Kamala Harris: Papier-mâché Coronation
How aristocratic it all sounds, if only in a playground, papier-mâché sense. The language of the estates, the “crowning,” the “coronation,” words repurposed for republican politics, is much in evidence with Kamala Harris, who is all but guaranteed formal nomination at the Democratic Party Convention as US presidential candidate. She has now secured the necessary votes from Democratic delegates, without running a single primary, let alone engaging any rival contenders in her party. She has also garnered support despite her abysmal efforts to secure presidential nomination in 2020.
Her tenure as Vice President has been far from glorious, a point she is not entirely blameworthy for given the generally titular nature of the role, “not worth,” as John Nance Garner famously opined, “a bucket of warm piss.” While muddled and vapid musings at the high end of US politics is nothing new – George W. Bush demonstrated that becoming president is not contingent on lexical accuracy let alone rhetorical fluency – Harris has proffered a fair share of awful, and repetitive musings. “We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.” And the platoons of the banal cheered.
Harris is certainly the donor’s newly minted candidate, which does much to suggest how anti-democratic the whole process has been. Not that the process of selecting the Democratic nominee for the White House is particularly democratic, given that voters in the primaries do not directly select the candidate so much as delegates who will cast their votes for the figure at the National Convention. Having switched their favours from the ageing and increasingly frail Joe Biden, the monetary approval of the donor base was well signalled by the speedy addition of US$81 million in less than 24 hours. (Last month, the Harris campaign raised a total of US$310 million.)
The idea of a valid contest within the party has well withered on the vine, adding even more succour to the authoritarian varnish Harris’ critics identify as critical. The sycophantic celebration of her presumptive nominee status, offering nothing by way of sustained critique of this pseudo-coronation process, adds even more of a gloss in that regard. The National Review’s Dan McLaughlin is unsparing on this point. As California Attorney General, Harris “was a dangerous authoritarian with an unlimited appetite for power who displayed contempt for the Constitution and no regard for the rights, dignity, faith or reputations of anyone in her way.”
In her failed attempt to secure the 2020 Democratic nomination, she threatened a range of executive orders that would most likely have been felled by the justices of the Supreme Court. However appealing it would have been to the gun control lobby in terms of logic and sense, a ban on assault weapons was top of the list. She also proposed removing Congressional scrutiny of immigration through a generous use of executive orders, hardly in keeping with the spirit of the elected chamber. For someone keen to mark out the illiberal tendencies of Donald Trump and his imperial inclinations, her resume in this regard is conspicuously streaky.
Such a patchy record, notably during her Vice Presidential stint, would certainly explain the initial reluctance – and reticence – of former President Barack Obama in purchasing tickets for the Harris love train. While any unattributed sources run in The New York Post should be treated with silver tongs, aired suspicions can still be useful. Obama, according to The Post’s source, was “very upset” by Biden’s immediate endorsement of Harris “because he knows she can’t win.” He knew “she’s just incompetent – the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should have health insurance. She cannot navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.”
This “source” certainly sounds conveniently primed and rehearsed on various talking points that will chime with the MAGA crowd. Obama, thus ventriloquised, is supposed to have said that Harris “can’t debate. She’s going to put her foot in her mouth about Israel, Palestine, Ukraine. She’s going to say something really stupid.”
Even if half-true, the comments would point to the need to have some form of contest, one possible were the Democratic Convention to be an open one. In such circumstances, the challenging candidate would require the signatures of 300 delegates to get their name included in a roll-call vote. The majority winning the votes of all available delegates would thereby secure the nomination. As things have turned out, Harris has already reached the 2,350 delegate threshold of the 4,000 available via a virtual roll call.
Without delving too much into inscrutable tealeaves, this might have appeared on Obama’s political radar as a possibility, opening the prospects for any number of candidates who are now shaping up to become a running mate for Harris. An open nomination process is also reported to have interested former House speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
The New York Times, that reliable organ of establishment politics and anti-Trump mania, has also aired the view that the Democratic Party, in not endorsing a competitive process, had adopted “the playbook of ruling parties in authoritarian states.” From the top, the choice has been dictated; the rank and file had to accordingly “fall in line and clap enthusiastically.” The “manifest weaknesses” of Harris – her unpopularity, her poor campaigning, her abysmal management and tendency towards favouritism, her “penchant for excruciating banality,” and her Bay Area standing – were to be religiously ignored.
Whatever his reservations, the Democratic Party machine eventually proved powerful enough to sway Obama, and his wife, Michelle. In an emetic video posted on July 26, Harris is shown accepting a joint phone call from the former first couple at a suitably choreographed point as she walks backstage at an event. “We called to say Michelle and I couldn’t be prouder to endorse you and do everything we can to get you through this election and into the Oval Office.” The Harris papier-mâché coronation to the Democratic National Convention starting on August 19 gathers pace.
