The prospects for American democracy seemed dimmer than at any time since Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. Harris’s ascendancy has changed everything.
Less than two weeks ago the prospects for American democracy seemed dimmer than at any time since Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential election. Twice-impeached ex-President and convicted felon Trump, surviving a shooting attempt just days before, was exulting in his “martyrdom” and lording over a fawning and exultant GOP convention that was ecstatically pledging allegiance to him. Meanwhile President Joe Biden–still reeling from a devastatingly atrocious debate performance–was hemorrhaging support, his campaign in disarray in the face of his own stubborn refusal to face the facts: his poll numbers were exceptionally weak, concerns about his old age were growing by the day, and his candidacy seemed doomed to fail.
It appeared that Biden would not stand aside and the Democratic party, powerless to make a change, was courting disaster. It looked like Trump and a Republican party completely in his thrall were on their way to a landslide victory in November. They certainly believed this, and those of us who oppose them believed it too. And then everything turned on a dime.
After weeks of stubborn refusal marked by angry populist claims of betrayal by “elites” Biden, facing mounting calls for him to step aside, announced on Sunday, August 21 that he would step aside and “pass the torch” to his Vice President, Kamala Harris. In a matter of days Harris has managed to sew up her nomination. She has gained endorsements from Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and virtually every Senate and House Democrat. She has raised more than $200 million in record time, much of it from small donations, and has signed up over 170,000 new campaign volunteers. She has generated enormous enthusiasm on the campaign trail, and has struck a very aggressive tone in “prosecuting” the case against the Trump-Vance ticket.
Harris’s ascendancy has changed everything, for the November election and prospect of protecting and perhaps even deepening America’s attenuated and fragile democratic system. And given Trump’s obvious affinities with the likes of Putin, Orban, Modi, Le Pen, and Netanyahu, it is no exaggeration to say that the energy that Harris has brought to the Democratic party is a sign of hope for adherents of human rights and liberal democracy everywhere.
Thoughts on Biden
The Biden presidency was always at best a “bridge to the future,” as he himself stated repeatedly during his 2019-2020 campaign (even if he subsequently backtracked on this commitment, clearly an enormous error in judgment). That campaign indeed displayed many weaknesses, some of which have persisted until this very week, including a stubborn nostalgia for a bygone age of “bipartisanship” that was not unrelated to Biden’s age (his proudly proclaimed friendship with Strom Thurmond, the single most important Southern segregationist in the post-WWII Senate, was a particularly egregious example). Many, myself included, did not welcome his entry into the 2020 presidential race, already stocked with excellent candidates, including progressives Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
And yet Biden was able to win the nomination—thanks largely to the efforts of Rep. Jim Clyburn to mobilize Black voters in the South Carolina primary—and, in November 2020, the Presidency itself. His victory was a real triumph. He received the highest popular vote total, 81 million, in U.S. history, a full 7 million more than Trump received, and won 306 of the 538 Electoral College votes. Successfully unifying the party around a broadly progressive agenda, and then weathering Trump’s effort to overthrow the election, Biden then led an excellent transition at a moment of real democratic crisis, and proceeded to do a good though not great job in office.
I offered my overall assessment of Biden’s presidency for Kultura Liberalna back in the summer in 2022, explaining why “Biden Should Not Run for President in 2024”. Obviously, Biden did not do as advised. And while his decision to run for re-election generated great consternation, it was virtually impossible for any serious Democrat to contest his nomination. His campaign worked overtime to keep his limits, both age-related and political, below the radar, and he handily won every primary contest. And yet it became increasingly clear that his approval ratings were historically low, and that he was running behind Trump, and that only his departure from the race could perhaps prevent a stunning Trump victory in November.
And so he bowed out, and did so with a class that generated extraordinary praise, explaining, in his short Oval Office address to the nation, that democracy is more important than political ambition, and that he was “passing the torch” to Harris, and to “a new generation,” precisely because of his strong commitment to democracy. Even Trump’s former VP Mike Pence saluted Biden’s decision, noting on X [formerly Twitter] that “President Joe Biden made the right decision for our country and I thank him for putting the interests of our Nation ahead of his own;” needless to say Pence, already reviled by MAGA enthusiasts, was furiously denounced for this.
David Frum’s “The Dramatic Contrast of Biden’s Last Act” emphasizes the civic virtue behind Biden’s decision, noting that “In his address to explain why he was relinquishing power, the president marked himself as a modern Cincinnatus—and his Republican rival as a new Catiline.” As Frum explains: “Against the bright legacy of Cincinnatus, the Founders contrasted the sinister character of Catiline: a man of depraved sexual appetites who reached almost the pinnacle of power and then exploited populist passions to overthrow the constitution, gain wealth, and pay his desperately pressing debts.”
Mark Leibovich, in “What Biden Didn’t Say,” offers a more jaundiced perspective:
“It’s about you,” the president declared in his speech last night. But for a long time, it was about him. . . As it stands, Biden left time for only a late scramble. And little room to heal the rifts that have arisen from this awkward affair. If Harris loses to Trump, Biden will come in for a healthy dose of the blame. I don’t mean to kick the president while he’s in retreat. Biden should be given space to process this ordeal, mourn the end of his long career, and enjoy the over-the-top tributes (even the ones from the busybody backstabbers in his party). He should have plenty of time for valedictories. They will be well deserved. But the full story of Biden’s legacy and his performance through this chapter will be incomplete until a big cliff-hanger is resolved—in November.”
