By Kenneth Tiven
American vice-presidents receive modest notice until thrust into a bigger role, and this 59-year-old Indian-American from California is no exception. After an underwhelming debate against Donald Trump, Joe Biden, 81, was pressured by politicians, pundits and voters doubting his ability to handle four more years. Biden waited, perhaps strategically, until the Republicans finished their selection of the 78-year-old Trump, and withdrew his name. He remains president until the winner is inaugurated on January 20, 2025. This leaves Trump in the election as the only “old man”, and he looked it, delivering a meandering, 93-minute-long extemporaneous speech at his party’s convention.
Democrats have gone from despair to delight, raising millions in campaign contributions in the 36 hours after Biden’s withdrawal. Within three days, Kamala Harris had enough delegates committed to her to absolutely be the nominee. Instant party unity. The big issue is the vice-presidential pick to broaden appeal in a nation where race and gender are “issues” for many voters. Democrats begin their convention in Chicago on August 19, followed by a 72-day marathon race to the election day. Biden, in a nationally televised address, said: “Nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So, I have decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.”
Harris, who is a lawyer, was a prosecutor and state attorney general for 16 years, before becoming a US senator and then vice-president. She told a news conference what will be repeated in the weeks ahead: “I took on perpetrators of all types: 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.” Republican Party officials have spent a year preparing to run against Biden. Displeased only hints at their dismay since this leaves Trump as the only old white man running. Republican frustration and fear was obvious in the racist and misogynistic attacks being deployed against Harris.
David Plouffe, who was Barrack Obama’s campaign manager, expressed his pleasure and surprise at what he called a lame response to Biden’s withdrawal. Voters who want to see Trump defeated can be measured in dollars. In little more than two days, Harris has raised $100 million dollars. This on top of the roughly $110 million already in Democratic accounts available to her campaign. While there are limits in the US law on how much an individual can contribute to a campaign, there are no limits on how much an associated social action organization can raise and spend on a political campaign.
It did not go unnoticed by JD Vance, Trump’s pick to be the vice-president, tasked to complain in an email: “I know she has no grasp on reality. I KNOW her handlers will try every shady trick in the book to wipe us out. But YOU KNOW just as well as me – Democrats will fork over cash HAND OVER FIST for someone that was never qualified to begin with.” Vance, enthusiastically anti-Trump in 2015, shifted ideologically 180 degrees right to get elected as a senator in 2020. Comments he made about Harris in 2021 questioned her leadership because she did not have biological children. In a Fox News interview then, he had said: “We are effectively run in this country via the Democrats, a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” It has now gone viral. Cat owners are not happy.
Recent focus groups have shown that many swing voters or marginal voters have vaguely negative impressions of Harris, but basically know little about her. So, she’s largely a blank slate compared to Biden and Trump. Voters know who they are and tend to have very fixed opinions about them. Harris has been a vocal defender of women’s right to medical autonomy, as opposed to state-mandated rules on abortion. Six Supreme Court justices have ruled against the long-standing Roe vs Wade case that had created a national right to abortions. Now, some states dominated by right-wing political leadership want to criminalize women who have to leave their own state to have an abortion. Harris will be a favourite of younger voters and men and women who believe full family planning is a personal right even if you don’t use it.
During the 2020 primary campaign, Harris quasi-embraced a number of positions championed by the progressive wing of the party. A key example was her slightly modified version of Medicare for All. She also dipped into the push to end mass incarceration, and activism against police abuses. Internal party criticism of Harris focused on her tendency to adopt these activist positions without considering the liabilities in a general election then or later. Biden’s strength from a half-century in politics was caution in a political moment. He grew more cautious after chairing the Senate Judicial Committee, which conducted confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas and essentially ignored Anita Hill’s testimony that Thomas sexually harassed her when he was her boss in a federal organization.
The Harris campaign will work to neutralize negative advertising based on things she said or did decades ago. Things can cut both ways: As district Attorney for eight years and then State Attorney General for eight years, her record, by today’s thinking, is close to “tough on crime”. This is useful in contextualizing her position when “lock em up” Republicans attack her as a West Coast liberal. So, she can embrace Biden’s policy records she likes. In other words, the 2020 stuff is sandwiched by lots of material that tells a very different story. Perhaps from experience with Hillary Clinton in 2015, they now understand the key to rebut this stuff which must happen immediately.
Political polling indicates trends, not results. A poll for CBS News immediately after the Republican convention had Harris edging Trump with women voters, 52%-47%, beating him 76% to 21% with black voters, and against Gen Z voters 18-to 29 she had 62% to Trump’s 37%.
Can the Republicans recalibrate a 78-year-old candidate who, in his entire controversial business career, has never worked for a boss other than himself? Did the shooting incident cause any emotional reflections on his part? In a monotone, he recited the shooting incident to the convention, but then launched into more than 75 meandering minutes of his rally rage hits. My bellwether source for conservative reaction to events said: “I watched the first part, but then after a few more minutes, I turned it off. Hilary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, praised Biden for ‘as pure an act of patriotism as I have seen in my lifetime’. Vice-president Harris is offering a vision of an America with its best days ahead of it and, rather than ‘old grievances’,” she said. She pointed out that voters elected Black American Barack Obama in 2008, and she herself won the popular vote in 2016. “Abortion bans and attacks on democracy are galvanizing women voters like never before, with Ms. Harris at the top of the ticket leading the way, this movement may become an unstoppable wave.”
It is no mystery why Trump and his associates wanted Biden to stay in the race, especially as Democrats were telegraphing how much they wanted him out. Biden was losing his donors and running five polling points behind Trump. It looked like a slam-dunk win for Trump. Now they threaten implausible lawsuits to keep him in the race or force him to resign the presidency for, one supposes, misleading Trump. Now the match-up is between a lawyer, veteran prosecutor and a racist convicted felon with multiple criminal indictments ahead. Perhaps the most interesting political meme on the internet reads: “Why did God Save Trump? So He Could Get Beaten By a Black Woman.”
Young voters are likely to break strongly for Harris. “I think Kamala Harris is the only one that makes sense. She will get the votes Biden couldn’t. She could get the Black, Asian, Latino, women’s, LGBTQ+ and youth votes. She stands more for progress and equality than an old white dude and if she wins it will be historic,” says Will, 22, a construction worker from Portland, Oregon.
“My concern is we are facing a self-fulfilling prophecy; that people think it’s an impossible task to elect a Black woman to the highest office and as a result it becomes one. I think it’s quite the opposite actually. I feel Kamala is just what we need to energize young voters and get them to the polls,” says Lizzie, 28, an engineer from Idaho.
Peter, 27, a museum educator from Indiana, adds: “Kamala is not a perfect candidate, and I probably would have supported someone else if Biden had stepped down a year ago. I’m worried that she will struggle to differentiate herself from the administration’s policy on Gaza (as Hubert Humphrey struggled to differentiate himself from the Johnson administration’s policy on Vietnam), that she’ll be blamed for voters’ dissatisfaction with the status quo, and, of course, she will certainly face racist and sexist headwinds that Biden did not. I don’t have any concerns about her ability to do the job if elected, and I think she is perfectly capable of running a winning campaign, at least in theory.”
Just days ago, many Democrats feared a 1968 Chicago situation with protests getting out of hand at the upcoming Democratic National Convention. The seamless passing of the torch from Biden to Harris, signals the future not only of the Democratic Party, but of our nation. Her life is a counterpoint to Trump. How she navigates this unprecedented situation could mean the difference between democracy and autocracy. Will America give that task to a woman of Indian origin? Answer will be available in 10 weeks.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels