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      Pro-Palestinian protesters march before Democratic convention: ‘This is about morality’

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      About half a mile east of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, Union Park filled at noon Monday with demonstrators intent on sending a message to Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, delegates and the world: that the war in Gaza should not be an afterthought.Organizers for the Coalition to March on the 2024 Democratic convention drew 172 local and national organizations together for the protest. Thousands of people gathered for the march, one of the main anti-war demonstrations this week.“This is not about some Machiavellian politics,” said social critic and independent presidential candidate Cornel West at the onset. “This is about morality. This is about spirituality.”View image in fullscreenMo Hussief, a Chicago accountant, joined the rally.“My family is in Gaza,” Hussief said. “I’ve had over 100 family members murdered over the last 10 months by the genocide. So, I’m here to protest as an American, to say I don’t want my tax dollars to be used to murder my own family.”Hussief is a Democratic voter. Or, he had been, he said. He supports labor rights and wants public healthcare support, key Democratic policy goals. But none of that brings back dead cousins in Jabalia, he said. The death toll in Gaza hit at least 40,000 last week.Hussief said it is impossible for him to cast a ballot for the vice-president as long as she supports arming Israel.“I want the Democrats to basically do a weapons embargo for Israel,” he said. “If there is a weapons embargo on Israel, I will 100% vote for Harris. I love Tim Walz. The Democratic party does align on domestic issues. But for me, they have to end the genocide.”Another rally-goer, Jonah Karsh, arrived as part of the IfNotNow movement of American Jews from Chicago area, who are opposed to the war.“It’s obviously a really painful issue for the Jewish community. It tears at the fabric of us. It is painful to feel like a community that I care so much about is divided by an issue like this,” he said. “At the same time when I see children being killed supposedly in the name of Jewish safety, it doesn’t make me feel like I’m being kept safe. It just feels wrong. And I wouldn’t be anywhere else”.More commonly at the protest, protesters waving Palestinian flags and carrying signs equating Harris with Donald Trump seemed to have long abandoned either major party and were voting for Green party candidate Jill Stein, a socialist candidate, or abstaining entirely.Matt Stevens, an undergraduate student in Nebraska studying medicine, said this was his first presidential election. He’s voting for Stein, even with the ascension of Harris as the Democratic candidate.View image in fullscreen“She was still the vice-president. She still had a voice in what Biden was doing,” Stevens said. “She still has an ability to make some decisions and voice her opinion. She can say all these things and talk a big talk, but until she shows actual action, I’m not going to vote for it. She has to earn my vote.”Protesters marched from Union Park about a mile, intent on being within “sight and sound” of the convention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRhetoric by speakers was strident, but there were no calls for violence. Police ringed Union Park in the hours before the march, and streets have been blocked off across the city to control for traffic and crowds.Disruption, however, was on the mind of some demonstrators.One protester, a former marine who deployed in Iraq in the mid-2000s, wore a pink N95 mask and a black-and-gold keffiyeh. He said his name was Andrew, but asked not to be identified by last name to discuss what he called the need for more “direct action”.“My opinion, I think more is required than just protesting,” he said. “I think that people need to get a little more hands-on. I think politicians need to be scared. I don’t think that we need to hurt them. But I think that politicians sit in their ivory tower … and they are comfortable. People don’t press them. This is the most pressing they get.”“Even if it’s as much as throwing rotting fish into their air conditioning systems. But I really think that we should press our politicians more directly to their face. The whole ‘give them no peace adage’. I really agree with that. And this today is not enough.”That said, other demonstrators were concerned about the effect violence or property damage might have on their political message.“When I thought about it, I knew that that was not the point,” said Teri Watkins, a demonstrator from Chicago supporting the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “It messes up their messaging. We’re asking for peace, so it wouldn’t make sense to be violent.”If such things were to happen, it would be the work of outside provocateurs, Watkins said. “That would come in the evening. But I’m going to be home by then.” More

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      Biden’s Gaza policy is a liability for Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden now | Mehdi Hasan

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      The sitting Democratic president is not running for re-election. His vice-president has inherited his campaign – and refuses to disown an unpopular foreign war. Robert Kennedy is running for president. The Republican candidate is a corrupt authoritarian. A Planet of the Apes movie is in theaters. And anti-war protesters are threatening to disrupt the Democratic convention in Chicago.Am I discussing 2024 or … 1968?Now, I’m far from the first columnist to make this comparison. Plenty of pieces have been published on the uncanny and, yes, undeniable similarities between these two consequential election years. “History,” as Mark Twain is said to have remarked, “does not repeat itself. But it rhymes.”Joe Biden, after all, is the first president to announce he is not running for re-election since Lyndon Johnson, 56 years ago. And just as Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket is his vice-president, Kamala Harris, so too was Johnson’s.Vice-President Hubert Humphrey had been a popular, well-respected senator from Minnesota and one of the architects of postwar American liberalism. He had served as a loyal deputy to Johnson over four years, even publicly defending a bloody quagmire in Vietnam on the president’s behalf that he himself had privately opposed.Yet in August 1968, the “Happy Warrior”, as Humphrey had been nicknamed, arrived in Chicago for the Democratic convention depressed and demoralized, trailing his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, in the polls by a whopping 16 points. The war had become a millstone around his neck, and yet Johnson had threatened to “destroy” his vice-president if he dared take a different line on Vietnam. When Humphrey in Chicago, as the official Democratic presidential nominee, tried to insert a compromise “peace” plank into the party’s platform that seemed to satisfy both hawks and doves alike, the Democratic president called from his ranch in Texas to block him.In the wake of that disastrous convention, where police brutally assaulted anti-war protesters on the streets of Chicago, the demonstrations against the hapless Humphrey intensified. “Dump the Hump” was on the gentler side; some protesters arrived at the VP’s rallies with placards denouncing him as “Johnson’s War Salesman” and a “Killer of Babies”. One woman spat in his face.“Let’s face it, as of now we’ve lost,” Humphrey’s national campaign director, Larry O’Brien, told him a few weeks after Chicago. “Unless you change direction on this Vietnam thing and become your own man, you’re finished.”On 30 September 1968, Humphrey finally became his “own man”, committing “$100,000 of the campaign’s dwindling funds to buy a half-hour on NBC television”, and delivering a speech from a TV studio in Salt Lake City calling for an end to the war. In his address, Humphrey made clear that Johnson was still in charge of the effort to reach a peace deal in south-east Asia, but by 20 January 1969, there would “be a new president” and “if there is no peace by then” then there must be a “complete reassessment” of the conflict because “the policies of tomorrow need not be limited by the policies of yesterday”.The vice-president laid out a four-point plan to end the conflict. First, “a stopping of the bombing”. Second, “a de-Americanization of the war”. Third, an immediate “internationally supervised ceasefire”. Fourth, “free elections”, which he described as “the ultimate key to an honorable peace”.It was a powerful intervention from Humphrey, aired to tens of millions of Americans, which allowed the Democratic presidential candidate to hit reset with the party’s base and, in particular, with younger voters and people of color. “He was a new man from then on,” O’Brien later declaimed. “It was as if a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. And the impact on the campaign itself was just as great.”Humphrey experienced an immediate surge in the polls, narrowing the gap with Nixon. By election day, the final polls “pointed to a dead heat”.Few now remember that the 1968 presidential election, in terms of the popular vote, was super-close. Nixon defeated Humphrey by less than a percentage point, or about 500,000 votes. The question is: what if the Vietnam war hadn’t dragged him down? What if he had been willing to break with Johnson over Vietnam much earlier than he did? Would the US have avoided Nixon, Watergate and the rest? Had he stood up to Johnson “over Vietnam in 1968”, writes Humphrey’s biographer Arnold Offner, “he might have won the presidential election”.The war, agrees Yale historian Michael Brenes, “alienated Humphrey from liberals, civil rights activists and young Americans – the same people who, for decades, had loved Humphrey for his support of racial justice, full employment and the labor movement – and ultimately cost him the presidency in 1968”.Has the 2024 Harris campaign learned any lessons from the 1968 Humphrey campaign?