Does Kamala Harris stand a chance?
Like Obama, Kamala - in the eyes of her opponents - belongs at the heart of the Progressive movement, just by virtue of her gender and race. But just like Obama, her politics, is far from being aligned with the Progressive movement, which certainly does not endear herself with them
In 2020, when the then Democratic nominee Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, it was regarded as another milestone moment in the Progressive movement of US politics. Ever since the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008, there has been a sustained surge in people of colour, women, ethnically and religiously diverse people, and people from LGBTQ community vying for and assuming positions in public office, whether it be the Congress, Senate or State offices. Harris, in the form of one person, represented a multiplicity of that diverse group of people – a woman, a person of colour, a person of Indian heritage.
Once touted as the 'Obama Coalition', many pundits had rather prematurely and foolishly predicted that this growing diverse coalition of various minority groups would dominate US presidential elections in the years to come, to the point that the US Republican Party would never again win a presidential election (even though they would continue to dominate the House of Representatives because of their dominance of the Red states). The confidence and hubris accompanying Hillary Clinton's 2016 electoral campaign in part stemmed from this prediction – that Donald Trump and the Republican Party would never be able to outperform the coalition that dominated the urban areas of the US.
All of this now feels like ancient history. Instead of the dominance of the Obama coalition, what the US experienced over the last eight years is the emergence of the MAGA movement. Although they suffered an electoral setback in 2020, it was the MAGA movement instead of the Obama Coalition that has dominated the airwaves, finding more and more allies across the Western World – the Brexit movement and Nigel Farage's UKIP, Marie Le Pen's early electoral success in France, Geert Wilders in The Netherlands, Italy's Maroni, the German far right, Viktor Orban and numerous right wing parties in Eastern Europe.
All of these extreme right wing movements, parties and politicians of the West had one central theme on which they ran – anti-immigration. And why anti-immigration? Because immigration was the single biggest contributor to strengthening the diverse coalition in the West, which in their eyes made their countries less White and (for lack of a better word) less Macho.
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The US democratic party's response to the backlash against the coalition, in 2020, was to field a candidate who represented the old school political centre – the White, working class darling, Joe Biden. In fact, during the early stages of the primaries in 2020, the party closed ranks to convince many of the progressive candidates, including Kamala Harris, to step down from the race so that Biden had a clear and uninterrupted ride to the presidential ticket. It is a model that the British Labour Party successfully emulated in 2024 during the elections that saw Kier Starmer become the British Prime Minister.
Be that as it may, the Progressive movement nonetheless has grown incrementally over the decade and a half, be it the two strong runs by Bernie Sanders vying for the Democratic ticket, the rising stardom of Alexandra Ocacio Cortez and the disproportionately loud voice of the Squad – a religious and ethnically diverse group of women and men - in the US Congress. The pro-Palestine protests that erupted across US campuses over the last eight months' overlap in many of their political and ideological beliefs with the larger Progressive coalition.
When Kamala Harris was first moving up the ranks of Los Angeles politics, she was often compared to Barack Obama, not just because of her obvious ethnic similarities, but also her ability invigorate crowds with fiery speeches. Like Obama, Kamala, in the eyes of her opponents, belongs at the heart of the Progressive movement, just by virtue of her gender and race. She represents everything these people don't want the US and the West to become.
But just like Obama, her politics, is far from being aligned with the Progressive movement, and is more at the centre like Biden, which certainly does not endear herself with the Progressive crowd. There is a reason the progressive coalition is no longer called the Obama coalition.
That is the first hurdle Kamala – if finalized as a candidate - has to overcome, if she is to have any chance against Trump in November. Does she double down on her centrist politics to appeal to swing voters who much more easily warmed up to a White, male Biden in 2020? Or does she play to her race and background and appeal to the Progressive wing of her party?
Once past that post, the second thing Kamala has to contend with is the rather mysterious and steep decline in her popularity ratings, seemingly unmoored from her performance as a Vice President. The excitement surrounding a female VP of colour in 2020 died rather abruptly soon after, and although pollsters and sections of the media have been hitting at her political image with a sledgehammer, there was never any clear explanation provided as to why she was being deemed such an abject failure.
In fact, some of the worry around Biden's cognitive decline also stemmed from the lack of confidence in Kamala to step in, which makes her potential candidacy at this point rather ironic. It is safe to say that if the Democratic party had more time in hand, they would probably have picked someone else to take up the mantle in November.
And then there is Donald Trump – the convicted felon-cum-Presidential candidate who is seemingly invincible, and now sports a heroic badge of honour on his ears. With just four months left to the elections, the decision to play up Kamala as a candidate just days after Trump survived an assassination attempt, does make her seem like a sheep being sent to its slaughter.
On the flipside, the Democrats can be relieved they will go into the elections with a candidate who at least will fight Trump with his/her full mental faculties intact. If Kamala can make up her mind about where she stands on different issues and more importantly, who she represents, she still certainly has an outside chance to ride on the back of the progressive movement, which did bring another candidate to the White House only a decade and a half back.
Four months may be a short time, but as we've discovered during recent US elections, it is ample time to change the mind of US voters. After all, no one saw Trump winning in 2016 especially after the 'Grab em' controversy, while no one imagined a one-term Senator Obama would win the candidacy over the anointed Hillary Clinton. We will all have to wait and see how this plays out.
