George Binette assesses the electoral prospects of Kamala Harris in the wake of the Democrats’ National Convention.

In the end, neither Ms Knowles nor Ms Swift materialised, but the Democratic National Convention didn’t want for star power from an earlier generation with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Stevie Wonder lending their support to the Harris-Walz campaign alongside assorted party grandees. From the perspective of the Democrats’’ senior stage managers, the Chicago gathering from 19th to 22th August was an almost unqualified success.

The spring-time anxiety about a latter-day version of the notorious 1968 Convention proved unfounded as the numbers on protests demanding a Gaza ceasefire and an arms embargo against Israel’s war machine fell far below expectations. The organisers successfully blocked any pro-Palestinian speaker from addressing the main Convention with only modest opposition and all the main speakers refrained from any overt criticism of Vice-President Harris. Some on the party’s left flank, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the original member of ‘the Squad’ in the House of Representatives, heaped unwarranted praise on the newly minted presidential candidate, going so far as to suggest that Harris was “working tirelessly to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza.”

Senator Bernie Sanders had his third prime-time slot at a Democratic convention, though he still notionally sits as an independent. Aside from a categorical call for a Gaza ceasefire, he stayed on message, exaggerating the Biden administration’s progressive domestic agenda, but did provide a laser focus on the actual threats to the US working class posed by a second Donald Trump presidency.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz, introduced himself to a national television audience as an effective stump orator, offering some of the week’s most memorable lines. His speech managed in a single sentence to highlight his state’s commitment to free school meals and take a swipe at the Republican right’s obsession with censoring literature: “While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing kids’ hunger from ours.”  Such left-leaning populism from Walz may well prove valuable to the campaign between now and Tuesday 5^th November.

An Adrenaline Shot

By the Thursday night finale marked by Kamala Harris’ keynote address, the disastrous “debate” performance by President Joe Biden, seemed a distant, almost surreal memory, though Biden’s frequently incoherent performance had come barely six weeks before the Convention. Harris, whose own campaign for the Democratic nomination foundered in its initial stages, came across as an unabashed champion of abortion rights – the issue which galvanised voters in 2022 and saved the Democrats from electoral wipeout in that year’s mid-term elections. Otherwise, she sang the predictable paeans of praise to the United States and avoided much in the way of firm policy commitments.

The nigh-seamless transition from Biden to Harris as the Democrats’ standard-bearer has undoubtedly provided an increasingly forlorn campaign with an adrenaline shot. The gap that had opened in numerous opinion polls in Donald Trump’s favour when pitted against Biden disappeared in days, with Harris pulling ahead on a national basis and, crucially, edging Trump in ‘swing’ states, which assume outsize importance, given the perverse Electoral College system. In addition, donations to Democratic coffers, which had slumped even before Biden’s late June debacle, surged from late July with a reported $90 million pouring in within a week of the announcement of Biden’s withdrawal and Harris’ candidacy.

The Road Post-Chicago

With little more than two months until the General Election, momentum has certainly shifted and the Trump campaign frequently appears to be lashing out in desperation, with Trump himself delivering often incoherent stream of consciousness monologues at his rallies. Whether claims from the likes of JD Vance and Elon Musk that Kamala Harris is a “communist” resonate beyond the most ardent sections of Trump’s electoral base strains credulity. Some senior Republicans have even resorted to suggesting that Biden and Harris were behind the failed attempt to assassinate Tump.

Perhaps Harris can simply continue to project her newly minted image as a “joyful warrior”, avoid banana skins and become the USA’s first female Commander-in-Chief with the Harris-Walz ticket titling some close Congressional contests in favour of Democrats. But Trump’s base remains large and remarkably loyal. While he lost the popular vote across the US in both 2016 and 2020, Trump’s tally of 74 million just under four years ago was the second highest in history, eclipsed only by Biden’s winning total. The recent endorsements of his candidacy by Democratic scion Robert F Kennedy Jr and idiosyncratic ex-Representative Tulsi Gabbard will do him no harm but are also unlikely to carry much weight. Harris, though, certainly has vulnerabilities, not least around the issue of immigration and ‘border security,’ which was ostensibly part of her vice-presidential brief and appears to have salience in opinion polls.

Voter turnout in 2020 smashed records in many of the 50 states. At present and for a variety of reasons including voter suppression measures, 2024 looks unlikely to see such levels of electoral participation. That clearly matters much more for the fate of Harris’ White House bid, especially in such key states as Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

The Israel-Palestine Factor

Even though pro-Palestinian protests were muted in Chicago, the reality of Israel’s relentless assault on Gaza alongside increased settler and military violence on the West Bank remains only too present. Harris’ expressions of concern for the civilian death toll and the ongoing suffering of Gazans may have placated a few of those voters who had broken with Biden since last autumn, but there are still many Arab-Americans in Michigan particularly who are far from convinced and may either abstain or cast ballots for another candidate.

Whatever Harris’ personal views, she dares not stray too far from the Biden administration’s record and so there is little reason to believe that she would impose cuts on military assistance to Israel, much less an arms embargo. The Democratic leadership’s position underscores the still-substantial consensus in mainstream US politics around foreign policy. Reinforcing that consensus is fear of incurring the wrath of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which proved its continued effectiveness in two Democratic primaries this summer, which saw pro-ceasefire ‘Squad’ members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush ousted after the expenditure of millions to back candidates prepared to give Israel carte blanche.

The Unions’ Role

Union density in the United States may still hover barely above historic lows, but the past five years have seen something of a resurgence in organised labour’s combativity and recruiting power. Since the often-unofficial strike wave involving teachers in several states in 2018, a union drive at Amazon’s giant Long Island warehouse has finally succeeded and unionising efforts at Starbucks have seen ‘yes’ votes for union recognition at more than 500 stores and the corporation’s management eventually agreeing to contract talks. The United Auto Workers (UAW), a still-strategic union, has seen the election of a far more radical, reforming leadership, a largely successful strike across the car industry last year and a win in a recognition vote at a car plant in the historically union-hostile South.

The UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, sporting a T-shirt that branded Donald Trump “a scab,” delivered an explicitly class-conscious speech on the opening night of the Democratic convention. The union, which has a significant Arab-American membership, concentrated in Michigan, has endorsed Harris, but has also been to the fore in calling for a ceasefire and being overtly critical of Israel in a significant shift by one of the AFL-CIO’s major affiliates.

Vice-presidential candidate Walz spoke at the Boston convention of the 350,000-strong International Association of Fire Fighters on 28th August, receiving a warm reception from the vast majority of delegates in a union that backed Biden in 2020, but has yet to declare support for a presidential candidate. In contrast, Sean O’Brien, the recently elected head of a revitalised Teamsters union, spoke at the Republican National Convention in a nigh-unprecedented move, though he stopped far stopped far short of endorsing the Trump-Vance ticket. He’s since shown signs of remorse, especially in the wake of Trump’s notorious conversation with “X” (formerly known as Twitter) boss Elon Musk where Trump praised Musk for simply sacking workers taking strike action.

Thus far, of course, there are few, if any, signs of a willingness on the part of any major union leadership to break decisively with the duopoly of the Democrats and Republicans. Assuming Democratic success in November, followed by a likely period of further disillusionment, the question may emerge of whether the likes of Shawn Fain would be prepared to initiate such a break and promote a class-based politics beyond the vacuity of endless memes.

George Binette is a Massachusetts native, who has previously been a UNISON branch secretary and the Trade Union Liaison Officer for Hackney North & Stoke Newington Labour Party.

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