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      U.S. convention season is done — but here’s why the marquee political events, past and present, are critical

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      Given the days of political pageantry at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago have come to an end, it’s an opportune time to examine parallels to past conventions — particularly those in the Windy City, a locale that has long been the grounds for historic political coronations.

      In the decades following Abraham Lincoln’s nomination in 1860, Chicago became a convention hotspot for both Republicans and Democrats. Politicians that include Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton were nominated as their parties’ presidential candidates in the city.

      While the Republicans have held more conventions in Chicago to date, they haven’t held one there since 1960, when Nixon first ran for president. That’s likely because the state of Illinois is a longtime Democratic stronghold.

      But whether they’ve been held in Chicago or elsewhere, Vanderbilt University historian Nicole Hemmer says conventions used to take place “in smoke-filled rooms by just the elites… [where] powerful party leaders needed to gather in the same place to decide who the nominee should be.”

      Times have changed in the 21st century.

      A new era

      Those who oversaw this year’s Democratic National Convention included Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former public school teacher and fierce advocate for racial equality.

      Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson speaking on the first day of the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024, in Chicago.
      (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

      There are few similarities between Johnson and former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, the pugilistic police supporter and Democratic Party kingmaker who notoriously ordered “shoot-to-kill” edicts on protesters at the 1968 Chicago convention.

      With the ongoing war in Gaza, there were certain parallels between the 2024 convention and the 1968 event, since a major war is raging again halfway around the world.

      But there are some key differences, most notably the fact that no U.S. ground troops are deployed in the region, notwithstanding many U.S. military bases located in places nearby.

      2024 not as tumultuous as 1968

      The whole world was watching the Democratic National Convention in 1968, but was that the case for either the Democratic or Republican conventions in 2024? And did Americans care as much as they did in 1968?

      Thousands of demonstrators showed up to protest the Democratic convention in 1968, and hundreds were arrested. Protesters included predominantly white college students from the Students for a Democratic Society, sexually free “Yippies,” Black Panther Party members and Puerto Rican Young Lords.

      All opposed police brutality and the war in Vietnam. Their demonstrations followed a tumultuous spring in Chicago, when its west side erupted in anger over racial inequality and the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tenn. The Republican convention in Miami earlier that summer, meanwhile, was largely peaceful and orderly.

      Read more:
      Kamala Harris chooses running mate in the heat of another long, hot summer in American politics

      The year 1968 also saw the beginning of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Though a tactical defeat for the North Vietnamese fighting the U.S.-backed south, the offensive led to a tremendous amount of scrutiny about American tactics in the Vietnam War.

      American GIs were increasingly coming home in body bags — 3,800 alone during the offensive. Along with the ongoing domestic unrest, the first few months of 1968 were exceedingly tumultuous — arguably much more chaotic than 2024.

      Chicago police attempt to disperse demonstrators outside the Conrad Hilton, the downtown headquarters for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968.
      (AP Photo/Michael Boyer)

      War as an issue: 1968 vs 2024

      Thousands also descended upon Chicago in 2024 to protest America’s support of Israel’s attack on Gaza, but only dozens — not hundreds — were arrested by mid-week. The focus of the convention was not the war in Gaza.

      By comparison, the 1968 Democratic convention was heavily focused on the Vietnam War, given the anti-war platforms of Democratic contender Eugene McCarthy and the late Robert F. Kennedy, the party front-runner who was assassinated down two months earlier following a campaign speech.

      Hubert Humphrey addresses the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968.
      (AP Photo)

      Lyndon B. Johnson’s heir apparent, Hubert Humphrey, won the party’s nomination before later losing to Republican Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election. But the Vietnam War and its impact on American life remained on centre stage.

      Kamala Harris’s candidacy, on the other hand, hasn’t dealt with any major internal party policy differences moving toward the election in November — and a stand-off with MAGA Republicans. And regardless of who wins in November, it isn’t likely the war in Gaza will be a major focal point for the American public — polls suggest inflation is by far their biggest concern.

      Conventions have changed, but still matter

      Conventions are certainly not decided by a bunch of white men smoking in closed rooms anymore. But even though representation has improved vastly from earlier eras, as well as more transparent processes of delegate selection and nominations, there can still be a sense that things have already been decided once conventions roll around.

      In fact, since at least the 1970s, tickets have largely been determined before the conventions begin.

      Both major parties in 2024 ran their conventions with the nominee already decided for all intents and purposes, though the Democrats cut it close by shifting dramatically to Harris earlier this summer after President Joe Biden, under pressure from the party, opted not to run for a second term.

      Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations in New York City in February 1965.
      (AP Photo)

      The year 1952 was the last time a presidential nominee — Democrat Adlai Stevenson — needed more than one ballot for the nomination at the convention, held, once again, in Chicago.

      He won in the third round of voting to become the nominee, but lost to Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in the presidential election.

      Still, contemporary observers argue that conventions are still important and allow for some political movements to make an impact.

      Marquette University politics professor Julia Azari explains:

      “If we look at the history of modern conventions, it’s tempting to dismiss the large, in-person gatherings of power players from around the country as pageantry. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that conventions have played an important role for some wings of the party, who may disagree with party leadership and want to attract media attention for themselves.”

      She points to the critical 1964 Democratic convention, held in the midst of the Civil Rights era, when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) challenged the all-white delegation from Mississippi, since Black people had been banned from party meetings in the state, where voting restrictions also prevented many from casting ballots in elections.

      By the time the Democratic convention of 1968 rolled around, a group of former MFDP delegates succeeded at being the sole Mississippi delegates to the DNC.

      Fannie Lou Hamer, a leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, testifies before the credentials committee of the Democratic National Convention in August 1964.
      (AP Photo)

      Looking ahead

      Sixty years later in 2024 and in the wake of both the Republican and Democratic conventions, similar movements that seek to end wars, address environmental catastrophe, fight for reproductive rights or end racial inequality will hopefully continue to find openings at conventions to have their voices heard.

      Perhaps future conventions will run more virtually, as was the case in 2020 when both parties were forced to go entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Maybe there will be reforms to the primary system of selection or to campaign finance measures that are troublesome to some voters.

      Either way, convention season will continue to both offend and excite those of us who follow politics closely as we consider the past, present and future of these critical events. More

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      RFK Jr faces call for investigation into claim he chainsawed whale’s head off

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      His independent White House campaign has fizzled, but the flow of bizarre stories of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s unorthodox handling of the carcasses of wild mammals has experienced no similar suspension.An environmental group is calling for a federal investigation into the former presidential candidate for an episode in which he allegedly severed the head of a washed-up whale with a chainsaw – and drove home with it strapped to his car’s roof.The episode has parallels with another extraordinary tale reported earlier in August in which Kennedy confessed to dumping a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park and attempted to make it look like the animal was killed by a bicyclist.The latest grisly revelation, about the whale head, is not particularly new – it stems from a 2012 interview Kennedy’s daughter Kick gave to Town & Country magazine, in which she talks about a visit to other family members of the political dynasty in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, more than two decades prior.But the story’s re-emergence, following the bear tale and other off-the-wall declarations – including claims that part of RFK Jr’s brain was eaten by worms and that he had an apparent fondness for barbecued dog – has angered activists at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. The group previously denounced Kennedy’s candidacy and endorsed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for president.In a letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) this week, Brett Hartl, the organization’s government affairs director and chief political strategist, demanded an inquiry.“Mr Kennedy’s apparent transport of the marine mammal skull from Massachusetts to New York, and therefore across state lines, also represented a felony violation of the Lacey Act, one of the earliest wildlife conservation laws enacted by [the] United States in 1900,” he wrote, adding that it was also illegal to possess part of any animal protected by the endangered species act.“Normally, an unverified anecdote would not provide sufficient evidence as the basis for conducting an investigation. The [bear] story made it seem like this was normal behavior for him, so he may also possess additional illegally collected wildlife parts.”The former Kennedy campaign’s press office did not respond to a request for comment. And Noaa has yet to publicly acknowledge receipt of Hartl’s letter.The somewhat unpleasant recounting by Kick Kennedy – granddaughter of Robert F Kennedy, the assassinated former US attorney general and Kennedy Jr’s father – remains the only documented account of the whale incident.Describing her father’s fascination with animal skulls and skeletons as “eccentric environmentalism”, she tells how the whale washed up on a beach near Hyannis Port and he sped to the scene.“[He] ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York,” she said.“Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet. We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day to day stuff for us.”Hartl, on X, called RFK Jr an “environmental criminal”. In his group’s denouncement of his candidacy, it said “his conspiracy theories go against the science-based foundation of all environmental protections”, and that he was no different from Donald Trump in terms of policy priorities “driven by what will benefit Big Oil and the greedy corporations that fund them”.Kennedy announced he was suspending his presidential campaign last Friday and immediately endorsed Trump. More

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      Why is alleged predator Bill Clinton still welcome in the Democratic party? | Moira Donegan

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      One of the grim lessons of the #MeToo movement and its long backlash is this: whether someone finds a sexual abuse allegation credible largely depends on their pre-existing opinion of the man accused. When a woman comes forward with an account of a man’s mistreatment of her – be it humiliating boorishness, violent rape or any of the range of degradations and hurts that fall along the wide spectrum between – the listener’s response is fairly predictable. If they hate the accused man, they’ll believe his accuser. If they like him, they’ll say it’s bullshit.This rule holds, I am sorry to say, even for women who identify themselves as feminists. It held for Gloria Steinem, the famed feminist now in her 90s, who in 1998 defended Clinton amid his slew of sex scandals and abuse allegations in the pages of the New York Times, dismissing the allegations against him as trivial and making an unconvincing case that the offense she took at similar allegations against Clarence Thomas was different. It held true, most famously, for Bill Clinton’s wife, the liberal feminist icon Hillary Clinton, who has remained silently beside her husband throughout each of the allegations against him – and retained her feminist credibility despite her loyalty to an allegedly abusive man that I can only describe as canine.People who like Bill Clinton, or who find him convenient for their own goals, have a long history of underplaying the multiple allegations of sexual harassment and violence that he faces from at least four women. They say that Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment after the then governor brought her to his hotel room, propositioned her and exposed himself, is lying – even though Jones has multiple corroborating witnesses, and even though her story has not changed in more than 30 years.They say that Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says that Clinton raped her in a hotel room in 1978, when he was Arkansas attorney general, is lying, too – even though Broaddrick, like Jones, told multiple people of Clinton’s attack at the time.They say that Monica Lewinsky, the 22-year-old unpaid intern whom Clinton carried on an affair with in the White House when he was 49 and the most powerful person in the world, technically consented to the sex acts that Clinton asked her to do – an insistence that betrays a startlingly simple-minded and willfully obtuse understanding of sexual ethics.They echo Clinton’s denials of wrongdoing in all these cases, against all these women. That is, at least, what they say when they acknowledge the allegations about Bill Clinton’s conduct at all. Mostly, they ignore them – as Bill Clinton has, as his wife, Hillary Clinton has, and as Bill Clinton’s popular legacy seems to do.Bill Clinton’s supporters ignore his accusers because they can. These women’s dignity, their equality and their right to control their own bodies matter less to them than their esteem for Bill Clinton – less than whether he can deliver a few votes, make a zinger on television or look nice in a suit.On Wednesday night, the third night of the Democratic national convention, the whole party ignored these women when they gave Bill Clinton, a multiply accused alleged sexual harasser and rapist, a rousing welcome at Chicago’s United Center. The former president was given a prime-time speaking spot, trotted out like a prize and applauded like a hero.Are these people not embarrassed? Do they not, at least, take note of the hypocrisy involved? After all, the 2024 election is quickly shaping up to be about gender, with the boorish Trump, creepy, sex-obsessed JD Vance and the radically anti-choice Republican party turning the contest into a referendum on the status of women in American society. Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee who will seek to become the nation’s first female president on election day, has taken on the mantle of the women’s struggle – not only in the symbolism of her candidacy, but in the tenor of her advocacy, in which she has championed the “freedom” of women to control their own bodies and lives.These are noble goals, ones that the Democrats can be proud of pursuing; but they are not commensurate with celebrations of an alleged rapist, with pomp and obsequiousness trotted out for a man who allegedly habitually sexually harassed women who worked for him and carried on an affair with an intern young enough to be his daughter. Sexual abuse, too, is hostile to women’s freedom – the freedom of women to live, work and participate in public without the threat of sexual force. This is a kind of gendered freedom that Bill Clinton has made it abundantly clear that he does not respect.The call for women’s freedom from rape, abuse and harassment has always been the least popular and most politically fraught feminist cause. Abortion has always had more appeal to male voters as a political issue. Misogynist men – in a tradition that extends from the Playboy founder (and alleged rapist) Hugh Hefner to Barstool Sports founder (and alleged perpetrator of sexual assault) Dave Portnoy to former president (and alleged rapist) Bill Clinton – have long supported abortion rights, in part because they understand abortion not as a matter of women’s fundamental freedom and dignity but as a matter of men’s increased sexual access to women and decreased responsibility for the resulting pregnancies.These prurient, sexually entitled misogynists are not all Republicans – rape, and its apologism, have always been bipartisan endeavors – but they are not the kind of voters that Democrats should be courting. A bargain in which women’s right to end a pregnancy is made in exchange for men’s right to rape, harass and abuse women is not an acceptable one. We can do better: we can reach for a version of America in which women are truly free and equal, endowed with all the bodily sovereignty, self-determination and sexual autonomy that men are. That’s not the world that Bill Clinton represents, and it’s not a world that a party that insists on celebrating him can deliver.Bill Clinton has been out of office for nearly three decades. In that time, his once-rosy status as a liberal hero has thankfully dimmed, even if his alleged history of sexual abuse has not played a sufficient role in the reassessment of his reputation. Liberals now rightly look back at Clinton’s crime bill with horror; his devastating cuts to the welfare system were punitive and cruel, hurting women and children the most. He modeled a vision of a conservative Democratic party, one less committed to its principles than in cynically trading them away for a chance at power.His vision of change has failed, and his political project has been revealed as morally bankrupt. It’s not clear that he can even deliver many votes; a large swath of the American electorate is now too young to remember much of his presidency, aside from the sex scandals. It’s time for Democrats to send the old man home. And to tell him to keep his hands to himself.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘January 6 was just the warm-up’: the film that tracks three Maga extremists storming the Capitol

