The Democratic Convention and necessary foreign policy priorities for a Harris Administration

Kamala Harris on Friday delivered her major address to the Democratic Convention. (1)

I won’t dwell on the theater criticism much here. But her campaign is doing remarkably well, having begun in surprising and unusual circumstances.

Cenk Uygur, who is not known for softballing his opinion on such matters, wrote: (2)

This was Roy Edroso’s take:

Big takeaway for me is, Harris killed. I don’t want to get too deep into the political theater criticism angle but I will say her great achievement was to simultaneously embody empathy and righteousness — compassion for her fellow Americans and advocacy for their advancement as well as fierce, implacable opposition to those who would steal it from them. That strikes me as perfect for this moment of great danger and opportunity.

I forgive her for leaning on toughness because we know what a hard sell Lady Commander in Chief is in some districts; in fact I admire that she acknowledged the need and threw herself into the task. I know the Democrats suck in regard to Palestine. (Boy, she four-wheeled right through that, didn’t she?) But they’re situationally the best choice because, in this era, all third parties can do is fuck things up worse. (Get back to me when there’s a real worker’s party with a broad, genuine appeal to enlightened self-interest. Cornel West and RFK Jr. ain’t it.) (3)

I saw a documentary report on Harris’ career this week that made me think that the somewhat stiff attitude she displayed in her 2020 campaign as well as at times in her Vice-Presidential role, the attitude that contributed to her “Kamala the Cop” image, actually seems to have been an exception. In earlier political career, she was often much more upbeat and inspiring. The image of a responsible and committed public official that she projected last night is far more appealing.

I’ve sometimes compared her style to a corporate human relations department spokesperson delivering a routine talk on personnel policies to employees who have heard it all before and spend their time doing the talk thinking about planning their vacation or what they plan to cook on the weekend while trying to look completely bored on nod off. Kamala seems to have retired that particular persona, hopefully for good!

And her choice of Tim Walz as her Vice-Presidential candidate is a hopeful sign for anyone who wants to see the Democratic Party keep moving to a more progressive positions. (4)

A Harris Administration faces some serious foreign policy challenges. And we urgently need a US government that takes new approaches to the most urgent and serious ones. And it needs to be a very different approach that the Biden Administration has taken to them. At the end of four years, which featured the very sensible decision to execute the withdrawal from Afghanistan, key areas of foreign policy seem to be coasting on tired and inadequate assumptions.

John Mearsheimer in a new video talks about two of the most obvious ones, the Gaza War and the Russia-Ukraine War. (5)

Israel and the Palestinians

The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and the subsequent war have shifted the politics of Israel within the United States. The blunt, ugly truth is that the US since then has been funding and arming, without any meaningful constraints, a genocidal war by the government of Israel against Palestinian civilians. (6)

The political situation in Israel is a horrible mess. Even though he is rightly being criticized heavily by the Israeli voters. But at the moment, he is polling better in his role of Prime Minister than he was a few months ago. And for all the political turmoil in Israel, the war itself is very popular. And the acceptance of criminal brutality against Palestinian civilians is clearly widespread. A lot of “respectable callousness” toward Palestinians of all ages is very evident.

The US government needs to shake off its own respectable callousness and do what it will have to do to restrain Israel: drastically cut military aid and withhold US direct military support from any wider war that Israel starts. The “savvy” assumption is also the very realistic one that a Harris Administration will find that extremely difficult to do, even if the new President seriously wants to do it. But it’s still necessary for the US to find a way to do it. Continuing to finance and arm and actual genocide in progress is just wrong.

Which is basically what Omer Bartov in the video above says the Biden Administration should have done early on.

The Russia-Ukraine War

The Ukrainians and the West need to find a way to establish a lasting peace agreement of some kind in Ukraine. Despite the understandable Western support for Ukraine in resisting an illegal Russian invasion, Ukraine is clearly losing the war and the long-term trend is on Russia’s side. The Ukrainians themselves will have to decide how much they are collectively willing to sacrifice in order to continue the war against Russia. And, of course, Russia has the upper hand and are in a position to keep fighting there for a long time. From the point of view of the US and NATO, we are basically enabling a war that is costing a lot of Ukrainian lives and doing a tremendous amount of damage to the country’s infrastructure and physical environment.

