US Vice President Kamala Harris, running for President after her boss Joe Biden exited the race on July 20, must be wondering why the day does not have 30 hours instead of 24. With less than 100 days to go for the November 5 election, Harris is faced with three major tasks, and one of which has to be completed by Monday, August 5.
Here are the three challenges before her:
Pick a vote-magnet Vice Presidential running mate
Finalise a policy document that includes solutions to unemployment, inflation, immigration, healthcare, Chinese business and military aggression, the Middle East crisis, and Russia.
Lay out a palatable vision for the American public, especially the non-Democrats, to vote for her.
Harris’ first challenge — her potential vice president — is important because she is not a grassroots leader like Biden, or Barack Obama still is, eight years after he left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If former First Lady Michelle Obama suddenly decided to run, Harris will have to back out the next moment. Nor does she have the radical, ideological support that Trump enjoys within the Republican fold (you could argue that Trump’s Republican Party has no resemblance to Ronald Reagan’s or even of the two Bushes, but it is what it is).
Even if the Democratic Party is energised after Biden’s withdrawal from a “no hope” situation to “at least it looks like we have a chance” scenario, Harris will need a natiowide vote-puller among both the liberals as well as the fence-sitters. An important endorsement came on Wednesday from Kevin Gaughen, a little-known founder of the US Liberal Party, who has exhorted non-Democrats to vote for Harris not because he is totally convinced about her candidacy, but because he wants to keep Trump out of the White House.
This is perhaps the most important aspect of this election for non-Republicans: How to keep Trump from winning.
Thankfully, for Harris, the numbers are not looking bad in just 10 days. A new Bloomberg poll released on July 31 shows that in the seven swing states of Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, the Democrat is leading Trump in the first five. In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, she is trailing 46-50 and 46-48 respectively. This is not a difficult gap to bridge, provided she announces a strong Veep candidate on Monday.
Once she crosses the first hurdle, the next one is the toughest of the three: announcing a policy framework that substantively approaches the inflation, unemployment, and immigration questions and one that provides adequate, measurable, and most important, marketable solutions. In this, Harris has a distinct advantage: Trump hasn’t the foggiest about policymaking, while she has been a technocrat all her professional life.
America has been facing the inflation bubble for nearly three years now, leading to the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates to unprecedented levels. Prices of groceries and living expenses have skyrocketed and the urban poor have had to work a minimum of two jobs on subsistence wage just to make rent or pay their bills. Crimes in major cities such as San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, etc, are almost unmanageable. Most of the robbers have no prior convictions, and are often first-time offenders. When they vote this November, the electorate will demand safety at home rather than asking their candidates what Washington’s relationship with Beijing or Moscow would be.
Democrats and Republicans have not seen eye-to-eye on two important issues affecting American life: healthcare and immigration. While Trump’s approach has always been exclusionary, the Obama healthcare doctrine has been to make healthcare and immigration accessible. The second part, especially, affects hundreds and thousands of Indians who have immigrated on professional visas to the US. Many of them are waitlisted for eternity for the elusive Green Card (the average wait time is over 100 years at present), leave alone citizenship. The post-Covid IT sector bust has meant that thousands of such people or their children face deportation to their home countries, with which they have neither any cultural or geographical connection with anymore.
Obama and the Democratic Party have been working on laws favouring immigrants and their families since 2008; yet, the vagaries of the US Congress (Parliament) have meant that such bills will always feel the Republican heat, resulting in, at best, a stalemate, and at worst, a “Go back to India” situation. Neither is desirable.
A Trump presidency would mean that the emboldened Republicans would double down on their anti-immigration policies, thus excluding millions from the mainstream and potentially hurting America’s competitiveness in the high-tech sector and in innovation.
Harris’ challenge here is to create a consensus among the non-Republicans. If the House of Representatives, where the Republicans enjoy a slender majority, returns to the Democrats this November, it will be a rare chance for Harris and Co to push through their pro-immigration and pro-affordable healthcare bills. It is unlikely, of course, but it is a possibility.
The last challenge for Harris and her running mate is to put forward a vision for America that endures beyond her four-year term. The last time this happened was with Candidate Obama, who was a genuine game-changer: he was black, he was young, and he had ideas that provided hope to millions of American voters. Neither Trump in 2016 nor Biden in 2020 could do that. Harris has an opportunity.
The thing is, Trump is a master marketer; Harris isn’t. Trump has managed to build a base out of hatred for liberal ideas and demonising the Democratic Party, not on account of any policy proposals. Strip his words off these projections, and you have nothing. Compared to him, even George W Bush sounds like a Mensa genius. But his words sell. His threats resonate with his base, and he has managed to become a vote-puller that no one in his party dare challenge.
It will be to Harris’ advantage, therefore, that she presents a comprehensive vision with a catchy slogan to the American public. In double quick time. The US needs one.
Sachin Kalbag, Senior Fellow at The Takshashila Institution, is a former Washington Correspondent and editor of Indian newspapers. Email: sachin@takshashila.org.in. Twitter: @SachinKalbag
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