Next week, Kamala Harris must tell the world what she stands for

For this was a year when the tense proceedings inside the convention hall were eclipsed by events outside on the streets of the Windy City, when a violent police crackdown on anti-Vietnam war protesters left an indelible mark on Chicago.

The chants of the protesters at the time, that “the whole world is watching”, reverberate politically to this day, as do the memories of the tear gas and baton charges that shocked a fractured America and the global audience who followed events in the media.

These past months, much has been made of those events back in 1968 as Chicago again prepares to host another DNC against the backdrop of a very politically divided America and another unpopular war overseas.

The latest war in Gaza – unlike Vietnam – might be one where US troops are not “directly” involved, but that has not stopped the Biden administration from supplying weapons to fuel it, with another $20 billion worth having been approved just last week. It’s hardly surprising, then, that tomorrow’s opening of the DNC marks the latest episode in a summer of high political drama in the United States.

And if fears of a replay of 1968 were running high for a time they might just have eased somewhat, though no-one can afford to be complacent over plans for protests against Israel’s Gaza war which has divided the Democratic Party’s base.

Tomorrow, Gaza’s war is only one of a number of pressing election issues that the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, along with her running mate Tim Walz, will have to navigate carefully as the convention gets under way.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at a campaign rally Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, in Romulus, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson).

Surprise ascent

Some 5,000 Democrat delegates will attend the four-day event which is also expected to draw thousands of people to Chicago. Some will attend in a show of support for Harris’s surprise ascent to the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race.

Others will be there to make sure she, Walz and the DNC hear their concerns over issues ranging from immigration to abortion rights among many others.

It’s expected that President Biden will kick off convention proceedings tomorrow night with a bittersweet keynote speech that will serve as a goodbye of sorts for a politician who just weeks ago was expected to come to Chicago to accept the renomination as his party’s candidate.

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will have marquee speaking slots as well.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, will introduce himself to Americans on Wednesday night, and Harris will end the convention on Thursday with one of the most important speeches of her political career.

But just what can we expect from these speeches and what might they tell us about the trajectory of the Democratic campaign in the coming months in the run-up to the November election?

Held every four years, the convention is a gathering to formally select the Democratic Party’s nominees for president and vice-president. But things, of course, are different this year given that the DNC held a roll-call vote earlier on August 6 to announce that Harris and Walz had been formally certified as the presidential and vice-presidential candidates respectively.

Normally, the official roll-call vote happens at the actual convention. But this year the party opted for a virtual roll call beforehand, because Democrats had raised concerns Harris could be left off ballots in Ohio due to a procedural issue.

While the roll-call vote will still go ahead in Chicago, it will, as the DNC has said, be more “ceremonial” in nature. All of which means the convention will focus much more quickly on that other crucial role that it serves in drumming up enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.

Most US political observers point to a number of issues that will feature in the nominees and delegates’ speeches, and are worth looking out for. To begin with, it will be Harris’s first major opportunity for her to reintroduce herself to the country, make her policy platform clear, and talk up her credentials.

For many American voters, Harris is someone that until recently they felt they knew little about, a view summed up by one woman interviewed recently by the American public broadcaster PBS. Wendy, a voter from Pennsylvania who voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, told the broadcaster she felt that Harris was still unknown.

“She hasn’t been very visible for most of Biden’s presidency,” Wendy said. “She was elected vice-president, and then she just kind of disappeared.”

For Harris, then, the convention is a place for her “reappearance”, a chance to make her presence felt and to build on her vision for presidency.

Glass ceiling

EIGHT years after Hillary Clinton hit that glass ceiling hard, America once again has a woman running for US president. In Harris’s case she is a black woman, a south Asian woman, someone whose voice not that long ago would have had little chance of being heard in the public realm, let alone from the DNC platform as presidential nominee laying out the proposed policies of a government she aims to head.

As Thomas Gift, associate professor of political science and director of the Centre on US Politics at UCL recently pointed out, “identity politics” will be one of the Democrats’ top talking points.

“Already the highest-ranking woman ever to serve in the federal government, Harris could become the first female president in US history and only the second non-white president, after Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008,” Gift noted in the online news and research portal The Conversation.

As Professor Gift went on to explain, barely a month ago the Trump campaign was on course to collect more black votes than any Republican presidential candidate in history, but now polls suggest “surging enthusiasm for Harris among this demographic”.

For their part, some Republicans have denounced Harris as a “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) nominee, something Democrats have called a “dog whistle”, but this will not stop the DNC highlighting Harris’s race and gender as a political asset, Prof Gift concludes.

There’s no doubt that utilising Harris’s racial background could shore up support among the black community, but the Democratic nominee is also acutely aware of the need to mobilise voters around class rather than just race.

The economy, wages, rising cost of living are the issues Harris knows that all Americans irrespective of race and colour care about. Even before tomorrow’s convention starts, Harris on Friday was doubling down on what she called a “laser-focused” effort on policies to ease the cost of living crisis.

Speaking in North Carolina, a battleground state where her Republican rival Trump delivered his own speech on economic policy earlier last week, Harris outlined her economic programme that she is likely to emphasise again this week during the convention.

She was also keen to contrast what her approach – if elected – would be to that of the Republicans and Trump including her rival’s vow to extend his 2017 tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals.

“Donald Trump fights for billionaires and large corporations,” Harris told supporters in North Caorlina. “I will fight to give money back to working and middle-class Americans.”

New tax credits

As the Financial Times detailed, perhaps the most significant of Harris’s proposals is a $6,000 tax credit for families with newborn children, an expansion of an existing credit for families with older children to $3,600 per year, and up to $25,000 in downpayment support for first-time homebuyers.

Although some Republicans have criticised Harris’s campaign for lacking substance, especially on the economy, Friday was a sign of how the Democratic nominee plans to address these issues head on in the coming days and weeks, both during the convention and onto the campaign trail.

As the Washington Post noted, some of the economic policies Harris outlined on Friday went beyond what President Biden had promised.

“While Harris is building on much of Biden’s economic agenda, she is also seeking to roll out policies that are unique to her as she works to define herself to millions of voters who may not have a firm grasp of where she stands on a number of key issues,” the Post concluded.

Away from the economy, another issue to watch out for in this week’s speeches is abortion.

Harris has consistently supported abortion rights throughout her career and has been seen as the stronger rights advocate compared to Biden.

As a senator, she co-sponsored legislation that would ban states from imposing restrictions on abortion rights, and voted against a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy

As vice-President, Harris condemned the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe vs Wade that upended nearly a half-century of precedent guaranteeing abortion rights, and in doing so became the White House’s leading voice on reproductive health rights.

At the convention, Democrats are likely to focus on Trump’s three appointments to the court that solidified the right-wing supermajority that allowed for the overriding of Roe vs Wade. The Harris-Walz campaign team senses that on this issue they have a potential vote-winner and hope that listing measures to establish right to abortion on the ballot will boost turnout in certain battleground states like Arizona.

But if Democrats are sure to use the abortion question to political advantage at the DNC, then expect them to tread far more warily over certain foreign policy issues, the obvious being Israel’s war in Gaza.

The anger at the Biden administration over its handling of the Israel-Hamas war refuses to go away and is expected to play a major role at this year’s DNC. There will be 30 “uncommitted” delegates present, the result of co-ordinated protest votes in primary elections this year.

Palestinians injured or died in Israeli attacks including children, are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 15, 2024. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images).

Demonstrators

AS PBS recently highlighted, Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, is home to the largest Palestinian population in the US and more than 150 coalition groups, comprising thousands of demonstrators, are expected to take part in the “March on the DNC” over various days.

For some of the organisers of the protests this week, Harris, as Democratic nominee, has made no difference when it comes to policy on Israel and Gaza in their view.

“Let’s be honest …Kamala Harris is not a progressive,” insisted Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC was cited by The Economist magazine as saying. “None of us from the community are just willing to listen to her paying lip service to the plight of Palestinians,” Abudayyeh added, referring to what has been described by some as “tonal comfort” from Harris to anti-war Democrats, many of whom want a US arms embargo and stoppage of aid if Israel does not halt the war.

And so, as the convention opens its doors to delegates tomorrow at Chicago’s United Centre, there is so much at stake for the Democrats in getting their message straight and out to voters.

What we can expect in the speeches, of course, will be a repeat of Biden’s warning that democracy is at risk from a Trump presidency and likewise guaranteed is a final salute to Biden himself.

But above all, the DNC represents the definitive platform for Harris and running mate Walz to unfurl new ideas to try to change voters’ minds and not just energise their base. It’s a chance also, says Peggy Noonan, columnist at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) for Americans to see Harris and Walz for who they really are politically.

“Here is her [Harris’s] big opportunity. Nobody knows how she thinks. We don’t really know what she thinks, either, but how she thinks is more interesting and important,” observed Noonan a few days ago.

“So far, her story is her persona – child of immigrants, mixed race, a woman who’s risen high.

“What else is in there? What does she see when she thinks of the word “America”? What is its story, as she understands it?

“How will she add to it? It would be interesting if she told us. It could be powerful,” Noonan opined in a column that declared Harris’s speech next Thursday as “the biggest of her life.”

The coming next four days might just provide some of the answers to these and other questions.