Nuclear weapons

The greatest failure of the “unipolar moment” that began with the end of the Soviet Union has been the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons. A serious nonproliferation policy needs to become a top priority again:

The United States has begun a long overdue modernization of its nuclear arsenal, and it’s essential to understand the purpose of these acquisitions. The “why” and “how” of American nuclear weapons must be re-examined in consideration of emerging technologies that are complicating the logic underpinning nuclear strategy and policy. Are nuclear weapons being procured to win a war or to prevent one? Or both? Experts on both sides of a longstanding theoretical argument need to start talking to each other again.

Two schools of thought. The development of nuclear weapons started an inflexible and entangled debate between what—to borrow almost anachronistic language—may be described as the “nuclear revolution” and the “nuclear superiority” schools of thought. The former insists that mutual vulnerability (from which deterrence stability is derived) has revolutionized international competition by making wars between great powers essentially impossible. The latter, meanwhile, contends that the Pentagon should embrace nuclear warfighting postures revolving around a counterforce targeting doctrine—that is, shooting first in a preemptive strike to eliminate an opponent’s nuclear weapons before they can be launched (this is defined by its proponents as the only conceivable way to win a nuclear war). [my emphasis] (7)

To be clear, a “preemptive strike” nuclear strategy is extremely destabilizing. Controlling and reducing nuclear weapons requires a stable environment for international arms control.

And the sooner the US concentrates on building such an environment, the better.

Notes:

(1) WATCH LIVE: Kamala Harris speaks at 2024 Democratic National Convention. PBS Newshour 08/23/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/o10x76nSDEY?si=mXtGIEle8ms2l-S-> (Accessed: 2024-23-08).

(2) X/Twitter 08/23/2024.<https://x.com/cenkuygur/status/1826844582119645590 https://www.youtube.com/live/hlhX30TeGq4?si=I1qfZ_7s9FELRbt5> (Accessed: 2024-23-08).

(3) Edroso, Roy (2024): The Big Show. Roy Edroso Breaks It Down 08/23/2024. <https://edroso.substack.com/p/the-big-show> (Accessed: 2024-22-08).

(4) Yücel, Emine (2024): Walz Shows His Real Guy Roots As He Skewers Republicans’ Definition Of Freedom. TPM 08/22/2024. <https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/walz-shows-his-real-guy-roots-as-he-skewers-republicans-definition-of-freedom> (Accessed: 2024-22-08).

(5) Prof. John Mearsheimer: A Destructive Foreign Policy. Judge Napolitanto-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 08/22/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/hlhX30TeGq4?si=I1qfZ_7s9FELRbt5> (Accessed: 2024-22-08).

(6) Israeli Holocaust Scholar: Why Gaza Is Genocide - w/. Prof. Omer Bartov. Owen Jones YouTube channel 08/21/2024. <https://youtu.be/jDePmAFle4A?si=SRNmYZdzqR9BZwhH> (Accessed: 2024-22-08).

(7) O’Doherty, Jack (2024): Is America buying nuclear weapons to win a war or to prevent one? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 08/20/2024. <https://thebulletin.org/2024/08/is-america-buying-nuclear-weapons-to-win-a-war-or-to-prevent-one/> (Accessed: 2024-22-08).

Kamala Harris is clearly the most likely Democratic Presidential candidate

Kamala Harris seems to be very much the favorite to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic Presidential ticket. It does seem a bit unseemly for Democrats to be saying “unity, unity, unity” behind Harris. Because it seems like only a couple of days ago – actually, it was a couple of days ago, the normie Democrats were telling Democratic partisans that what we needed “unity, unity, unity” behind now-lame-duck President Joe Biden.

Bernie Sanders and the “Squad” social-democratic types in Congress also took the public position of sticking with Biden right up until his resignation announcement. There are two obvious reasons for that. One is that Biden has been more prolabor than any Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. And for all of the progressives’ differences with him, Biden did move away from the “neoliberal” economic dogma to more Keynesian economic including “industrial policy.” He’s been very good from a progressive perspective on union-specific issues and on antitrust issues. And they also had a tactical reason to stick with Biden to avoid charges from normie Democrats that it was their fault if Biden had lost in November.

I’m confident that Harris will be a more competitive candidate against Trump than Biden would have been in his current state of health. The polls were showing that not only was Biden on a path to lose but would also likely drag down the Democratic ticket even in safely Democratic states.

Here is some early “horserace” reporting from Steve Kornacki on Harris’ prospects: (1)

Judd Legum previews some of the oppo research points that we can expect to be used against Harris, with his own fact-checking: (2)

• The “migrant crime wave”. Which doesn’t exist. “Xenophobes lie” should be one of everyone’s main consideration in the US and European polemics over immigrants and refugees.
• She’s a woman, so she’s “shrill” and “annoying.”
• Jaleel Stallings: a Willy-Horton-type bogus accusation against Harris
• Soft on crime: When do Republicans ever not use this one?
• She’s a California hippie who want to force us all to be vegetarians.
• Harris wants to abolish private health insurance: not true. (But it’s actually not a bad idea!)

TYT’s Cenk Uygur has a passionate and informed take on the development. Cenk favors an open contest at the Democratic Convention next month. (3)

Here’s a roundup of some of the international reaction to the news that Biden has stepped out of the Presidential race: (4)

That clip also includes some discussion about European countries’ concerns about a new Trump Presidency. European leaders are mostly want careful about crassly injecting themselves directly into domestic politics in the US.

But what US citizens decide in November will have a major impact on Europe. Top of mind for most ministers: the fate of Western support for war-torn Ukraine.

Trump's claim that he could swiftly end the war has been interpreted widely as a warning that he would pressure Kyiv to back down and hand over territory to Russia, despite being the victim of an unlawful invasion. (5)

Notes:

(1) Watch: Steve Kornacki breaks down Kamala Harris' starting point in polls as race reboots. MSNBC 07/22/2024. <https://youtu.be/N7mypX_1xOk?si=1pLzSJ7CvXmVsPYq> (Accessed: 2024-22-07).

(2) Legum, Judd (2024): A guide to the coming attacks on Kamala Harris. Popular Information 07/22/2024. <https://popular.info/p/a-guide-to-the-coming-attacks-on> (Accessed: 2024-22-07).

(3) Democratic Party Split! Find Out Who is For and Against Kamala Harris. TYT YouTube channel 07/22/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/XY4T69JOd8M?si=yBIsfK_Py7gO4yj9> (Accessed: 2024-22-07).

(4) Global leaders react to Biden‘s announcement to step back from presidential race. DW News YouTube channel 07/22/2024. <https://youtu.be/CBlsa0eScJ4?si=DsQaizewEdhKOk4a> (Accessed: 2024-22-07).

(5) Birchard, Rosie (2024): Europe treads carefully as Biden ends US reelection bid. <https://www.dw.com/en/europe-treads-carefully-as-biden-ends-us-reelection-bid/a-69730794> DW News English 07/22/2024.

Kamala Harris: a pro at underwhelming voters?

The Vice President has an interview with Katie Couric in which she reminds us yet again that she is a master of platitudes and is well-versed in stock Democratic talking points. Rousing people to go vote? Maybe not so much.

Full post: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/kamala-harris-a-pro-at-underwhelming

Biden and Harris start their transition

Joe Biden gave his (main) acceptance speech on Saturday after the major networks recognized his electoral victory in Pennsylvania. Much to his credit, he had come out earlier to affirm he was clearly on track to win the votes and to insist that all ballots be counted. Kamal Harris introduced him with a speech of her own.

Both speeches were solid examples of a good performance in the particular moment of acknowledging victory and giving a celebratory feel with conciliatory rhetorical gestures toward the LOSERS. Even Abraham Lincoln in the conclusion his Inaugural Address of March 4, 1861, when the Confederate status were already in open military rebellion, struck a famously conciliatory note in his conclusion:

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

What the Confederate side did in response to Lincoln's rhetorical olive branch was to fire on Fort Sumpter and initiate a full-blown war. He even later conceded that he perhaps should have been less conciliatory in the days that followed his inauguration. But the conciliatory posture was in the Inaugural Address was good statesmanship and good politics.

PBS Newshour's transcript is here.

Harris's speech was mainly celebratory and focused on introducing Biden as a promising and decent President. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris delivers speech ahead of Joe Biden ABC News 11/07/2020:

She also rightly stressed the significance of her election as a black, South Asian woman:

Asian, White, Latina, and Native American women throughout our nation’s history who have paved the way for this moment tonight.

Women who fought and sacrificed so much for equality, liberty, and justice for all, including the Black women, who are too often overlooked, but so often Prove that they are the backbone of our democracy.

All the Women who worked to secure and protect the right to vote for over a century: 100 years ago with the 19th Amendment, 55 years ago with the Voting Rights Act, and now, in 2020, with a new generation of women in our country who cast their ballots and continued the fight for their fundamental right to vote and be heard.

This is a democratic (small-d and large-D) way to celebrate real democratic progress while recognizing it was achieved through serious effort against real obstacles.

She gave the following policy signals:

No matter who you voted for, I will strive to be the Vice President that Joe was to President Obama — loyal, honest, and prepared, waking up every day thinking of you and your families. Because now is when the real work begins.

The Hard work. The Necessary work. The Good work.

The essential work to save lives and beat this pandemic.

To rebuild our economy so it works for working people.

To root out systemic racism in our justice system and society.

To combat the climate crisis.

To unite our country and heal the soul of our nation.

The road ahead will not be easy.

But America is ready. And so are Joe and I.

I do have a reservation about the "brunch liberalism" style she uses in this speech, celebrating her personal example for women and minorities but not mentioning any commitment to policy initiatives to expand opportunities for women or recognize particularly challenges of the pandemic and the depression that have disproportionately negative effects for women. Sarah Palin and Joni Ernst are also examples of women who achieved notable fame and success in politics while committing themselves to policies that reduce women's opportunities and restrict their rights.

Also, when if ever will the Democratic Party revive the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment?

Biden jogged onto the stage to deliver his speech. Joe Biden's full speech after becoming president-elect ABC News 11/07/2020:

PBS Newshour's transcript is here.

Biden's speech included these passages:

I pledge to be a President who seeks not to divide, but to unify.

Who doesn’t see Red and Blue states, but a United States.

And who will work with all my heart to win the confidence of the whole people.

For that is what America is about: The people. ...

It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric.

To lower the temperature.

To see each other again.

To listen to each other again.

To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.

We are not enemies. We are Americans.

Muna Duzdar, a Social Democratic Member of the Austrian Parliament, translated a few of those lines into German for an 11/08/2020 Facebook post.

Of coure, there has been no sign from the Republican Party or their Great Leader the Mango Mussolini that they intend to present anything but fundamental opposition to the Biden-Harris Administration.

Biden did mention some important themes, and even used the word "mandate":

Now that the campaign is over — what is the people’s will? What is our mandate?

I believe it is this: Americans have called on us to marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness. To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.

The battle to control the virus.

The battle to build prosperity.

The battle to secure your family’s health care.

The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.

The battle to save the climate.

The battle to restore decency, defend democracy, and give everybody in this country a fair shot.

Our work begins with getting COVID under control.

The Democratic base has a real challenge in holding Biden and the Democrats in Congress to the program they ran on. But Donald Trump is on his way out of the Presidency.

The Kamala Harris pick

Joe Biden has picked California Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate. Harris is safely establishment, though with a more liberal streak than Biden has shown for most of his career. Progressive hero (and my former Congresswoman) Barbara Lee supported her Presidential bid in the primaries.

Vice Presidential picks generate media interest. Their actual effects on the outcome of the Presidential election is much more dubious. Lyndon Johnson in 1960 was arguably important in attracting Southern voters to the Kennedy ticket during the waning years of the Solid South, i.e., when the South generally voted Democratic in the Presidential elections. The polls in 2008 indicated that Sarah Palin's presence on the Republican ticket actually hurt McCain's Presidential bid. George McGovern's ill-fated initial selection of Stuart Symington as his running mate didn't help his 1972 campaign, but he was facing huge odds in any case.

Harris will be the first black woman on a major party ticket in the US and the first Asian-American. How capable a campaigner she will be in the general election remains to be seen. Ironically, her strongest moment during the primaries was her shot at Joe Biden during a debate over his record on busing for school desegregation in the 1970s. The Vice Presidential nominee is automatically considered a top contender for the top of the party ticket next time around. And there is a good chance that if he wins, Biden will not stand for re-election in 2024.

Obviously, Biden-Harris is a far superior ticket to the disastrous Bunker Boy-Mike Pence one. Trump and Pence have gone a long way in damaging democracy and the rule of law. They've also shown the stunning incompetence in governance and shabby corruption that are also typical features of authoritarian governments. There's no serious doubt that Biden and Harris will do a better job on the COVID-19 crisis and will not display the kind of blundering, incoherence, and shameless bigotry we've had in the Bunker Boy Administration.

One real concern I have about Harris as the VP candidate is that the single most important task for a Biden Administration when it comes to the rule of law will be to hold members of the Trump Administration who committed serious crimes in their official position legally accountable. The Obama-Biden Administration notoriously adopted a look-forward-not-backward position on official crimes of the Cheney-Bush Administration, including the torture crimes. As Don Froomkin wrote in 2011 (Is Torture In America’s Future As Well As In Our Country’s Past? Huffington Post 2011):

[Obama] But he has also repeatedly expressed his desire to “look forward instead of looking backward.” As a result, there has yet to be any accountability for the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration. And none appears forthcoming.

And without accountability — without either criminal prosecutions or some sort of official national reckoning of what took place — there’s no reason to think that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, some other president or vice president will not decide to torture again.

The de facto impunity for serious official crimes the Obama-Biden Administration gave to their predecessors was very obviously taken by Trump and the Republican Party as a license to consider themselves above the law and the Constitution. The Republicans are certainly willing to use laws against Democrats; Trump just publicly accused Obama of having committed treason. But for the Republican Party to make partisan prosecutions against Democrats and leftwing protesters while the Democratic Party adopts a policy of refusing to enforce the law against actual Republican violators is not the rule of law.

And Harris' record raises serious doubts about whether Harris is willing to enforce the law against the rich and powerful on an equal basis.

Carla Marinucci reported on charges that Harris was soft on accountability for misconduct by big banks during the mortgage crisis in New book whacks Kamala Harris’ AG record during housing crisis Politico 10/22/2019:

Kamala Harris catapulted to Democratic stardom on a narrative based on her role as California’s attorney general during the housing crisis, when she was an unrelenting adversary of big banks and mortgage lenders, and a champion of consumers.

But a new book by Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter Aaron Glantz challenges that storyline, arguing that Harris not only allowed Steve Mnuchin’s OneWest bank to get away with foreclosing on tens of thousands of state homeowners, but then tried to bury the evidence.

The book, titled “Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall St. Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions of Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream,’’ was published this week by Custom House.

It posits that a group of Wall Street moguls including Trump Cabinet appointees Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, as well as White House insiders like Steve Schwarzman and Tom Barrack, took advantage of “a rigged system” to transfer billions of dollars from individual homeowners into their own pockets during the Great Recession.

Sam Seder interviewed Aaron Glantz on this topic in 2019, Why Didn't Kamala Harris Prosecute Steve Mnuchin? The Majority Report 11/05/2019:

David Dayen wrote about the Mnuchin case in Treasury Nominee Steve Mnuchin's Bank Accused of "Widespread Misconduct" in Leaked Memo The Intercept 01/03/2017.

