Overnight, Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic nomination for US president, closing out the four day political Cirque-du-Soleil that is the Democratic National Convention. The selection in Chicago was never going to be anything less than a coronation, and with Harris now leading Donald Trump by a comfortable 3.3 points in national polls, if you’re in it to win it, Harris looks like the right choice.
But in all the excitement generated by Harris’s booksmart-aunt energy, one thing seems to have dropped out of view: the politics.
It’s been a month since Joe Biden endorsed current vice president Harris as his successor in this year’s presidential election. And in that time, there’s been little in the way of policy from her campaign. Sure, we had the sketch of an economic plan last week, containing proposals that will have both immediate and long-term impacts on low and middle-income families. But if you were expecting more from Harris’s show-closing speech, you’ll have been disappointed.
Her 45-minute oration – the longest of the four-night convention – was honed on two things: laying bare Trump’s unsuitability for high office and reclaiming the concepts most dear to Republicans: freedom and America. In fact, the whole event was aimed at these two goals, with speaker after speaker staking a claim on Trump’s “real American” and rightly ignoring Michelle Obama’s disastrous 2016 advice – “when they go low, we go high” – to attack the Republican pick.
High on the Chicago buzz, Democrats will be patient for now. But the lack of a clearer sense of Harris’s direction will soon prove troubling. While Harris’s overall lead has grown, polls still show that Trump is trusted more on the economy in swing states. And it’s the economy, stupid.
Amongst her more material economic pledges is the reinstatement of the Biden child tax credits, which expired in 2021, while giving a $6,000 tax credit to families for the first year of a child’s life. Less solid is her pledge to pass a federal ban on price-gouging by corporations. How this would work is not yet clear. In the context of a ruthless, for-profit corporate healthcare regime, Harris’s proposals are tweaks – limiting out-of-pocket costs on prescription drugs to $2,000 and a vow to tackle medical debt. Again, no detail on how the latter would work.
And there are major areas of US politics where Harris has so far said next to nothing. The US federal budget deficit is set to hit $1.9 trillion this year, and the country is in debt to the tune of $33 trillion. That’s a black hole whose gravity could draw us all in; the IMF warned in April that the US debt problem poses “significant risks to the global economy”.
Foreign affairs is also a topic Harris is keen to avoid. With a de facto ban on Palestinian speakers in place, only Bernie Sanders was permitted by the DNC to give full-throated support for an end to the war in Gaza, with others either dancing around the topic, or warning Democrats not to let “phoney issues” (Bill Clinton) divide them. The biggest inadvertent joke came in AOC’s speech, when she lauded Harris for “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire”. Leaving aside the fact that that simply isn’t true, the gag is that no American leader needs to work to end the war when a phone call or arms embargo months ago would have done it. For her part, Harris’s contributions on the issue have so far been vague, making statements on the human rights of Palestinians without reflecting on whose bombs Israel is using to blow up their children.
Her convention speech barely departed from that record, promising that both sides would have everything… eventually. But the rhetoric held no shift from the Biden position of strong, military support to Israel and a slowly-slowly approach to a ceasefire. In her words, Hamas “caused” the “horrors of 7 October”. But the devastation in Gaza since then just “happened”, with no mention of the perpetrator, while “so many innocent lives” have been merely “lost”.
But a single issue – both clear and obvious – dominated both the DNC and Harris’s speech. It’s an easy one for the Democrats: abortion. The Supreme Court – stacked with hardcore Republican judges – overturned Roe v Wade two years ago, abolishing federal abortion rights and leaving individual states to set their own rules. In that time 14 states have instituted near-total bans on the procedure, meaning 22 million women lost their right to terminate a pregnancy. Further states imposed reduced, often impossible time limits.
That ruling was – politically speaking – a gift to the Democrats, creating a single cause that American progressives of all stripes can rally around with laser focus. Add to it the probability that a Trump presidency would see further erosion on reproductive rights, and you have a single issue that few others are likely to eclipse for most liberal voters. Indeed, before he stepped down, it was clear abortion would be the central plank of Biden’s reelection bid. But its centre-stage position also raises difficult questions for his administration’s record: could Biden and Harris have done more to ameliorate the effects of the Supreme Court judgement earlier? Some White House watchers certainly believe so. Would it have hurt the Democrat’s electoral chances if they had? Realists already know the answer.
Harris has promised to give her first – her first! – in-depth interview by the end of this month, so we may hear more policy details over the next week. The risk for Harris now is that a sharp pivot to policy – and the scrutiny that comes with it – will kill some of the electric buzz carefully cultivated at the DNC this week. Still, no party can last forever. And that’s when the real race begins.
The article was adapted from our newsletter The Cortado. For more political analysis straight into your inbox, click here.
Steven Methven is a writer and researcher for Novara Media’s live YouTube show Novara Live.
