apprentice” in 2004 and mounted his initial campaign for the presidency in 2015. In mid-July before Harris became his rival, Trump picked conservative Ohio junior Senator JD Vance, 39, as his running mate. He is a Trump clone who made his name as the author of a best-selling book describing his struggle out of poverty in a hard scrabble Ohio town. He served in the military, graduated from Ohio State University and took his degree from Yale Law School before taking a high paying job in Silicon Valley. Vance was meant to win votes in the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

While Trump received a boost in his all-to-predictable campaign on June 13th when he was shot in the ear by a failed assassin, this boost had faded by the time Harris launched her bid and began to secure millions of dollars in funding. The public became engaged in the unique process of garnering enough votes for Harris via the internet from Democratic party delegates so she could claim the nomination ahead the August 19th-22nd party convention. Harris wowed attendees at huge campaign rallies with promises of a better future and created drama and suspense by vetting half a dozen candidates tor her vice president. She took until last week to choose Minnesota Governor Tim Walz who caught Democrats’ attention by labelling the Trump-Vance team “weird.”

Walz is a perfect choice. A White male, 60, a former teacher, football coach, National Guard veteran, gun owner, and member of the House of Representatives before running for governor. While in office he blessed his middle western state with progressive reforms. He legalised abortion (which Trump’s followers seek to ban nationally), provided children attending pubic schools with free lunch, improved health care and imposed modest gun controls. He is a bouncy, joyful man who has transformed Harris’ campaign rallies into cheerful events and dubbed Harris and himself “happy warriors.” Walz has better credentials than stiff Vance to attract voters in the middle-western swing states.

Harris and Walz promptly embarked on a five-state campaign journey to swing states where the latest opinion polls show they are building support at the expense of Trump-Vance. It is in these swing states that elections are won and lost as it is the Electoral College which decides presidential races not popular votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton garnered nearly three million votes but lost due to the Electoral College, a fossilised institution created to boost the less populated conservative rural hinterland which stood to be dominated by the heavily populated coastal urban centres.

The televised Democratic National Convention in Chicago which begins on the 19th is certain to maintain the momentum of the Harris-Walz ticket. Meanwhile, anti-Gaza war activists – the “uncommitted movement” – will provide drama in the convention hall and the broad avenues of the city. There could be confrontations with the police. The movement is determined to wrench from Harris a pledge to pressure Biden to demand Israel end the Gaza war and use US leverage on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to pull his troops out of Gaza. There is nothing Trump-Vance can do to steal the scene during the rival party’s convention.

The Harris-Trump television debate on September 10th could also maintain the excitement of the race and favour Harris. This will give her an opportunity to describe her proposed agenda and refute Trump’s infantile accusations against her and Walz which dominate his campaign rallies. He offers nothing new in terms of policies which are, as they say, old hat. While his charisma continues to excite his “base” of supporters and preserve his conservative credentials to win Evangelical Christians, Trump offers little nor nothing to independents and first-time voters.

He relies on the “grievance” vote of mainly White men who are dissatisfied with their lives and will try to scare conservative voters by claiming Harris-Walz are “socialists, “progressives” or “communists” who want to destroy the “American way of life.” These are charges Harris-Walz can refute by saying that they want US citizens to enjoy benefits of health care, gun control, and freedoms Trump/Vance want to take away.

Photo: TNS