The PBS Newshour has a sketch of her as the VP pick, Kamala Harris’ path to the Democratic presidential ticket 08/11/2020.

They also include this discussion of how she is likely to play out as the nominee, What Kamala Harris offers the Biden campaign as VP nominee 08/12/2020. This segment strikes me as a notably sympathetic presentation. Gushing, even:

One thing to keep in mind is that Harris' political career has been based in safely Democratic and generally liberal-leaning California. How her pragmatic political approach plays out on a national scene is mostly still to be seen. Her first run for San Francisco District Attorney is worth remembering. Lee Fang covered it in In Her First Race, Kamala Harris Campaigned as Tough on Crime - and Unseated the Country's Most Progressive Prosecutor The Intercept 02/07/2019:

Many in San Francisco view the campaign as a defining moment for Harris, who carefully cultivated a base of support among police officers, domestic violence advocates, wealthy donors, and a diverse range of local officials and community leaders who had bristled at [Terence] Hallinan’s leftist politics and abrasive style.

The 2003 race stands apart from the image she has projected in more recent years. Far from the “smart on crime” mantra she touted in her successful bid to become California’s attorney general or promoting her efforts to hold corporations accountable when she ran for the U.S. Senate, Harris’s first campaign reflected familiar tactics in an era of booming mass incarceration. [my emphasis]

He also reports on a disturbing difference in Harris' approach as San Francisco District Attorney to the problems of people abused by Catholic priests in As San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris's Office Stopped Cooperating with Victims of Catholic Church Child Abuse The Intercept 06/09/2019.

Establishment Democrats are sorely tempted to assume that the current surge in civil rights activism around the issue of wanton police murders of black people will automatically benefit the Democrats. And in 2020, it almost certainly will. However, highly engaged activists are a minority of voters. We saw the Democratic vote drop significantly in 2010 as the presence of an African-American Democrat in the White House energized the Republicans and Obama's studied moderation - including the ridiculous Simpson-Bowles Catfood Commission - fell short of the hopeful vision of 2016.

Even more devastating, after eight years of seeing Obama slammed around by the Republicans in Congress with no comparable pushback from the Democrats, low turnout in the key Midwestern swing states among Democratic-leaning African-American voters. Black voters may vote "defensively," as the pundits repeatedly told us in the leadup to the South Carolina Democratic primary this year. But that's not enough if they don't turn out to turn.

Politically, 2020 is a stunningly favorable year for even a Democratic ticket of Status Quo Joe the crime bill guy and Kamala the Cop. But even if Biden wins, not being Donald Trump will just not be enough for the Democratic Party in 2022 and also not in 2024, even if Bunker Boy himself heads the Republican ticket that year.

Doing something meaningful and visible to cut down on arbitrary police murders is one essential thing they need to do to avoid discouraging young voters and African-American voters. Mandatory federal reviews of questionable killings on the part of police is essential. But neither that or anything else is going to be supported by Republicans or the various police lobbies. And that means any meaningful action will require a Biden-Harris Administration to put up a real fight for it. Meaningless gestures like "more funding for bias training" are little more that a declaration of indifference in the current moment.

Making a real fight for improvement on that front will go strongly against the past political practices of both Biden and Harris which they have seen as being succesful for them. I hope the popular pressure will be enough to persuade them to jump that particular shark and take on a new perspective.

What we don't need from her in the campaign or as Vice President are cringe-worthy moments like this one of her giggling weirdly about draconian threats against parents of student with truancy issues. Kamala Harris Laughed About Jailing Parents Of Truant Kids The Rational national 01/31/2019:

Joy Reid gave Harris' selection the kind of glowing treatment we can expect to see her receive during the Presidential campaign on MSNBC, Joe Biden Picks Sen. Kamala Harris As The Running Mate To Defeat A Trump-Pence Ticket 08/12/2020: