By Kenneth Tiven
Make no mistake, Kamala D Harris, an American politician and attorney, who is the current vice-president of the United States, has momentum with the election just two months away. In a stunning four-week period, she has united a political movement of joy and hope for the majority of Americans worried about democracy being dismantled in the hands of a right-wing group that seems more cult than political party.
Her acceptance speech was wrapped in a patriotic appeal to Americans to move the nation forward as the world’s greatest country. She described her upbringing in a middle-class community with a warm but demanding immigrant mother, who was a medical scientist and an immigrant father who taught her to be fearless. She called Donald Trump an “unserious man” who poses a dire threat to American democracy. “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” she said.
Many of the issues she mentioned drew thunderous applause. Ridicule was applied when warning about Republican efforts to restrict abortion access and restrict family planning. “Simply put, they are out of their minds,” she said.
Tackling the Middle East, she tried to cover both sides of a difficult issue, promising continued support for Israel while criticizing Hamas for its tactics in the October 2023 attack on southern Israel. But she decried the intensity of Israel’s response, leaving many thousands of Palestinians dead and injured. She warned Iran that the US was resolute about the Middle East. For someone thrust into this role only a month ago, she seemed severe and confident, but empathetic.
As a nominee, she keeps her day job as vice-president. President Biden stepped out of the campaign, remaining president until January 20, 2025, when if she wins, she will be sworn in. When Donald Trump lost the opponent he denigrated on a daily basis, he set the stage for a Democratic resurgence. Trump, who measures everything by size, now faces a bi-racial woman getting bigger crowds, better polling, and raising more money. Now Trump is the “old guy”. Younger voters, uninspired by their grandfather’s generation of candidates, are flocking to her campaign as Harris promises a new way forward for America’s huge middle class.
Many Americans and people around the world are stunned by Americans not behaving to expectations. Trump’s dystopian vision of a dark failing nation that only he can fix now competes with a campaign of hope, joy, and a commitment to democracy. How did a bi-racial Indian American woman who smiles a lot and vice-presidential pick Tim Walz, a school-teacher-turned-progressive- politician from Minnesota, do this?
Voters apparently recognized Trump’s threat to personal rights, family planning, and the inherent ugliness of his increasingly erratic behaviour. Instead, they chose a more soothing approach to government, one that reflects Minnesota—a farming state in the northern mid-West mostly famous for people being too nice to each other.
Harris is the vice-president of the United States. She always fights for the people—from her barrier-breaking time as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California to serving as a United States senator and the vice-president. She was the first woman, the first black American and the first South Asian American to be vice-president. Proof that America’s demography, while it shifts slowly, does shift.
As a political party, Democrats often described themselves as a “big Tent” party, and this year, they are all inside the same tent, without letting several disagreements dismantle their national efforts. Their slogan, “A New Way Forward”, seems appropriate. In Chicago, the divide that defined the party for nearly a decade was bridged, with a broad mix of politicians and ordinary people promising progress for working families.
Business-friendly Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo pledged Democrats to an economy “free from monopolies” with a tearjerker about her dad’s factory job being offshored by rich Republicans. Left-wing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, citing Kamala’s “patriot” bona fides earned by protecting “our way of life from “corporate greed”. The crowd was receptive to Harris’ background as a city and state prosecutor and her plans to protect abortion rights and help young families buy a home. The centrality of the economic message was impossible to miss. Seven union leaders spoke, most notably United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who called Trump a “scab,” a swear word for strike-breakers, but rarely heard in a political context.
This election is about “feelings.” For a change, Democrats are intensely focusing on American families, but not in terms of micropolicies—reduce medical costs, fight Big Pharma for fairer US pricing, which is always significantly higher than charged anywhere else globally, even when adjusted for country costs.
Frequently attacked was Trump’s Project 2025 plan, which outlines the destruction of the competence-based federal workforce in favour of appointing ideologically acceptable people for every level and type of government work. This MAGA thinking united Democrats from centre-moderate to far-left, leaving them to sort out their internal differences quietly.
