What North Carolina can teach us about Kamala Harris's chances

In 1942, we learn from one commemorative sign, “a group of 44 African American musicians broke the US Navy’s color barrier, enlisting at general rank” in a barracks close to the town. Another sign reminds us that on this site in 1960, “nine Lincoln High School students ignited the direct action Civil Rights movement with the first sit-in at Colonial Drug”.

So sleepy old Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, actually carries a lot of history which reminds us how deep racial division ran and, by extension, why colour plays a significant part in every American election campaign. With the forthcoming anointment of Kamala Harris as Democratic candidate, that is one of the great imponderables she brings with her.

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North Carolina is a case study in why race matters. In 1968, it went Republican for the first time in response to white voters’ hostility to civil rights legislation. It stayed that way until 2008 when the black vote turned out to elect Barack Obama who took North Carolina by just 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million cast. In the last election, Joe Biden lost the state by 1.3 per cent.

With Kamala Harris as candidate, North Carolina is back in play as a potential swing state and the number of votes which will determine its contribution to the electoral college will probably be no more decisive either way than in these recent elections. But then we come to another statistic which the history represented by these signs on Franklin Street plays a huge part in.

North Carolina has the lowest percentage of registered voters in the United States at just 61 per cent. In other words, even before you get to the question of turn-out, there are huge numbers of citizens who are not even eligible to vote and it should come as no surprise that they are disproportionately poor and/or black.

This is not by inadvertence. Voter suppression is the great untold story of American politics. In the hands of Republican administrations at state level, it has become an art form which has a crucial impact on elections. Keeping huge numbers of the disaffected off the register is a lot more effective than persuading them to vote Republican.

I remember first encountering this phenomenon when, in times past, I reported US elections for The Herald and visited a voter registration campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. There were counties, I was told, where people of colour were required to recite the Oath of Allegiance in order to be registered. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t bother.

These days, the tactics are more subtle but still pretty effective. The Brennan Center in Washington which fights the issue says that “voter suppression has a long and ugly history in the United States, and over the last two decades, it has resurfaced with a vengeance”. The organisation constantly raises lawsuits “which have blocked or weakened some of the worst suppression schemes”.

So there is quite a lot to be learned about current American politics from a walk down Franklin Street, Chapel Hill. Not just the state but the country are now so polarised with Presidential elections determined by tiny numbers of votes that it is almost certainly true that voter registration or the lack of it has the potential to tip the result. Yet it is a factor you never hear mentioned in the endless punditry and prognostications.

There have been two significant reactions among Democrats since Joe Biden finally pulled out on Saturday. The first is simply a sense of relief, reflected in every conversation on the subject. There has been no backlash or indignant claims that Biden should not have been forced out. Belated though his decision was, there is an overwhelming sense that it at least gives the Democrats a decent chance of beating Trump.

The second, perhaps less predictable, follow-through has been the unanimity around the assumption that the Vice-President should succeed him as candidate without a contest. Mr Biden himself set the tone for this and all the other leading Democrats have followed. This fait accompli gives Ms Harris a decent period of time to emerge from the relative shadows of a loyal vice-presidency to carve her own image and agenda. She looks well capable of seizing that opportunity.

Over the next few days, polls with be dissected with even more microscopic attention than usual to assess her prospects. A couple of percentage points bounce will indicate a race which was slipping inexorably away from Joe Biden is very much alive again. There is no certainty this will happen since the question of whether America is ready for a female president of colour is more fundamental than any policy issue. Donald Trump’s attacks will be crude and brutal.

Donald Trump's approval ratings have not moved even after the assassination attempt (Image: PA)

It is useful to be here, to be reminded of just how divisive and vulgar a figure he is. Following his dice with death, commentators with long memories recalled that when Ronald Reagan survived a shooting, his approval rating soared to 73 per cent. Donald Trump’s did not move; an indicator, it was suggested, that he has “maxed-out” on potential support and nobody not already committed to his cult will be persuaded now.

In her initial foray, Ms Harris pointed out that she is used to dealing with “predators, fraudsters and cheaters”, in other words, “Trump’s type”. She is going to present a very different kind of challenge for Trump to rant against and I will watch with particular interest if the polls are moving in North Carolina.