After the euphoria that followed her spectacular entry as the new Democratic candidate for the November presidential election in the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris will seek to keep the flame alive around her candidacy, all week in Chicago where the Democratic National Convention opens. The event must symbolically confirm her new status, while staging the passing of the baton that Joe Biden made, to everyone’s surprise and in the heart of summer, by withdrawing from the race.
But the exercise remains delicate for the vice-president who, while trying to breathe a more positive tone into the current electoral campaign, remains confronted with divisions within her party as well as a political record that could weaken her beyond the political high point this week.
“Replacing Joe Biden with someone younger and more energetic was bound to bring some dynamism and optimism to the Democratic Party,” University of Chicago political scientist Anthony Fowler said in an interview. “But challenges remain for Kamala Harris, who has been a historically unpopular vice president, as Joe Biden is. She also doesn’t have a long list of policy accomplishments to boast about during her campaign, which could end up making her candidacy a little weaker than Democrats would like.”
Expectations are high for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who have been on a roll for the past few weeks, turning the tide in a Democratic campaign mired in a physical weakening of Joe Biden and the prospect of a rematch with populist Donald Trump.
The duo now hopes to make the major Democratic political gathering in Chicago one of the most optimistic in the party’s recent history and, above all, one of the most unifying, like the one that led to Barack Obama’s first coronation in 2008.
In 2016, the Democratic convention was torn apart by the divisions induced during the primaries and the heartbreaking victory, for several members of the party, of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate, defeated a few months later by Donald Trump. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a necessarily distant convention. The entrance on the scene of Kamala Harris at the head of the Democratic ticket once again places the Democratic convention on a historical and symbolic framework that will confirm the rise of the first African-American woman of South Asian descent at the head of one of the two major American political parties.
A fine line
“Many voters have high hopes for Harris and Walz because they are different and they represent change,” said Corwin Smidt, a political science professor at Michigan State University. “The convention must therefore find the right balance to keep that image and perception alive, while ensuring that it does not put forward ideas that risk offending the Democratic electoral base.” A varied base, sometimes militant, and several components of which have decided to make themselves heard all week in the streets of Chicago to remind their new presidential candidate of their concerns.
At least six protests and rallies are planned throughout the week, led by a coalition of nearly 200 groups that plan to disrupt the party, particularly by reminding that Israel’s war on Gaza has still not ended and that its persistence risks costing Democrats votes next November, with the Biden-Harris administration regularly accused of supporting Israel in its asymmetric war against the Palestinian people.
“We can’t win against Donald Trump if we don’t have all the voters with us,” Asma Mohammed, one of the 11 Minnesota delegates who will attend the convention without having yet officially declared their support for Kamala Harris, recently summarized in the digital pages of Politico. There are 5,000 delegates who will be present this week. The vice president and her running mate were already elected as the Democratic candidates in a roll call vote held virtually earlier this month, in which 99% of delegates voted in their favor.
Mohammed said the war could hurt voter turnout in the working-class, multicultural “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that Democrats need to keep the keys to the White House. “We’re going to go into this campaign with a divided party if we don’t tackle this issue head on,” he said.
Changing perceptions
While keeping an ear to these demands, the Democratic convention will nevertheless seek to promote the idea that Kamala Harris has been trying to install for weeks in the minds of voters, namely that the vote next November should become a vote in favor of her candidacy rather than a vote against the opposing camp. A logic of rejection, often motivated by hatred and disinformation, which, in both the Democratic and Republican camps, has become one of the foundations of political engagement for a significant portion of voters.
The Democratic political high mass also suggests a strong affirmation of the party’s unity in the face of Donald Trump’s persistent populism, with the presence of several former presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as Joe Biden, at the opening of the event on Monday evening. Jason Carter is also scheduled to speak on behalf of his grandfather, Jimmy Carter, 99.
By comparison, the Republican convention last July was notable for the absence of historic party figures, who were clearly not inclined to publicly support the candidate’s candidacy in the race.
“The tone of the campaign has certainly changed with Kamala Harris,” Fowler says, but the convention is likely to follow a classic framework, focusing on praising the candidate and criticizing her Republican opponent, he predicts. “If Harris could convince voters that she’s more moderate than her track record suggests, that would probably have a significant effect on the rest of her campaign,” he says, “but I’m not sure she can, or even wants to, do that convincingly.”
The Democratic convention will rock the walls of Chicago’s United Center through next Thursday.
This report was financed with the support of the Transat International Journalism Fund-The Duty.