The Promise of Harris
If Biden had become a source of Democratic party disunity, Kamala Harris almost instantly became a source of party unity. In the weeks following Biden’s awful June 27 debate performance, it became increasingly clear that Biden, though he had “won” the Democratic primaries earlier in the year, had lost the support of key elements of the Democratic party: elected officials up and down the ballot who feared that a Biden candidacy would cause major Congressional and state-level losses; the large donor base that had become increasingly indispensable to Democratic campaigns; and almost the entire liberal and progressive commentariat, which has for more than eight years been sounding the alarm about MAGA authoritarianism in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Republic, The Atlantic, The Nation, The American Prospect, The New Yorker, and many other publications.
Biden tried playing an almost Trump-like populist card, casting these groups as “elites” out of touch with the “voters” who had supported him, months earlier, in the primaries. And it is true that Biden retained strong support among other important elements of the Democratic coalition, especially the Congressional Black Caucus, progressive icons such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and major AFL-CIO unions. But over time all of this support began to weaken, in large part due to Biden’s very feckless response to the unfolding situation.
As political scientists have long noted, American political parties have become exceptionally weak and “hollowed out.” But in the face of this genuine crisis, the Democratic party actually proved itself to have some real backbone. Party elites, increasingly in tandem with the polling data about the expressed preferences of Democratic base voters, prevailed on the sitting President to place the unity of his party above his own political ambition. And, through a process that involved some improvisation and some orchestration, Biden’s decision to step down was linked to the decision to advance the candidacy of Harris. Biden’s own preferences surely played some role here. But the fact is that as the incumbent Vice President who was also Biden’s running mate, and as the first woman of color ever to serve as Vice President, Harris was clearly the party’s presumptive nominee. And though some had reservations about her candidacy, and others believed that on procedural grounds there ought to have been a “mini-primary” to select Biden’s replacement, it was increasingly clear that no serious competitor to Harris would step forward to contest her nomination, and all of those named as potential competitors quickly fell in line to endorse her—in large part because any effort to contest her nomination would clearly have engendered enormous outrage on the part of key African-American voters.
Biden’s stubborn refusal to bow out gracefully created a real crisis for the party that was so severe that his eventual decision to bow out has generated a level of relief and genuine enthusiasm for the Harris candidacy that perhaps exceeds what any primary contest might have created. There is now an extraordinary level of unity behind and mobilization for the Harris candidacy. The transition from Biden-Harris to Harris-TBA has been seamless, and throughout this entire process Harris has risen to the occasion, first by standing fast as Biden’s loyal VP and now by hitting the ground running as the new leader of the Democratic party in this election cycle.
Harris has great strengths as a candidate. Jill Filipovic is probably right that “Kamala Harris’s Biggest Advantage” is her ability to vigorously campaign in support of abortion rights, reproductive freedom, and women’s health care more generally—and this could well be the issue on which the November election will turn. As an energetic and comparatively youthful woman of color she has already generated extraordinary enthusiasm among African-American and young voters which can make a real difference in swing states. While her record as a prosecutor was mixed, Harris does have a record of powerfully prosecuting consumer fraud, banking fraud, and corporate malfeasance, and her obvious strengths as a “trial attorney,” most visibly displayed during her withering cross-examinations of Republican nominees and witnesses while serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, will be huge assets on the campaign trail and in any debates with Trump—who she will surely eviscerate in any serious debate. And there is real enthusiasm for Harris among leading progressives such as Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Dissent editor Patrick Iber’s “Kamala Can Win” neatly explains the sources of this enthusiasm.
The Challenge Ahead
At the same time, the presidential race remains stuck within the margin of error, and Harris faces real challenges, especially regarding her ability to match Biden’s strength among older white, working class voters and swing voters.
James Carville–longtime Democratic strategist who engineered Bill Clinton’s successful campaigns—who had strongly called for Biden to step down, has noted the real promise of Harris’s candidacy, and the change in mood it has generated. But he has also warned that “we got to be a little careful . . . . [There’s] about 10% too much triumphalism going on. . . It’s going to be very close, and I understand that people are feeling a lot better and excited, but that excitement has got to be tempered with realism, and the realism is she has a tough campaign going on.” Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Carville emphasized that Harris faces “an entrenched opponent that’s got a large part of the country behind him,” and observed that the Trump campaign will employ all manner of gutter tactics to attack Harris and incite fear and anger about her campaign.
These attacks have already begun. Harris is being denounced as a “DEI hire” who has gotten by simply on the basis of her race and gender, and who epitomizes “woke” hostility to “American values.” Last week, Trump called Harris “Dumb as a Rock” on social media, and he continues, as he has for years, to mockingly mispronounce her first name. The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer neatly summarizes these attacks in “The Racist, Sexist Attacks on Kamala Harris,” noting that “the offensive is an expression of the GOP’s values and its policy agenda . . . on display in all its ugliness.” Famed theorist of intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw, has offered a similar observation on X: “Over the next few months, we’re going to see a rise in racist, misogynist language. Why? Because the public targeting of Black women is a direct tactic to drive the right wing’s agenda.”
While the Harris candidacy represents a real hopefulness for the Democratic party and for the defense of liberal democracy, it is also certain to bring to the surface some of the most noxious and dangerous features of Trumpism, an ideology with very real support among many millions of American voters. The Harris campaign, and the Democratic party more generally, is going to have to work very hard to counter the vicious attacks to come, and to mobilize the voters necessary to decisively defeat Trump in November’s election. Even such an electoral defeat is certain to be contested and obstructed by GOP leaders, operatives, and lawyers; as the New York Times reports, “Unbowed by Jan. 6 Charges, Republicans Pursue Plans to Contest a Trump Defeat.” But however precarious an electoral victory may turn out to be, an electoral defeat would be nothing short of a disaster.
Weeks ago disaster seemed imminent. But today there is reason to hope—and to do the work necessary to keep hope alive this year and in the years to come.
Jeffrey C. Isaac is the James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington.
This piece was originally published in Kultura Liberalna on August 1st, 2024.
Kamala Harris and the Future of American Democracy