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      Homegrown is a documentary about three American patriots who love their country, revere Donald Trump and balk at the result of the 2020 presidential election. Director Michael Premo spent months trailing his subjects – Chris, Thad and Randy – in the run-up to the attack on the Capitol building of 6 January 2021, and his illuminating, gripping film looks back at a dark period of recent US history. Implicitly, though, it also warns of further unrest.“I think January 6th was just the warm-up,” Premo says. “This November, we’re going to see an even more frantic and desperate attempt to attack every level of the electoral system.” He is not optimistic about the US’s current direction of travel. The country, he argues, is effectively on the brink of civil war.Homegrown premieres in the International Critics’ Week sidebar at this year’s Venice film festival. It is one of a number of campaigning political pictures that could put the event at loggerheads with Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing Italian government. Joining it on the programme is Separated, Errol Morris’s documentary about family separation on the US’s southern border; Dani Rosenberg’s harrowing Gaza-themed drama Of Dogs and Men; and Olha Zhurba’s Songs of Slow Burning Earth, which is billed as an audiovisual diary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.Another highlight, says festival boss Alberto Barbera, will be the epic M: Son of the Century, Joe Wright’s eight-part TV biopic charting the life and times of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whose government established the Venice film festival back in 1932. “And I must add,” Barbera told Variety magazine, “the time it describes has some pretty striking similarities with the present day.”View image in fullscreenLinks with the past are certainly clear in Homegrown, which spotlights a right-wing insurrectionist movement that had flourished on the fringes for decades before finding a new energy and focus under the Maga banner of Trump. Premo, a New York-based film-maker, began researching the documentary in 2018, eventually homing in on his three main protesters. One, Chris Quaglin, is a New Jersey electrician who divides his time between preparing a nursery for his soon-to-be-born son and stocking his “man-cave” with firearms in readiness for war. He says: “An AR-15 and enough people is enough to take our country back.”This, Premo argues, remains a distinct possibility. “Most prominent thinkers still dismiss the idea of civil war, because their reference is an event that occurred in 1860 under a very specific set of circumstances. But that’s discounting the way that modern political violence manifests itself, and particularly the way that sectarian violence plays out around the world. If this was happening in another country, say in Africa or Asia, I think American journalists would already be referring to the situation as a cold civil war. That’s how it feels to me.”Homegrown climaxes with powerful, ground-level footage of the January 6 attack. We see Quaglin in the thick of the action, resplendent in his stars-and-stripes Maga jumpsuit. He is swept up in the moment, storming the DC police by the metal barricades. “Almost a victory, I would say,” he brags afterwards, although this moment of near triumph proves short-lived. Quaglin was later found guilty of assaulting police and obstructing Congress and is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.Premo has spent his career filming direct action protests. January 6 felt different, he says. “This was one of the most well-documented crimes in history. It was planned in public: a collaborative conspiracy involving numerous actors and institutions. Everyone knew it was coming.”View image in fullscreenThe director says he anticipated a massive police presence which would prevent protesters from gaining access to the Capitol. In the event, he was shocked by the lack of security; he says it almost felt deliberate. “I have to imagine that there are many law enforcement people who are part of these same conservative Facebook groups. They’re watching Fox News, watching Alex Jones and all the other pundits bang the drum about storming the Capitol. They had the same information I did and chose to do nothing about it.”What Homegrown highlights, however, is how broad-based and diverse America’s right-wing populist movement has become. Premo, who is black, claims that its main organising principle is not race hatred so much as despair and disillusion, characterised by a widespread loss of faith in American democracy’s ability to safeguard public interests. Significantly, the film chooses to cross-cut Quaglin’s journey with that of his fellow rebel Thad Cisneros, a charismatic Latino activist from Texas. Cisneros explains that he was first radicalised by watching Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. He now dreams of forming an alliance with Black Lives Matter organisers.Cisneros, it transpires, is now also serving time and thus unavailable for comment. But he represents an increasingly fractured and muddied political landscape, one in which the old left-and-right stereotypes no longer apply. “We need to have a more nuanced understanding of the people driving this movement,” Premo says. “We need to know who these people are, what they look like, where they come from. Only then can we understand what we need to do to support the principle of a pluralistic democracy that stands any chance of surviving beyond this current era of us-versus-them politics.” More

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      Kamala Harris’s rise has energized many Asian Americans. Could these ‘unmeasured’ voters swing battleground states?

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      “America, the path that led me here in recent weeks, was no doubt … unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys. My mother, Shyamala Harris, had one of her own … traveling from India to California, with an unshakeable dream.”With these words, Vice-President Kamala Harris began her acceptance speech on the final night of an epic convention, embracing the unprecedented means by which she had arrived at the Democratic presidential nomination, and elevating her identity as the daughter of an immigrant mother from India.For those of us who had never imagined that in our lifetimes we might have an Asian American president, this was a staggering moment – not least because the discourse leading up to this convention had been so badly derailed by Donald Trump’s bizarre questioning of Harris’s biracial identity. In the wake of Trump’s allegation that Harris had “only promoted her Indian heritage” in the past, until she had decided to “turn Black”, there was whispered concern from some corners of the Asian community that Harris might be forced to downplay her mother’s ancestry while reaffirming her father’s Caribbean roots.The concern was unnecessary. Like most people of multiracial background, Harris has always been both/and, not either/or, celebrating both her Black and Asian birthrights with equal pride – and in the run-up to the convention, Black and Asian Americans have celebrated along with her.An internet-shattering Black Women for Harris Zoom call drew 44,000 attendees and raised $1.5m in three hours. Three days later, a South Asian Women for Harris online rally, headlined by the US representative Pramila Jayapal and the actor/producer Mindy Kaling gathered a crowd of 9,000 and equaled its predecessor’s $1.5m in the same span. It paved the way for a cascade of other Asian American events, packed with energetic and enthusiastic participants such as the actor and comedian Ken Jeong, who exhorted at the online AANHPI Men for Kamala event: “This is our time – this is our moment!”The excitement that Jeong and many fellow Asian Americans are feeling over Harris’s rise has been unmeasured. I mean that both metaphorically and literally, because when it comes to the major entities tracking the state of the election, the polls aren’t measuring it.For decades, there’s been a term used for Asian Americans in the electoral process, and it begins with O. (No, not “Oriental”, though, yes, that too.) The term is “Other”, as in the miscellaneous bin into which pollsters cast any non-white, non-Black, and non-Latino person in their data samples, turning us into unidentified trimmings from the Democratic donkey or Republican elephant – enigmatic bulk filler for the political sausage.View image in fullscreenLumping us into the undifferentiated Other might have made some sense when Asian Americans were a tiny fraction of the population and an even smaller one of the electorate – say, in 1980, when Asians made up 1.5% of the US population, about 3.7 million people, and represented roughly a million registered voters.But that was then; this is now. Asian Americans, who have consistently been the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in the US over the past half-century of census tallies, now make up 6.2% of the population, or 21 million people, at least 15 million of whom are eligible to vote. That’s bigger than the national voting-eligible populations were for Latino or Black Americans in 1980, when both groups were already being broken out in voter surveys and targeted by campaigns. And in battleground states like Pennsylvania (769% growth since 1980, to 612,567) and Georgia (2,246% growth since 1980, to 610,257), the Asian population has soared, making us critical swing voters in those critical swing states. In fact, an analysis by the electoral consultant TargetSmart suggests that the entire victory margin for Joe Biden in 2020 in such states may have come from the surging Asian American vote.Yet still today, even with the growing influence of an Asian American Democratic presidential nominee, in many major polls, Asian Americans remain “othered”.Pollsters are quick to blame language issues (although three-quarters of Asian Americans speak proficient English, about the same rate of fluency as in the Latino population), difficulty in finding willing respondents, and a lack of culturally sensitive surveys and data tools. The reality is that, with proper investment and effort, all of these challenges can be readily addressed. The fact that they largely haven’t been comes down to a single awkward truth: Asian Americans have never in US history been seen as salient to this nation’s political discourse.Of course, it’s an uphill battle to be seen as “politically relevant” when you’re part of the only group that’s ever been explicitly excluded from this country based on race. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited non-resident Chinese from entering the US, and 35 years later, that ban was expanded to an “Asiatic Barred Zone” that included nearly all of Asia. This exclusion was a prelude to outright hostility. Throughout the 20th century, the US would find itself in conflict with Asians, waging military campaigns against enemy forces in Japan in the 40s, Korea in the 50s, and Vietnam in the 60s and 70s, and then engaging in ugly trade wars against a resurgent Japan in the 70s and 80s and a fast-rising China in the 90s and 2000s.Given that for most of this nation’s modern history, Asians have been excluded as undesirables or vilified as enemies, it’s hardly surprising that even after the Hart-Celler Act swung open the US’s doors to immigration in 1965, many newcomers kept their distance from politics and other professions in the spotlight – such as journalism and entertainment – and advised their offspring to do the same. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, they said. Better to be silent than scrutinized and found wanting. Better to be invisible than targeted. Those of us who pursued such professions often did so over the skepticism or condemnation of our parents.That wasn’t the case for Kamala Harris, whose Jamaican father and Tamil Indian mother raised her within Oakland’s Black activist community and seeded her with a passion for service through the example of her maternal grandfather, PV Gopalan, a lifelong civil administrator who oversaw refugee relief in Zambia and served as joint secretary to the government of India during the 1960s. Together, they encouraged her from childhood on to step into the harsh glare of public scrutiny, and to embrace politics as a career.View image in fullscreenAnd Harris’s example has resonated widely, including among others who have made similar decisions to take on jobs that make them socially visible.At the recent Asian American Journalists Association convention in Austin, Texas, Aisha Sultan, an opinion columnist for the St Louis Post-Dispatch, shared how Harris’s ascension had “given her hope in very dark times”.“All of us Asian American journalists who had to break into predominantly white spaces, we know what she had to go through to get here,” she said. “So we know it’s possible, and now I’m absolutely going to manifest this. I’m not going to accept anything other than President Harris.”Sultan’s excitement was echoed by the former ABC news producer Waliya Lari, now communications director for Pillars Fund, a non-profit that seeks to build visibility for Muslim Americans. “The day after Harris became the nominee, I got very emotional,” she said. “I was thrilled to be able to tell my girls: ‘Look at that. That’s someone just like you.’ They say you can’t be what you can’t see. Well, now they’re seeing it.”Because for those of us who have been American all along but often haven’t been perceived as such, the elevation of an Asian American president means that pollsters, political campaigns and policymakers alike will need to acknowledge that we’re Other no longer. And as Ken Jeong says, this is our moment – because the first wave in a rising tide of younger voters is finally ready and eager to see an Asian American in the Oval Office. As data pulled from the Asian American Foundation’s Staatus Index survey shows, while just 34% of Americans 65 and older and 42% of those aged 45-64 are “very comfortable” with an Asian American in the White House, a majority of those aged 16-44 say they’re ready for that to happen, and have been since Harris was elected vice-president.You can’t be what you can’t see. But it isn’t just about seeing, it’s about being seen – and for the first time, on the biggest of possible stages, in the brightest of possible spotlights, we’re finally being seen. More

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      The US diplomatic strategy on Israel and Gaza is not working | Daniel Levy

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      The Biden administration remains in an intense phase of Middle East diplomatic activity working to avoid a regional war while optimistically spinning the prospects for a Gaza breakthrough deal.Following the latest round of provocative Israeli extrajudicial killings in Tehran and Beirut and the intensified exchange of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend, the region appeared to lurch further in the direction of all-out war. Preventing that is a worthy cause in itself.With a US election looming and policy on Gaza, Israel and the Middle East unpopular with the Democrats’ own constituency and a potential ballot box liability in key states, there are also pressing political reasons for a Democratic administration to avoid more war and to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough. Countering domestic political criticism with hope for a deal was a useful device to deploy at the Democratic convention in Chicago and will be needed through to 5 November.Team Biden is attempting a difficult trifecta. First, the Biden administration is trying to deter the Iranian axis from further responses to Israel’s recent targeted killings in Tehran and Beirut. Joe Biden no doubt has wanted to hold out the prospect of a ceasefire, which Iran would prefer not to upend, while he simultaneously bought time for the US to beef up its military presence in the region as leverage and a threat against Iran.The US is also trying to help a key regional ally, Israel, reclaim its deterrence posture and freedom of military operation after the balance of forces shifted against it during the current conflict.Second, the Biden administration is trying to reach election day on a positive note, by bringing an end to a divisive conflict – or, as a fallback, to at least avoid further escalation and a potentially debilitating regional explosion into which Israel could pull the US. Third, and more speculatively, the Biden administration might want to bring an end to the brutal devastation and killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the humanitarian crisis there, and the hellish ordeal of the Israelis held in Gaza and their families. A ceasefire would also have the benefit of avoiding further damage to US interests and reputation as a consequence of Biden running political cover for and arming Israel throughout this war.Ordinarily, delivering on those first two goals – and merely scoring two out of three – might constitute an acceptable achievement. It is made more attainable by the Iranian-led axis of resistance not wanting to fall into the trap of all-out war. However, failure to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza risks everything else unravelling and keeps the region at boiling point. Regional de-escalation and domestic political quiet will be that much more difficult to sustain if the Gaza talks again collapse, especially against the backdrop of raised expectations.Sadly, that is the direction in which things are headed, exacerbated by the current US diplomatic push being exposed as clumsy or fraudulent or both.It should go without saying that putting an end to the unprecedented daily suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, as well as bringing the Israelis who are held there home, is reason enough to throw everything at achieving a ceasefire. But the Biden administration has been singularly incapable of treating Palestinians as equals with the humanity and dignity accorded to Jewish Israelis – one of the reasons this has played so badly with the Democratic voting base.The staggering shortcomings in the Biden administration’s approach, exacerbated in secretary of state Antony Blinken’s latest mission, are highly consequential and worth unpacking. Alarm bells should have been set off when Blinken at his recent press conference in Jerusalem announced that Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted the US “bridging proposal” – when the Israeli prime minister himself declared no such thing. Within hours, it became clear that Israel’s chief negotiator, Nitzan Alon, would not participate in the talks as a way of protesting against Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal.That was followed by senior US and Israeli security officials anonymously briefing the press that Netanyahu was preventing a deal. Similar conclusions were also reached and made public by the main forums representing the Israeli hostage families. On his ninth visit to Israel since the 7 October attack, Blinken again failed – not just at mediating between Israel and Hamas, but even in closing the gaps between the competing camps inside the Israeli system. The US refusal to take seriously that there are Hamas negotiating positions which are legitimate, and which will need to be part of a deal (and with which the US ostensibly agrees to in substance – such as a full Israeli withdrawal and a sustainable ceasefire), has condemned US-led talks to repeated failure.Repackaging Israeli proposals and presenting them as a US position may have a retro feel to it, but that does not make it cool. And it won’t deliver progress (it can’t even sustain Israeli endorsement given Netanyahu’s constant shifting of the goalposts to avoid a deal). That the US has zero credibility as a mediator is a problem. That it has conspired to make its contributions not only ineffective but counterproductive is devastating. Even Itamar Eichner, a diplomatic correspondent for the Israeli Yedioth newspaper, describes Blinken’s visit as having displayed “naivete and amateurishness … effectively sabotaging the deal by aligning with Netanyahu”.This is a US government modus operandi with which Netanyahu is extremely familiar, and which falls very squarely inside his comfort zone. Netanyahu knows that he has won once the US mediator – whatever the actual facts – is willing to blame the Palestinian side (Arafat during Oslo, Hamas now). Despite having the US having changed its own proposal to accommodate Netanyahu, and Netanyahu still distancing himself from the terms and being called on it by his own defence establishment, Biden and senior US officials continue their public disinformation campaign of claiming that only Hamas is the problem and should be pressured.Even if US governments hold personal frustrations with Netanyahu, their policies serve to strengthen Bibi at home.From early in this war, Netanyahu’s bottom line has been that while internal pressures exist to secure a deal (and therefore get the hostages back and cease the military operation), the opposite side of that ledger is more foreboding: a deal would upend Netanyahu’s extremist governing coalition and bring an end to the most important shield Netanyahu has created for himself politically: his claimed mantle as Israel’s indispensable wartime leader.Netanyahu’s ideological preference is for displacing Palestinians and eviscerating their rights, alongside pulling the US more actively into a regional clash with Iran; his short-term political goal is to maintain an open-ended war which can accommodate varying degrees of intensity, but not a deal.So where might change ultimately come from? Given current tensions, something approximating an all-out regional war might yet unfold. Alongside the dangers and losses this would entail, a broader conflagration might belatedly produce a more serious external push for a comprehensive ceasefire.Israeli coalition politics could also throw a spanner in the works for Netanyahu, given tensions among his governing allies, and particularly with the ultra-Orthodox parties over the issue of military enlistment. But the surest way to de-escalate in the region and to bring the horrors of Gaza to an end continues to be via challenging the Israeli incentive structure in meaningful ways – through legal, political and economic pressure and sanctions, and especially by the withholding of weapons.Netanyahu is a loose cannon, which Kamala Harris should have no interest in reloading 10 weeks out from an election.

      Daniel Levy is the president of the US/Middle East Project and a former Israeli peace negotiator More

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      Here it is, the new right playbook: wreck and impoverish the country, enjoy the high life yourself | Owen Jones

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      Rightwing dogma has cost Britons dearly, but remains the ultimate meal ticket for the guilty men and women. While Tory rule saw workers face the most protracted squeeze in wages since the defeat of Napoleon, the politicians to blame have shamelessly monetised this failure of historic proportions.Boris Johnson – turfed out of No 10 in disgrace after little more than three years in charge – leads the pack, unsurprisingly. Within six months, he had raked in more than £5m thanks to speaker fees, hospitality and donations. A million of that was generously donated by Christopher Harborne, a tech entrepreneur based in Thailand who had mostly donated vast sums of money to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party. That means Johnson certainly had the means to settle the legal bill for his defence in Partygate: alas, you and I coughed up that £265,000, with the National Audit Office condemning the government’s decision to use public money.The Rwanda scheme to deport asylum seekers was not just cruel, it was costly: about £700m of taxpayers’ dosh was frittered on needlessly catering to the basest prejudices of the British electorate. Yet its most vociferous champion, the former home secretary Suella Braverman, clearly believes she has expertise deserving of a hefty price tag.She has already made nearly £60,000 on the global speaking circuit, more than any other sitting MP, with another £14,000 from the Telegraph for articles such as one titled “Islamists are in charge of Britain now”. Then there was the all-expenses “solidarity” trip to Israel worth £27,800, paid for by the National Jewish Assembly, who clearly believed it was an investment: its chairman declared that it had paid up because Braverman “has been very influential in politics and we hope that she will again be influential in the future”.Sure, Liz Truss may have crashed the economy with unhinged rightwing policies, sending mortgages and rents soaring, contributing to 320,000 British adults being driven below the poverty line. And yes, granted, in July she was booted out of her Norfolk seat – where she had won 69% of the vote in 2019 – with the biggest swing from Tory to Labour in any UK election ever. But her bank account balance is as healthy as her shame is absent: by last September, she had made £250,000 in speaker fees since leaving office.And while Farage was never a Tory minister, few politicians have done so much to reshape the Conservative party, or deliver a Brexit which, according to the polls, just 13% of Britons believe is a success. He’s the highest earning MP, making £1.2m a year from GB News, alongside lucrative trips to the US funded by wealthy friends.That 14 years of rightwing leadership gave us a Britain with wages lower than in 2008 in two-thirds of British local authorities, stagnant growth, crumbling public services, and chronic divisions and tensions is clearly no barrier to success. All of these figures champion capitalism as a system that rewards success and punishes failure, and yet all thrive precisely because they were architects of Britain’s most calamitous era of the peacetime democratic era.What is termed “rightwing populism” is, in short, an endless money spinner. Truss is a particularly instructive case. In her youth, she was a Liberal Democrat devotee, passionately denouncing the British monarchy. Despite swerving to the right in adulthood, she campaigned for remain in 2016. Since her premiership had its fatal appointment with reality, Truss has either shifted further right or felt liberated to be her true self, or both. A cheerleader for Donald Trump, she spoke at a far-right conference in the US alongside Farage to decry “the deep state” for taking her down, and said nothing while appearing in an interview where Steve Bannon hailed Tommy Robinson as a “hero”.Other attenders at this Conservative Political Action Conference included a US senator who has refused to condemn white nationalists, and allies of the authoritarian Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán. While in the US, Truss accepted another trip worth £20,000 from a murky group called the Green Dragon Coalition, which says it is committed to “break down climate change policy” and “expose the woke mob”.What is going on here? Back in the 1970s, well funded thinktanks helped reshape the western right to embrace privatisation and regulation, slashing taxes on the rich and smashing trade unions. Today’s right is metamorphosing again, epitomised by the authoritarian demagoguery of Trump. Where there was once a cordon sanitaire between what was loosely described as the “centre right” and what lies beyond, that has long broken down.All this money is helping to reshape the international right, bringing together its leading lights to forge common bonds and a shared mission. Yes, it is nauseating to watch politicians make others pay for their failures while they are rewarded with endless pay cheques. But this is not a political project driven by results – and powerful tycoons with bottomless pockets are determined that these walking, talking disasters act as trailblazers for what comes next.

      Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

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      Democrats sue Georgia officials over election rules that could ‘invite chaos’

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      Democrats sued Georgia state election officials on Monday, alleging new rules that could allow local officials to delay certification of November’s presidential results were illegal.The lawsuit was filed in the superior court of Fulton county by local Georgia Democratic politicians, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic party of Georgia. It says the rules approved by the Republican-controlled Georgia state election board this month were intended to give individual county election officials the ability to delay or cancel the certification of votes.The lawsuit says the new rules “introduce substantial uncertainty in the post-election process and – if interpreted as their drafters have suggested – invite chaos by establishing new processes at odds with existing statutory duties”.The Georgia secretary of state’s office, which oversees the board, did not respond to requests for comment.Last week, the five-member Georgia election board, which includes three conservative members championed by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, voted 3-2 to empower county election board members to investigate any discrepancies between the number of cast ballots and the number of voters in each precinct before certification.Such mismatches are not uncommon and are not typically evidence of fraud, according to voting rights advocates, who say that rule could permit individual board members to intentionally delay approval of the results.The board has also in recent weeks approved a separate rule that county election boards conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into any irregularities before certifying the results. The rule did not define “reasonable” or set a particular deadline for completing the inquiry.The Democrats’ lawsuit says it is established law that it is the responsibility of the judicial system, not individual county election officials, to resolve allegations of voter fraud.The former president has falsely claimed for years that the 2020 election was rigged by fraud.His infamous January 2021 phone call in which he asked Georgia’s top election official, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to sway the outcome helped lead to Trump’s pending indictment on state charges.Voter fraud in the US is vanishingly rare, research shows.Trump faces Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, in the 5 November election. Polls show a close race, with Georgia among seven states likely to determine the outcome. More