For the past four years, Trump and the MAGA Republicans have threatened revenge on people who don’t agree with them, using the Supreme Court majority to implement some of it. This finally pushed the Democrats to move away from its customary focus on policy to embrace the possibilities of a new future. The organization and visual pace of the convention came from people who are conversant in today’s media approach. What viewers saw on TV, on social media, and dozens of streaming media platforms was a multifaceted representation of America today, with young people pushing jokey memes and making fun of themselves. This was a step to reclaiming the country and its symbols. Democrats admit the past is imperfect, but say a future perfect is a better option. Implicitly pointing out that Trump was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, many speakers were proud military veterans.
Former first lady Michelle Obama amplified Harris’ commitment to hard work and perseverance. She called it the “contagious power of hope, the values of work and scrape and sacrifice” to be honoured in the country’s politics. She described her mother and Kamala’s mother as having shared values for service and sacrifice. She said: “No one has the monopoly on what it means to be an American. No one. Only Kamala Harris truly understands the unseen labour and unwavering commitment that has always made America great.” In 2008, Trump falsely claimed Barack Obama was ineligible to be president because he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States.
Michelle, wielding a verbal scalpel, said Harris “understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward. We will never benefit from the affirmative action of generational wealth. If we bankrupt a business or choke in a crisis, we don’t get a second, third or fourth chance. If things don’t go our way, we don’t have the luxury of whining or cheating others to get further ahead. If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top.” She further added: “Who is going to tell him [Trump] that the job that he is seeking might be one of those Black jobs,” referring to a recent Trump remark in which he claims jobs are being taken from Black people by migrants crossing into the US. Thunderous applause followed. She continued: “For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard working and highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.”
Former President Obama, like his wife, critiqued Trump. “We do not need four more years of bluster and bumbling and chaos. We have seen that movie before and we all know that the sequel is usually worse. America is ready for a new chapter.” It was another night crackling with energy in the packed arena as America’s first Black president made a case for the nation to elect the first woman and first woman of colour to the Oval office.
Recalling the 2004 convention where he spoke, Obama, now 63, said: “I’m feeling hopeful because this convention has always been pretty good to kids with funny names who believe in a country where anything is possible. Because we have the chance to elect someone who’s spent her whole life trying to give people the same chances America gave her. Someone who sees you and hears you and will get up every single day and fight for you.”
He contrasted her with Trump. “This is a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago,” he said. “It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually gotten worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. The childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories. This weird obsession with crowd sizes.” The crowd erupted. “It just goes on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbour who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. From a neighbour, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous. Harris, he said, had to work for what she’s got, and she actually cares about what other people are going through. She’s not the neighbour running the leaf blower—she’s the neighbour rushing over to help when you need a hand.”
Harris and running mate Tim Walz, held a rally in Milwaukee in the battleground state of Wisconsin the evening they had no formal role in the Chicago convention. It filled the same arena used by the Republicans in July. It was live-streamed back into their convention.
Trump sees power as nothing more than a means to his ends, Obama said, accusing the former president of wanting another tax cut that helps his rich friends and of killing a bipartisan immigration deal because trying to solve the problem would hurt his campaign. When delegates began to boo, Obama offered an old refrain: “Do not boo. Vote!”
Obama, whose breakthrough speech in 2004 had argued that there is not a liberal America and conservative America, only a United States of America, then took Trump to task for deliberately trying to turn Americans against one another. “Most of all, Donald Trump wants us to think that this country is hopelessly divided between us and them; between the ‘real’ Americans who of course support him and the outsiders who don’t. And he wants you to think that you’ll be richer and safer if you will just give him the power to put those ‘other’ people back in their place. It’s one of the oldest tricks in politics—from a guy whose act has gotten pretty stale.”
Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean put it this way: “America is the best place to be, I’m the best of the American dream… You know what makes America great? We’re a bunch of immigrants.”
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels