President Joe Biden’s decision to end his re-election campaign has evoked shock and many questions in the American political landscape. At the same time, he endorsed the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor, calling on Democrats to rally around her.
The new reality of the Democratic Party
Now Democrats need to consolidate around a new candidate and unite their efforts if they want to defeat Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the primary candidates to replace Biden, especially after she received the president’s endorsement. The fact is that it is unclear whether Harris will lead the list of candidates from the Democratic Party – both the US and world media are writing about this quite a bit. It is the delegates of the Democratic National Convention who will determine and vote for their presidential candidate. A new candidate will be chosen at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, when more than 4,000 delegates (party officials and activists) will gather to vote. According to rules of the Democratic National Committee, delegates can propose a new candidate from the party if they receive the signatures of 300 fellow delegates, as well as a confirmation signature from the proposed candidate. But the party is likely to rally around Harris to present a united front.
Nevertheless, it initially seems that the Democratic Party is rallying around Harris and that she will be able to win the nomination. At the same time, however, there are strong concerns about whether Harris, 59, or any other Democratic candidate will be able to defeat Trump less than four months before the November elections. After all, Trump is currently in the lead in all opinion polls in the United States, especially after Joe Biden’s decision.
Although change is fraught with risks, the new candidate can mobilise Democratic voters who had previously come to terms with the uphill battle to defeat Trump at a time when he is at an advantage over Biden across states. Before leaving, Biden was scheduled to meet with Republican candidate Trump for the second consecutive presidential election. Mina Bose, a political science professor at Hofstra University, said that while it’s risky to switch candidates so close to the election, a shake-up at the top of the Democratic Party’s list could boost its chances.
What we know about Kamala Harris
Harris, 59, was born in Oakland, California, to an Indian-born mother and a Jamaican father. She studied at Howard University in Washington, D.C. before receiving her law degree from the University of California, San Francisco College of Law. She started working in the Alameda County District Attorney’s office. In 2003, she became the District Attorney of San Francisco. Later in 2010, she was elected Attorney General of California, the top law enforcement official of the state, and was re-elected four years later.
She was elected to the US Senate in 2016 and became a leading critic of Trump, especially vis-à-vis his immigration policy. Her aggressive questioning of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 helped solidify her reputation as one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party. Harris is married to lawyer Doug Emhoff, who became the first ‘second gentleman’ in US history following the 2020 election. Harris and Emhoff have no children.
Harris initially ran for the White House in the 2020 election, but quickly retreated during the primaries after lacklustre debate performances. As Biden consolidated his leadership in 2020, he vowed that he would choose a woman as his partner. Choosing Harris was seen as an attempt to appeal to black voters and boost the party’s base. Harris’ reputation in law enforcement and her centrist approach were also seen as assets that could distract undecided voters from Trump. During the 2019 debate, Harris also challenged Biden on the issue of race, which, according to many, could have deprived her of the chance to become vice president.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Jennifer Victor, professor at George Mason University, called Harris ‘a very typical vice president’. Harris has largely supported the Biden administration’s policies, including on immigration, gun control and abortion. In particular, Harris was tasked with leading efforts to curb migration from Central America. “Figures for her popularity weren’t too high, but she also didn’t get much press coverage”, Victor said.
Will she be able to defeat Trump? This remains a big question for Democrats. Reporting from Washington, Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher said that although Biden supported Harris, this does not mean that she will receive support from the Democratic Party, which has less than a month left before the start of the congress. Recent polls conducted after Biden’s weak performance in the debate against Trump did not show that Harris was more likely than Biden to defeat Trump in November. Harris supporters argue that the polls may change now that Biden is out of the race. For example, an Economist/YouGov poll released last week showed Biden losing to Trump 41% to 43% and Harris losing to Trump 39% to 44%.
Kamala Harris’ political preferences
It is expected that if Kamala Harris she wins the November elections, she will mostly adhere to Joe Biden’s foreign policy on key issues such as Ukraine, China and Iran, but may toughen the rhetoric in relations with Israel over the war in Gaza. As the obvious front-runner for the nomination after Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed her, Harris will bring her work experience, personal connections forged with world leaders and an understanding of global affairs acquired during her time in the Senate and as Biden’s deputy. According to analysts, Harris’ presidency will resemble the second Biden administration in a number of global priorities. “She may be a more energetic player, but one thing should not be expected: any immediate major changes in the essence of Biden’s foreign policy”, said Aaron David Miller, a former negotiator on the Middle East from the Democratic and Republican administrations.
Harris made it clear, for example, that she would not abandon Biden’s firm support for NATO and would continue to actively support the war in Ukraine against Russia. This is in stark contrast to former President Trump’s promise to fundamentally change US relations with NATO and the doubts he expressed about future arms supplies to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
If Harris becomes her party’s standard-bearer and can overcome Trump’s lead in pre-election opinion polls and win the White House, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be high on her agenda, especially if the war in Gaza drags on. Although she mostly echoed Biden’s strong support for Israel’s right to self-defence as vice president, at times she was slightly ahead of the president in criticising Israel’s military approach. In March, she sharply criticised Israel, saying it was not doing enough to mitigate a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ during its ground offensive in the Palestinian enclave. Later that month, she did not rule out negative ‘consequences’ for Israel if it launched a full-scale invasion of the refugee-crowded Rafah in southern Gaza.
Analysts say such language raises the possibility that Harris (as president) may at least take a tougher rhetorical stance on Israel than Biden. While her 81-year-old boss has a long history of dealing with successive Israeli leaders and has even called himself a ‘Zionist’, Harris, 59, lacks an internal personal connection to the country.
She maintains closer ties with Democratic progressives, some of whom insisted that Biden put forward conditions for the supply of US weapons to Israel out of concern about the heavy casualties among the Palestinian civilian population in the conflict in Gaza.
But analysts do not expect a big shift in US policy toward Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East. Halie Soifer, who served as Harris’ national security adviser during the first two years (2017-2018) of the then-Senator’s tenue in Congress, said Harris’ support for Israel was as strong as Biden’s. “There really wasn’t any daylight between the two of them”, she said.
Viktor Mikhin, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
