Kamala Harris can’t stop America’s pivot to the far-right

Hannan Hussain 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

Kamala Harris didn’t show much resolve when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that he had no chance of defeating Trump.

After US President Joe Biden showed the world he was increasingly unfit to challenge Republican rival Donald Trump in the November polls, Kamala Harris looks set to clinch Democratic nomination and take initiative. But in a party where scores of Democrats pressured their own president to drop his re-election campaign, how assuring is Harris against the far-right?

Let's be clear. What they refuse to answer is this simple question: will Kamala Harris’s lackluster bid for presidency turn America’s fortunes around? This is a country that is fast pivoting towards the far-right in a deeply polarized political space, and growing support for Trump suggests that is exactly what the nation wants. 

Look no further than Trump’s push for “national unity” in his first address since the assassination attempt. It takes a figure who helped fuel white nationalism in America, integrated hate speech and vitriol into presidential rhetoric, castigated hard-working immigrants and showed a temperament to tolerate rampant racism, Islamophobia, and divisive politics to preach cosmetic values of unity on the national stage. If the Democrats are so keen on projecting Trump as a threat to Americans, what explains the citizenry’s surging support for that very threat? 

Make no mistake. The seeds of division were sown long before Trump made his way to the top. Influences of imperialism, democratic exceptionalism, and selective diversity were already rooted in America’s decades-old history of destruction and mayhem beyond its borders. The vast disparities, income inequalities, structural discrimination, and white supremacy that are on display today were years in the making but masked through rhetoric on democracy and so-called values. Trump is simply the product of that fractured democratic system where the best choice for leadership now swings between a convicted felon and a Democrat attorney who shoulders the blame for Biden’s shambolic governance. 

Capitulation to the far-right is glaring proof that the US has made its choice. Kamala Harris didn’t show much resolve when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that he had no chance of defeating Trump. For a candidate who now claims to take on Trump with confidence, her lack of prior initiative is self-contradicting. Some claim that Harris’s profile as a prosecutor could dent Trump’s far-right appeal, but it didn’t make much of a difference in 2020. This is the same exaggeration and tall rhetoric that tanked the Democratic party.

The truth is that both Conservatives and self-proclaimed ‘liberals’ have empowered the far-right to lay claim to America and expose its real face to the world. The recent past removes all doubt. Over the past four years, Biden and Harris endorsed their own administration’s contested claims on jobs, inflation control, loan relief, cultural coexistence and other key issues, while turning a blind eye to simmering public frustrations that now find their way into Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ – MAGA – populist agenda. 

On the back of limited performance gains and tall liberal rhetoric, expect a more radical, violent, divisive and hyper-charged extremist MAGA agenda to grace America’s domestic and foreign policies. Much of it is also courtesy of an empty Democratic administration that failed to strike a principled contrast to its Republican establishment.

Meanwhile, the future icons of so-called American democracy are lining up to take charge, so take note. This includes the hard-right strategist and disgraced Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who is convinced that the ‘MAGA army' is now ready to take up positions, despite being confined to prison walls and leading a legacy of scandals, racism, and mass corruption. “I've served my country now for the last 10 or so years focusing on this,” said Bannon, referring to politics and Trump's MAGA mantra. “If I have to do it in a prison, I do it in a prison - it makes no difference at all.” Bannon is among other Trump loyalists who celebrate maneuvers around America’s struggling legal system, muster pride from disgrace, and are now determined to bank on Trump’s victory prospects to ensure American isolation on the world stage.

So come at Harris all they want, America is full of leadership hopefuls who have leadership limitations and a short-sighted view of public grievances. For instance, Trump’s premature pick for Vice President – James David Vance – is simply rebranding Trump’s vitriol against progressive Americans to fight for the so-called “working class.” This is akin to Trump’s agenda when he pushed to sow divisions between the two classes during his last presidential term. 

By joining Trump’s bandwagon, Vance makes clear that those who make it to the top of the leadership ladder in America will happily trade off agency and independent judgment to back the ambitions of their superiors. In Harris’s case, this is exactly what Democrats did. After all, her limitations didn’t dawn this year: they were evident ever since she partnered with Biden to rise to power, whether on the foreign policy front or through public campaigning. But Democrats chose to overlook those limitations because it was opportune to do so. Now the fanfare may come to bite them.

And thus, it is clear: opportunism strikes at the heart of the American democracy project.