This is a letter from Scotland - so why am I writing about US politics, you may ask. It matters to us all who is the next President of the USA. As my colleague Joyce McMillan put it recently, America may make its bed, but we will all have to lie on it. This week the threat of a second Trump term looms ever closer.
Bidenomics seems to be working - the US is at almost full employment. But Biden’s senior moments have gone too far - last week he referred to a meeting with Helmut Kohl when he meant to say Angela Merkel. That didn’t exactly help him to refute allegations that he has serious memory issues. (A friend sent me this Biden parody)
But it will all be OK, because Biden has a great deputy in Kamala Harris who is ready to step up to the plate if he steps down before November, right? Well no because she is even less popular. But why? I took a look at what people have against Kamala Harris and most of it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
Take the accusation that she speaks in “word salads”. She really doesn’t. Last week, Harris delivered a powerful speech in Georgia about reproductive rights. Harris said that one in three women of reproductive age in the US now live in states with abortion bans. Then she said “Understand that Donald Trump is the architect of this health crisis…He hand-picked three members of the US Supreme Court of Justice because he intended for them to overturn Roe. He intended for them to take your freedom and it is a decision he brags about. He said…’I did it, and I am proud to have done it’. He is proud that women across our nation have been robbed of a fundamental freedom, proud that doctors can be thrown in prison, in some cases for life, for caring for their patients, and he is proud that young women today have fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. How dare he?” Her speech was clear and delivered with brio.
I looked up some of Harris’ supposedly confused speeches and they are mostly the kind of platitudes that people in her kind of position have to deliver on state occasions - think Royal family, as being VP is a ceremonial role. She supposedly told NASA scientists that “space is big” - but what she actually said was “space makes us ask big questions”. There was one about the importance of expanding public transport where Harris slightly elided her words before saying “you have to get where you need to go.” She once slipped up and said “The Republic of North Korea” when she meant Korea - well she is far from the only politician to have done that. But any time Harris hesitates or tries to express a thought and changes tack - as everybody does - a clip wil be endlessly replayed and chewed over. Hmm - how about Trump’s word vomits? Remember how he wittered on about bleach and other idiocies during Covid press conferences?
And then there is the way Harris laughs - a deep chuckle which has been christened the “Kamala cackle”: Take these ladies on Australian Sky: “She laughs all the time this ridiculous laugh, I don’t know what drugs she's on or what makes her so happy but she is an absolute disgrace who has done no favours for women”, “But of course she’s black and she’s a woman so she ticks the box”, someone else counters. Another commentator on the same channel said: “If she was a genius who could bring the Middle East together it wouldn’t matter because of the laugh - nobody’s voting for the laugh!” It may not be the kind of delicate-chiming-of-silver-bells effort that I imagine one learns at a Swiss finishing school. But personally, I like it, it sounds natural.
The other allegation that is often made is that she has had a high staff turnover in her private office. I’m not qualified obviously to say what kind of staff turnover level is normal, but Harris has around 100 staff in her office and about 13 appear to have left over the four years, mostly apparently on good terms. That seems to be about the same - or maybe a bit lower - than in Biden’s team. The allegation is rarely referenced or put in context. For example, Freddy Gray in the Daily Telegraph this week wrote that Harris: “insists that anybody who has seen her doing her job “walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead”. Well, the first part is true: people who work with Kamala Harris walk away – her staff turnover is very high. Harris has a reputation for being impossible – thin-skinned, grandiose and slow to grasp the point.”
But Sean Clegg who worked for Harris told the Washington Post she was firm but not rude or personal. "Has she called bullshit? Yes. And does that make people uncomfortable sometimes? Yes. But if she were a man with her management style, she would have a TV show called 'The Apprentice.'"
Early in her term, Harris was given the role of speaking about the US’s southern border - which is now a big electoral issue because of the number of illegal immigrants coming across it. Harris is not in a position to enact any policy changes at the border, and has indicated that she thinks the best long-term solution would be to improve the prosperity of Central and South America. She appears generally liberal on migration, which has alienated some on the right of the Democratic Party.
People on the left have different issues with Harris - citing her background as a public prosecutor, who took part in what many regard as a flawed justice system that treats Black people unfairly. She was part of the establishment for sure - but so is every other Presidential candidate with a chance at winning.
The underlying issue may be that being Veep is a difficult role to build popularity from, like being an understudy to a big star. It is different from, say, the role of a UK cabinet minister with a specific portfolio - there isn’t a lot of scope for getting things done, or for building a power base. Harris may not have achieved much - but on the other hand, she has made few genuine mistakes. She has waited patiently in the wings, learning her lines, and been supportive of the person on stage. She is the obvious candidate to take over from Biden. And there really isn’t time to mess about auditioning other understudies now. The curtain is about to go up. The Democrats should get behind her.
Way back in 2019, I read a book called ‘How to Beat Trump” by Mark Halperin. Halperin’s recipe for beating the big man was simple. One, recognise the need to defend what we have - it is not as if there is nothing to lose. Things can always get worse. Two, the progressive left and the centre right have to put their differences aside and work together. Team work. And three - find a great slogan, ideally three or four words - “Make America Great Again” (Trump), “Get Brexit Done” (Johnson), “Yes We Can” (Obama), “Morning in America”(Regan), “All for One and One for All” (The Three Musketeers), “Winter is Coming” (Game of Thrones). The Democrats’ current ones are “Finish the Job” and “Biden for President”. A tad uninspiring. They need something with broad appeal, that speaks to the work of building for the future and trying to maintain fundamental freedoms that the Biden administration is actually doing. How about: “Our Time is Now”.
With respect, I don't agree that Kamala has made only minor slips comparable to those of Biden or Trump. She seemed fine during the primaries four years ago, but since then she's had some truly awful painful moments in front of a microphone. So bad they're funny. Must be nerves.
The Democrats seriously miscalculated when they went with Hilary Clinton given that there was already such a solid automatic anti-Clinton block in existence. I don't see an alternative to Biden given the power of incumbency versus the major catastrophe that would be another Trump Presidency.