Photo by 50m. above
Forgive me if I am not among those measuring the drapes in the Oval Office so that come January 20, 2025, Kamala Harris can move seamlessly into the White House. I am sure that I am in a minority. Since President Joe Biden’s renunciation on July 21, the vice president has been all things to all men and women—breaking Zoom attendance records, hauling in millions in campaign dosh, finger-wagging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, line dancing to Megan Thee Stallion, and reviving the dead-on-arrival Democratic party.
Unless I am mistaken, all that stands between Harris and her electoral coronation is for Donald Trump to be cast to the wolves and for the electoral votes to be counted on this year’s January 6. What could go wrong?
* * *
Ten days ago, it was Trump who was ascendant, fresh from the Republican National Convention and Discount House of Worship and living large on the stigmata of his AR-15 crucifixion.
The reborn Trump entered the convention center as Lazarus, brought to life both by the assassin’s bullet and the mummification of Joe Biden, which reduced the president’s debate performance to little more than tales from the crypt.
With so much political capital in his pockets, Trump did what he always does, which was to spend money on another monument to himself.
In this case, he acquired the junior senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, a near-perfect Trump replica with a string ring coming out of his back that when pulled has the vice presidential nominee reciting complete Trump catchphrases (“childless cat ladies…..DEI….bum…crazy….not really Black…”).
Not even that conspicuous consumption of a defective product—a mediocre politician in his own image—was thought to prevent a Trump restoration until Vice President Harris, previously a dreary and morose machine apparatchik given to hectoring her opponents, was rebranded as the political equivalent of Taylor Swift.
Had Harris been playing Trump in checkers, she would have jumped him three times and said: “King me.”
* * *
One of the Harris risks in the coming days is that we will find out who she really is, as Republican oppo research tries to “define” the Democratic candidate—something that Harris herself may find of interest, as in the last five years she has changed her political persona as often as she has her pants suits.
When last a candidate for the presidency in 2019, Harris tried to thread the needle between running as a hard-charging prosecutor (more Hawaii 5-0’s Steve McGarrett than, say, Miss Marple) and a new age Californian who was open to eliminating ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and private health insurance.
In the current campaign, Harris might well run on her record as a California prosecutor, having front marched perps of the Donald Trump variety into state prison, but that may open Harris up to Willie Horton moments: the Republicans will dredge up every case in which Harris went easy on a skell, only for him later to commit rape or murder.
(For those weak on 1988 electoral history, Horton was an imprisoned murderer who Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate for president, furloughed for a long weekend during which Willie cut a path of assault, armed robbery, and rape. As depicted in Republican negative ads, Horton might well have been Mike’s running mate.)
As vice president, Harris has largely toed the Biden line on abortion, packing the Supreme Court, keeping the Electoral college, Gaza, and the Affordable Care Act, but just as ample video tape exists of J.D. Vance putting the boot into Trump (“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad, and might even prove useful, or that he’s America’s Hitler…”), there are the same recordings of Harris that show her at odds with both her own Biden administration and the positions she is taking in the current campaign.
* * *
Nor in the Harris processional to the White House is there any hint of the extent to which the Democratic nomination might well be a poisoned chalice—something handed to Harris because no one else wanted to slam back the venom (to be the Democratic candidate presiding over losses in the House, Senate, and presidency).
In today’s iconography of the Harris ascension, the great and good Joe Biden, thinking only of the republic “for which it stands”, stepped aside as the Democratic candidate so that a new generation could carry on the fight for truth, justice, and the American way.
On just about every political talk show in the nation, Biden was assured that he would “go down as one of the greatest American presidents.” In the New York Times, courtier historian Jon Meacham wrote a column on bended knee called “Joe Biden, My Friend and an American Hero”:
Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his campaign for re-election. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington, who also stepped away from the presidency.
The reality of the power play that defenestrated the hapless Biden was far more prosaic than Meacham’s father-of-the-nation sycophancy might indicate.
* * *
According to reporting by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, a palace coup involving Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, Kamala Harris, and Barack Obama (what are friends for anyway?) sprang at Biden, as if emerging with daggers from behind the drapes in the Oval Office.
The plotters delegated Obama to make the head-shot phone call, during which Barack told his old running mate that Harris and the rest of the cabinet were ready to invoke the 25th Amendment (on presidential incapacity) unless Biden dropped his candidacy.
The pertinent clause in the amendment is worth quoting, as it shows the extent to which Harris stood to benefit (cui bono, to quote from The Big Lebowski) from the plot. It reads:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Can it really be expected that experienced, senior Biden campaign officials and administration figures will overlook the minor matter of a coup d’état and cheerfully organize the presidential campaign of one of the plotters? After all, Macbeth doesn’t end with balloons cascading from the rafters.
* * *
For all that the Harris candidacy is a rainbow coalition that, presumably, embraces everything from the Tamil Tigers to Willie Brown, Jr.’s San Francisco political machine, when it comes to winning the Electoral College Harris could well have the limited national appeal of a liberal former senator from California.
Only two such senators—John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama—ever made it to the presidency, and it can be argued that neither was exactly a beacon of liberalism.
Keep in mind that Harris will come to the nomination through yet another Democratic anointment (think of white papal smoke more than primary wins), the same process that gave us the flawed Hillary in 2016 and the confused Biden in 2020.
The only presidential campaign that Harris has managed on her own crashed and burned in 2019, with her at 2% in the polls and no money. That will not happen this time, but she is running against a candidate, Trump, who might well be psychotic, delusional, demented, criminal, and an adjudicated rapist, but who has a team that is running its third consecutive presidential campaign.
* * *
For Harris to win the presidential election, she needs to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If she loses Pennsylvania, winning in Arizona and Nevada still doesn’t get her to 271 electoral votes. To make up for that loss, she would have to win in Georgia or North Carolina, and Trump has won North Carolina in the last two elections.
In the current polling (which might well not account for the Harris surge), without any so-called “toss up” states, Trump remains ahead in the Electoral College 312 to 226, with the map looking very similar to the 2004 election, in which George W. Bush defeated liberal windsurfer John Kerry (a useful precedent in studying 2024).
When I do my own map of the Electoral College for the Trump-Harris race, I give her Michigan and North Carolina but not Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, or Nevada, and with those Trump wins 281 – 257, not something that MSNBC points out when dancing on Trump’s grave.
If I allow my electoral map to follow the extraordinary popular delusions on CNN (never a good thing), it is easy to imagine Harris winning North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, and pulling down 290 electoral votes to Trump’s 248.
In this scenario, the pivotal states are Georgia and North Carolina, both of which are “back in play” with Harris instead of Biden at the top of the ticket.
* * *
As always, the race largely comes down to Pennsylvania (and its 19 electoral votes), where, despite Harris’s celebrity-packed, rock concert campaign, even the New York Times/Siena poll still has Trump ahead. In a polling average, Trump is ahead by 2.7%.
With Pennsylvania as the O.K. Corral, it makes sense that Harris might pick PA Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate and launch the campaign with a rally in Philadelphia—except that it belies another truism of many elections, which is that vice presidential running mates, in general, only cause problems.
Maybe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, vice presidential running mates delivered a key constituency or state, although that balance-the-ticket illusion probably ended when Franklin Roosevelt ran four times for president, each time with a different man standing for vice president.
It is likely that in 1960 Lyndon Johnson helped elect John F. Kennedy by delivering Texas to the Democrats (Johnson would have stolen the necessary votes fair and square), but since 1960 running mates have been more hood ornaments than the latest sedan model. Who, after all, voted in 2020 for Joe Biden because Kamala Harris was his understudy?
* * *
In general, vice presidents are chosen to win a particular battle—say Pennsylvania or the suburban vote of soccer moms—but occasionally, as with the selection of Bedminster hillbilly J.D. Vance, they prove a distraction that can drag down a campaign.
Assuming Shapiro is the Democratic choice, his role would be to deliver Pennsylvania to the Democrats and to draw in younger, suburban, Gen Z voters to whom Harris (forget about Trump) looks old and establishment (someone who threw away the key after busting a few stoners).
There’s a risk that Shapiro draws Pennsylvanian votes in state elections, not nationally, and that his presence on the ticket, as an Israeli war hawk, will remind younger voters how Biden (and Harris, whatever she says now in between dance numbers) haven’t minded watching the rubble bounce in Gaza.
* * *
To reclaim the front pages of the New York Post (Trump’s only measure of credibility), it would not shock me if during the Democratic National Convention he were to dump Vance—proving further that vice presidential candidates are little more than Hollywood extras.
Trump could stream his Apprentice-like deliberations in primetime, tell J.D. he’s fired (Vance does have the look of a failed game show contestant who might be happy going home with the consolation prize of the lounge suite), and evaluate the ratings of a VP replacement to jump the shark of his failing and flailing campaign.
Deep down Trump only wants one running mate, his daughter Ivanka (as close as he gets to a Mini-Me), so that on the political stage Trump can present the MAGA Republican Party as 99.44% pureTrumpism and act out his incestuous fantasies in a dark Netflix-like serialization of his campaign.
Running mates, however, don’t often determine elections, which in this case will be won in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina, where Kamala Harris, despite her Beatlemania moments, will have uphill battles trying sell Age of Aquarius incense as canned root beer.
Matthew Stevenson is the author of many books, including Reading the Rails, Appalachia Spring, andThe Revolution as a Dinner Party, about China throughout its turbulent twentieth century. His most recent books are Biking with Bismarck and Our Man in Iran. Out now: Donald Trump’s Circus Maximus and Joe Biden’s Excellent Adventure, about the 2016 and 2020 elections.
