Kamala Harris: A Hubert Humphrey for 2024

The party is over in Chicago. The liberals won. Kamala Harris gave a typical acceptance speech with a bit more military machismo than some Democrats might have given. The chants of USA, USA echoed nauseatingly in the hall. Some of my somewhat left-leaning friends didn’t join in the USA chants, but posted messages on their social media accounts that might as well have been written by Democratic party hacks of the mediasphere. Those men who pointed out the militarism and aggressive nature of Harris’ foreign policy remarks were silenced by female Harris supporters with the words, “so now a man is telling me how to think and feel again.” Women who pointed out the same things were called traitors to their gender. Meanwhile at the convention, Palestinian-American delegates were refused a chance to speak to the convention. One assumes this refusal was due to pressure from certain extreme Zionist elements in the Democrats leadership. I couldn’t help but think of Fanie Lou Hamer, whose group of a Black Freedom Democrats from Mississippi were refused seats at the 1964 Democratic convention to please the party’s racist Dixiecrat elements. Palestinian women in Gaza and the West Bank were too busy hoping their children wouldn’t be shot, killed or arrested by the US-armed Israeli occupation forces to care.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe Harris needs to win the election. Not because I support her foreign policy or think her domestic politics are progressive enough, but because Trump must be defeated. I know more progressive candidates from third parties don’t really stand a chance, no matter how much their supporters say otherwise. A secondary reason I want Harris to win is so that the final identity-related barrier in US electoral politics will be broken. Let people who have gone head over heels for her discover that having a woman in the White House will not change the world any more than having a Black man did. While there’s something to be said about the symbolism involved, the politics remain the politics of the power elite. Antiwar protesters will continue to be surveilled and arrested, the bankers will continue to reap their unearned profits while the war machine brings us closer to armageddon. While mass deportations of long time residents are unlikely if Harris wins, newly arrived immigrants from the global South will still be mistreated. Unarmed Black people will continue to be shot by police at disproportionate rates, and the poor will continue to fill the penal system’s jails, prisons and courthouses.

Do I think she can lower taxes for those in the middle income range? Or make reproductive choice a federal guarantee? Can she slow down price gouging on food and other essentials and actually address the issue of affordable housing in a way that puts people in homes? Sure, but only if she has enough votes in Congress to do so. And only if she rejects the politics of compromise with the far right. Those politics have shown us time and time again that the far right only accepts surrender to their agenda. While I think she can push through these and other progressive measures, I look at the world around me and doubt that she will. The reactionary elements among the powers that be are much stronger than they have been in decades. They are fighting like the cornered rats they are. Unfortunately, the Democrats (who are still rats), seem to have more allegiance to their fellow rats than they do to the people both parties seek to rule over.

Back to Palestine and its struggle against the occupation. Ever since the 1970s when I first began opposing Israel’s expansionist policies, there have been folks claiming that it is Tel Aviv that determines Washington’s funding of its aggression. In other words, Washington is not in control, Israel is. This is just not true. The US isn’t cowed by Israel. Every time a US politician attacks the Palestinians, talks about Israel’s “right to defend itself” and sends another billion dollars worth of death machinery to Israel, Washington isn’t proving its subservience to Israel. It’s proving its collusion. Despite its pretense of unknowing, the supposed shock at Israeli tactics, and the multitude of words about ceasefires and statehood, it’s quite plain to me that Washington is fine with Israel’s bloodthirsty wars, with the occupation, apartheid, massacres, assassinations and provocations. If it wasn’t, it could stop paying for them at any time. It could sanction the entire nation, embargo trade, and support a permanent ceasefire. In reality, defending Israel is defending US imperial interests in the region we call the middle east. Washington’s dog Israel has been let off its leash.

As the Democrats repeatedly make clear, they are adamant about supporting Israel, even when its rulers are genocidal fascists. Pretending like one party or the other is better on this issue glosses over the fact that Washington supports the occupation in all its manifestations no matter which party is in power. Perhaps more than ever, US imperialism is essential to US politics and power. Any differences between the two parties real or imagined in their policy regarding Israel and Palestine are window dressing undertaken with a common understanding that maintaining and expanding the empire comes first.

Kamala Harris is the Hubert Humphrey of 2024. In 1968, Humphrey was forced on the party after LBJ quit, RFK was murdered and McCarthy was sidelined. A resolution demanding an end to the war in Vietnam was defeated by party bosses. Some in the movement against the US war in Vietnam voted for Humphrey and some called for an election boycott (no one on the left was going to vote for Nixon). After Humphrey’s narrow defeat in the presidential election, the party went through a series of rules changes that opened up the party to activists. Antiwar/anti-poverty candidate McGovern won the nomination in 1972. He lost to Nixon, thanks in no small part to the ticket being sabotaged by the party’s right wing/neocon wing. The DLC was formed in the wake of McGovern’s defeat. It included Bill Clinton and other politicians eager to be bought off by corporate America. As this year’s situation shows (and 2016 proves), this part of the party continues to dominate the party. Capitalist parties are gonna’ be capitalist parties. Their politics are politics designed to maintain the health of capital, not of those who live in its darkening shadow.

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