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTo be clear: Gaza isn’t Vietnam. There is no military draft and US troops are not bogged down in rice paddies 8,000 miles from home. And Harris, unlike Humphrey, is leading right now in most of the polls.Complacency, however, would be a huge mistake for the Democrats. Harris, ideally, needs to maintain a sustained two-point lead over Trump to overcome the pro-Republican bias of our broken electoral college. Despite her clear momentum, she continues to struggle in the key swing state of Michigan, where “Uncommitted” voters are demanding a Gaza ceasefire paired with an arms embargo on Israel.Agreeing to such a demand should be a moral, geopolitical, and – for the Democrats – electoral no-brainer. Gaza may not be Vietnam but Harris should, nonetheless, be distancing herself from Biden on Gaza in the same way that Humphrey distanced himself from Johnson on Vietnam. She should be advocating for all four of the steps that he advocated for in Salt Lake City, beginning with a call for an immediate halt to the horrific Israeli bombing of Gaza’s schools, apartment buildings and refugee camps.Crucially, however, she should do it more than a month before he did; she should do it in her acceptance speech to the Democratic national convention in Chicago on Thursday night. (“I fear she will be Humphrey and break too late,” one prominent House Democrat texted me last week.)What does she have to lose? As the Financial Times pointed out last month, the polling suggests there is “less downside” on Gaza than one might expect: “a Democrat who is soft on Israel (as Biden is seen as having been) loses support on the left, but a candidate who takes a more critical line wins those voters back without losing votes among moderates.” A poll last week from YouGov and the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) showed over a third of voters in three swing states say they are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee if they pledge to withhold weapons to Israel, while only 5 to 7% said they would be less likely to do so.So what is Harris waiting for? More anti-war hecklers at her rallies? Even more civilian deaths caused by Biden administration-supplied munitions?Some might say that it is impossible for a serving vice-president to go against the sitting president, even a deeply unpopular sitting president, on a major foreign policy issue. They would be wrong. Humphrey did it – he just did it too late in the campaign to reap an electoral advantage.Harris is in a much stronger position than Humphrey. Biden would never dare try to humiliate her the way that Johnson regularly did to Humphrey. (On one memorable occasion, the then president insisted Humphrey continue reciting aloud from a draft speech of his on Vietnam as Johnson walked into a toilet: “Keep talking Hubert, I’m listening.”)Humphrey spent much of 1968 defending both Johnson and the war. He was less a candidate for change and “more like a son who feared a punitive father”, to quote Offner. “I don’t even know who Johnson would prefer as the next president,” the fearful vice-president told the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, “Nixon or me.”Harris is not Humphrey. Gaza is not Vietnam. 2024 is not 1968. Nevertheless, the similarities that do exist are too glaring to ignore.Biden may want to continue sending more and more weapons to an Israeli government accused of war crimes at the international criminal court and of genocide at the international court of justice, but Harris should take a different stance – a bolder stance, a stance that is more in line with her party’s base, as well as with the American public at large.The current vice-president would do well to recall the words of the then vice-president after his narrow defeat in 1968. “I ought not to have let a man who was going to be a former president dictate my future.”

      Mehdi Hasan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo More

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      Biden to give possible swan song at Democratic convention amid Gaza protests

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      Joe Biden will take centre stage for perhaps the last time on Monday night when he addresses the Democratic national convention in Chicago – as the US president faces a backlash over one of his most complex legacies.Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to converge in the host city to demand that the US end military aid to Israel for its ongoing war in Gaza. Activists have branded Biden “Genocide Joe” and called for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, to change course.Just over a month ago Biden had been expecting to give Thursday’s closing speech as he accepted the Democratic nomination for 2024. But his withdrawal from the race last month, and the party’s consolidation around Harris, means that Biden will speak on opening night and then set off on a holiday.The president has been reportedly working on his address with his long-time adviser Mike Donilon and chief speechwriter, Vinay Reddy. He is expected to return to a familiar theme – the defence of democracy against Donald Trump – and tout Harris as the ideal presidential candidate.Biden is likely to receive a far more electrifying welcome as an outgoing president than he ever did as a candidate. The convention will honour his half-century career in politics as senator, vice-president and president, with the first lady, Jill Biden, among those paying tribute. Harris is likely to join Biden on stage.It will be a bittersweet moment for the 81-year-old, who is still reportedly irked by the role that the senior Democratic figures Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer played in pressuring him to step aside amid questions about his mental fitness.Still, the mood among Democrats is buoyant as opinion polls show Harris leading or tied with Trump in crucial swing states. The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, told CNN’s State of the Union programme that the convention would be “like a rock concert”. A-list stars are likely to inject further energy.Wiley Nickel, a congressman from North Carolina who was with Harris in Raleigh last Friday when she unveiled her economic policy agenda, said in a phone interview: “The feeling is like it was back in 2008 when I worked for President Obama. People are incredibly excited. They’re focused on the issues instead of Joe Biden’s age. When we have a campaign focused on the issues we’re going to win.”But the party is eager to avoid any repeat of their Chicago convention in 1968, when anti-Vietnam war protests and a police riot led to scenes of chaos that stunned the nation and contributed to the party’s defeat in November.The death toll in Gaza has exceeded 40,000, according to the health ministry there. The biggest protest group the Coalition to March on the DNC has planned demonstrations on Monday and Thursday to coincide with Biden and Harris’s speeches. Organisers say they expect at least 20,000 activists to demonstrate, including students who protested against the war on college campuses.The switch at the top of the ticket has given some activists pause but others contend that Harris is part of the Biden administration and so complicit. Her speech on Thursday will be watched closely for signs that she is willing to take a harder line against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.Peter Beinart, a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, argues that Harris can distinguish herself simply be enforcing an existing law that bars the US from assisting any unit of a foreign security force that commits “gross violations” of human rights.“The premise of the Leahy law is that all lives, including those of Palestinians, are equally precious,” Beinart wrote in the New York Times. “Kamala Harris can show, finally, that a major-party nominee for president agrees.”On Sunday, there was march along Michigan Avenue against the war in Gaza and for abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. The march began in late afternoon and stretched into the night. Police lined the march route and there were no signs of major conflict. At one point, anti-abortion activists staged a small counter-protest.The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to America’s third-biggest city including delegates, activists and journalists. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention centre, while police have undergone de-escalation training.On the eve of the convention, Democrats released their party platform, a document of more than 90 pages presenting their policy priorities. The platform was voted on by the convention’s platform committee before Biden’s exit and repeatedly refers to his “second term”.On Monday, the convention will focus on the Biden administration’s policy accomplishments and feature former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton; Tuesday will contrast Trump’s and Harris’s visions for America; Wednesday will emphasise the importance of protecting individual freedoms; Thursday is entitled “For Our Future”, underlined by Harris’s speech.Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, will spend the week counter-programming the Democratic convention with a tour of battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. More

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      Tens of thousands of activists prepare protests over Gaza war at Democratic National Convention

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      Some 40,000 protesters are expected to gather outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago on Monday to demonstrate against the Biden administration’s position on Israel, with some groups saying they will push for amendments to the party’s platform.The party is on guard for disruptions to high-profile speeches at the DNC, with one pro-Palestinian group called Delegates Against Genocide, angry at US support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, saying it will press for an arms embargo this week.Delegates Against Genocide said it would exercise its freedom of speech rights during main events at the four-day convention. Its organisers declined to give details, but said they would offer amendments to the party platform and use their rights as delegates to speak on the convention floor.The group wants to include language backing enforcement of laws that ban giving military aid to individuals or security forces that commit gross violations of human rights.“We’re going to make our voices heard,” said Liano Sharon, a business consultant and delegate who signed an alternative platform along with 34 other delegates. “Freedom of expression necessarily includes the right to stand up and be heard even when the authority in the room says to shut up.“They want the convention to go smoothly. They don’t want to have any kind of disruption or any kind of statement or anything like that,” he told Reuters at an event hosted by Chicago’s large Palestinian population. “I’m sorry. A convention is a political engagement vehicle, OK? And if we’re not using it for that, then it’s just a beauty pageant.”The Harris campaign declined to comment on the group’s plans.The Uncommitted National Movement, a separate effort pushing Democrats to change policy on Israel that won more than 30 delegates in primary elections, also wants an arms embargo. But it has focused, unsuccessfully so far, on winning a main-stage speaking slot for a Palestinian American or Gaza humanitarian worker.Uncommitted has said it is not planning to disrupt the convention proceedings.Late on Saturday, convention organisers added a daytime panel discussion on Arab and Palestinian issues to Monday’s agenda and one on antisemitism.Nadia Ahmad, a law professor at Florida’s Barry University and a delegate, said there were about 60 Muslim delegates, a fraction of the 5,000 overall. But their concerns were shared by others, she said.Demonstrations are expected every day of the convention and, while their agendas vary, many activists agree an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war is the priority.The largest group, the Coalition to March on the DNC, has planned demonstrations on the first and last days of the convention. Organisers say they expect at least 20,000 activists, including students who protested the war on college campuses.“The people with power are going to be there,” said Liz Rathburn, a University of Illinois Chicago student organiser. “People inside the United Center are the people who are going to be deciding our foreign policy in one way or another.”The Democratic party’s draft platform released in mid-July calls for “an immediate and lasting ceasefire” in the war and the release of remaining hostages taken to Gaza during the 7 October attack by Islamist militant Hamas fighters in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed.The platform does not mention the more than 40,000 people that Palestinian health authorities in Gaza say have been killed in Israel’s subsequent offensive. Nor does it mention any plans to curtail US arms shipments to Israel. The United States approved $20 billion in additional arms sales to Israel on Tuesday.Mediators including the US have sought to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas, which rules Gaza, based on a plan Biden put forward in May but so far have not succeeded.Pro-Palestinian activists say Harris has been more sympathetic to people in Gaza than Biden has been. Her national security adviser said on X this month that she does not support an arms embargo on Israel. After meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, Harris told reporters not only that Israel had a right to defend itself but also in reference to Gaza: “We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”Organisers of Monday’s planned-protest said the numbers outside the convention could swell to over 100,000.The city has designated a park about a block from the DNC’s venue, the United Center, for a speakers’ stage. Those who sign up get 45 minutes.The convention will draw an estimated 50,000 people to the nation’s third-largest city, including delegates, activists and journalists. Activists say they learned lessons from last month’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and are predicting bigger crowds and more robust demonstrations in Chicago, a city with deep social activism roots.The city says it has made necessary preparations with police and the Secret Service. Security will be tight, with street closures around the convention centre.With Associated Press and Reuters More

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      US election: when is the Democratic convention and why does it matter?

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      Kamala Harris is set to appear in Chicago next week to formally accept the nomination for president of the Democratic party, less than two months after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. She will appear alongside her running mate, Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, at the party’s national convention.Typically a party formally nominates their candidate at the convention – as the Republicans did for Donald Trump in July – however, Democrats changed the rules to put in place a virtual roll call. Harris and Walz were officially nominated earlier in August.Here’s what else to know about next week’s Democratic convention.Where and when is the Democratic national convention?The Democratic national convention will be held in Chicago from 19 to 22 August.Chicago previously played host to the convention in 1996, when Bill Clinton was nominated for re-election, and 1968 when Hubert Humphrey was nominated.Two venues in Chicago will host the convention: the United Center arena for evening programming, and McCormick Place convention center for daytime sessions.Who is speaking at the convention?Harris and Walz will both speak at the convention, and Biden is also expected to give an address. The full lineup of speakers has not yet been released (Republicans only released the names of confirmed speakers the day of their July convention).However, several big names have been reported:

      Monday, 19 August: Biden will speak on the opening night, along with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

      Tuesday, 20 August: Former president Barack Obama will give an address on the second night.

      Wednesday, 21 August: Former president Bill Clinton will join Walz on the convention’s third night.

      Thursday, 22 August: Harris will close out the fourth night of the convention.
      In 2020, the virtual convention included speeches from Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jill Biden and a host of other elected officials.How can I watch the convention?The party will livestream the convention on its Democratic national convention website and on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.The Guardian has a team of reporters in Chicago and will be covering the convention in depth, including live blogs each night.Major news networks are likely to carry prime-time programming. PBS will have live coverage beginning at 8pm each night.What happens at the Democratic convention?The primary functions of the convention is to formally nominate the party’s candidate, adopt the party’s platform, unify the party and boost enthusiasm for the ticket.The convention usually includes a roll call to formally nominate their candidate. However, the rule-making group for the Democratic National Committee established procedures for candidates to contest the primary nomination ahead of the convention.Harris was confirmed as the party’s nominee after a virtual roll call vote earlier in August – the first time Democrats have used such a process. Harris and Walz will formally accept the nomination at the convention.The rest of the week will focus on the party’s platform and speeches from notable figures. The party says that more than 5,000 delegates and alternates will be at the convention, with 50,000 total visitors in Chicago for the convention (which includes delegates and the media).Who else is speaking?The party has signaled its plans to foreground up-and-coming Democrats in its programming. Likely speakers include the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland governor, Wes Moore, and Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, among others.Meanwhile, many political influencers have been credentialed, including the socialist podcast host Daniel Denvir.Will there be protests?Yes. Organizers expect tens of thousands of people to protest outside the Democratic national convention to pressure the party to stop the war in Gaza. Inside the convention, uncommitted delegates plan to push anti-war demands in hopes of winning more allies to the cause and influencing the party platform.Chicago is home to the country’s largest Palestinian population – with Bridgeview, Illinois, known as Little Palestine. More than 200 groups have joined together for the March on the DNC, with protests planned for the opening and closing nights of the convention.Protests are not unique to the Democratic convention; during the Republican convention in July, protesters led a demonstration against Trump and his party in downtown Milwaukee.What’s ahead on the US election calendar?The next presidential debate is scheduled for 10 September, with both Harris and Trump confirmed.A debate between JD Vance and Walz has been confirmed for 1 October. More

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      The evolution of Kamala Harris: from activist in pigtails to presidential candidate

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      View image in fullscreenIt was the first week of July. News of the presidential election had been mired, for eight days, in alarming assessments of Joe Biden and that shambolic debate. The president had started but not finished sentences, slurred words and at points stood with his mouth slightly agape while his opponent, Donald Trump, ignored questions and lied without fact-check.Now, on 6 July, inside New Orleans’s convention center, the 30th annual Essence Festival of Culture was under way. Kamala Harris was set to speak, one of the vice-president’s biggest in-person events since Biden’s performance had seemingly upended the race. The attendees – mostly Black women, drawn to this long-running music-festival-meets-women’s-expo – were waiting to see Harris. Some were chattering about the possibilities: did her future lie at the top of the Democratic party’s ticket? What could, or should, happen next? The press corps now trailing Harris had swelled in size, and began to scribble notes and scramble for a look as Harris walked across the stage as the defiant second chorus of Beyoncé’s Freedom boomed. A rousing cheer came from the standing-room-only crowd in the cavernous, 600-seat room.“Who is Kamala Harris?” Caroline Wanga, the CEO and president of Essence Ventures asked, as she began a “Chief to Chief” conversation, the live version of an interview published each month in Essence, the Black women’s magazine. The conversations are supposed to illuminate what makes the subjects human, their struggles and lessons learned, the moments of victory and defeat and what distinguishes Black women who lead.“The vice-president of the United States,” Harris responded, setting off another extended cheer from the crowd. “I am a wife. We have children. I am a god-mommy. I am an auntie. I am a best friend. I am a good cook … and you know, I am a fighter for people. I am prepared to fight.”Until late July, Harris had been the running mate of the oldest man to seek the presidency. Today, Harris, the nation’s first Black and south Asian and female vice-president, who was once characterized as a public official struggling to find her footing, is a presidential candidate with a narrow lead. When the big change happened – not by death but by swelling doubt – Harris appeared to have surprised all but those who have long known her.People who know Harris well say what the US is witnessing is the confidence, charisma and net effect of practical experience at multiple levels of government, a woman raised to work hard, to operate with compassion and to push past the comfortable toward what is necessary and right. That’s always been there, but it was, perhaps, not always grasped by the public or press. Harris, friends and mentors say, was subjected to constant and unusual forms of scrutiny and given a series of particularly complex, intractable tasks that no one could wrap in a single term as vice-president.What is indisputable is that Harris is a woman running for the nation’s highest office at a moment when democracy is at stake. Her candidacy is historic, and the next few weeks leading up to the presidential election will alter the course of American politics for better or worse.‘She was at marches in a stroller’“She’s always been a go-getter,” said Areva Martin, a CNN legal analyst and lawyer who first met Harris in the late 1980s. Martin, then a student at the University of Chicago, was visiting her brother, a student at Howard University in Washington DC, where Harris was also enrolled, when the two first connected. The women hit it off and have remained friends. “She’s always had a lot of confidence and a concept that anything that wasn’t right, that wasn’t working, was hers to try and change,” Martin said. “If you hear her talking about growing up with her parents, who were very active in the civil rights movement, it’s in her DNA. She was at marches in a stroller.”Born in October 1964, Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother who met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The Harrises were committed civil rights activists during a time of radical political thought and activity and also, respectively, an economist and a breast cancer researcher. Harris was a toddler when Donald Harris’s academic career forced the family to decamp to Illinois, where Harris’s younger sister, Maya, was born. When Harris’s parents split up in the early 1970s, Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, moved Kamala and Maya back to Berkeley. The girls were raised with direct engagement with two cultures and a firm grounding in the realities of race in the United States. There were trips to an area Hindu temple, and lots of south Indian food which, with a few spice changes, Gopalan would often make into soul food.At home, there were ample amounts of gospel music, which Gopalan, a singer, loved. The Harris girls also went with a neighbor to a Black church and sang in the children’s choir. During summers with their dad, there was lots of jazz. Gopalan, for her part, counted writers and activists among her closest friends. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” Harris wrote in her 2019 book, The Truths We Hold. “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls and she was determined to make sure that we would grow into confident, proud Black women.” (Harris’s staff declined to make Harris available for this story.)View image in fullscreenGopalan and the girls lived in a Black neighborhood, and the children were bussed along with other Black students to a white school in another part of town as part of the school district’s integration plan. Harris was a civil rights foot soldier in pigtails. Later, at Howard University – widely considered the nation’s premier institution of all the historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) – Harris encountered so many Black people with different interests, class backgrounds, experiences and cultures that, she wrote in her book, she felt like she was in heaven. She was one of at least two Kamalas on campus.Harris, then fond of popped collars and her short natural curls, studied political science and economics. Yearbooks show she was active in the California Student Association and the debate team and chaired the economics society. It was at Howard where she ran for her first office: freshman class representative. She had a summer gig at McDonald’s, as well as internships with a US senator and at the Federal Trade Commission. At the National Archives, where the original Declaration of Independence, constitution and Bill of Rights as well as every administration’s papers are held, the country’s future first female vice-president was on research. And while working as a tour guide at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Harris got her first official code name: “TG-10” for “tour guide No 10”.Then there was Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc, one of the nine Black sororities and fraternities, which Harris joined while she was an undergraduate. The groups were founded during the early 20th century so that a select group of college-educated Black Americans might have networks through which they could access jobs, loans, business deals, healthcare and even a safe place to stay. The Divine Nine, as the collective is called, were countervailing forces in a segregated country where the social order planted white Americans at the top and was often enforced by violence.Being an AKA has been a way for Harris to embrace self-affirming merriment and matters of global significance. “On Fridays, my friends and I would dress up in our best clothes and peacock around the Yard,” she wrote in her book. “On weekends, we went down to the National Mall to protest apartheid in South Africa.”“She’s just always been a force,” said Inez Brown, who pledged AKA with Harris in the spring of 1986. “I always said, Kamala is going to be a supreme court justice, because once I knew she was headed for law school, I was like she is going to do something really different. That was just her energy.”When Maya gave birth to a daughter at 17, Harris went back home to California for law school, opting for the state university system’s oldest law school, then known as the University of California, Hastings College of the Law (or UC Hastings, now UC Law San Francisco). When Harris was a student there, she and her mother helped to care for her niece, so that Maya could graduate from the University of California, Berkeley and then Stanford Law School on time.In law school, Harris led the Black Law Students Association and was among an early, small group of Black students who spoke of wanting to become prosecutors, said Shauna Marshall, a semi-retired professor at the law school and co-director of its Center for Racial and Economic Justice. Marshall has known Harris since the early 1990s. While Harris was in law school, she and a few other students had begun to understand a district attorney’s powerful decision-making authority – who should be charged, if at all, with what, and how long a judge should be asked to jail those convicted – and wanted it applied more fairly.“I think both of their career choices came directly from their mother’s activism,” Marshall said about the Harris sisters.In 1988, Harris took an internship in the Alameda county district attorney’s office, the place where the supreme court justice Earl Warren – a chief justice whose court transformed the nation, vastly expanding civil rights and liberties to millions of Americans – had been chief prosecutor. She was one of a handful of Black lawyers in the office. It was the height of the crack epidemic, and Harris managed to convince a court to free a woman wrongly arrested in a drug raid. But, like 40% of people who took the California bar exam the next summer, Harris failed. She passed on her second try in 1990 and joined the Alameda prosecutor’s staff, specializing in the prosecution of sex crimes.In a 2019 speech, Harris told the South Carolina NAACP that when it was time to decide what type of lawyer she would be, her family gathered for a conversation. They wanted to know: “Kamala, what are you going to do in your fight for justice?” Explaining why she wanted to be a prosecutor to that group was a bit like defending a thesis, she said.“I know and I knew then prosecutors have not always done the work of justice,” Harris said. “There have been prosecutors who refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality.” But, Harris said, like other lawyers she admired, she decided to “believe in what can be, unburdened by what has been”.There have been moments that convinced her it was the right choice. Once inside the Alameda county prosecutor’s office, Harris was one of a handful of Black prosecutors. One day, she overheard white colleagues chatting in the hall about how to prove that defendants had been in gangs to apply longer sentences. The conversation was riddled with assumptions and stereotypes. One person suggested looking at the person’s neighborhood. Another suggested the truth was in a defendant’s clothes or music. Harris interrupted: the neighborhood they had discussed was one where she had friends and family. The clothes they described were considered stylish. The music, well, she had that on a tape in her car outside.From district attorney to state attorney generalAfter nearly a decade, Harris was recruited to run the career criminal unit in the San Francisco district attorney’s office, focused on violent and repeat criminals, and was responsible for many of the cases whose outcomes were shaped by California’s contribution to the “tough on crime” era – actions states were incentivized to take under a 1994 federal crime bill brokered by then senator Joe Biden.California’s “three strikes” law and federal money to build more prisons made anyone convicted of three felony crimes, even non-violent offenses, eligible for a life sentence. Harris was among those in the San Francisco district attorney’s office who pushed the agency to seek third-strike treatment only if the felonies involved were serious or violent crimes. But the issue and the racial disparities it deepened were bigger than any one prosecutor or DAs office. Today, the Vera Institute for Justice describes California as “one of the epicenters of mass incarceration in the United States, incarcerating more people than any other state except Texas”.Harris lasted in the San Francisco career criminal division for 18 months before San Francisco’s city attorney called. She wanted Harris to come work on child welfare cases. Harris took the job with a condition: she would do court work and policy.“The work was meaningful, empowering and … [i]t also boosted my confidence that when I saw problems, I could be the one to help devise the solutions,” Harris wrote in her book. “All those times my mother had pressed me – ‘Well, what did you do?’ – suddenly made a lot more sense.”The experience was instructive. Harris, prompted by a friend she had met while serving on a non-profit board, ran for San Francisco district attorney. She defeated the incumbent, her old boss, and became the first person of color or woman to serve as district attorney. She was one of three elected Black district attorneys in the entire country.Just two years into her first term, Harris launched what was then a rare program, Back on Track, wherein first-time defendants aged 18-30 would plead guilty to non-violent crimes – and in exchange for getting a job or going to school, performing community service and making use of social workers, see their records expunged. Most years during the rest of Harris’s tenure, the program enrolled 100 or fewer participants, according to district attorney office data. But, only 10% of participants wound up back in the criminal justice system, compared to about half of otherwise comparable defendants in California. The program was evidence that Harris was trying to make good on the logic that had driven the decision to become a prosecutor, said Marshall, who served on the program’s advisory committee.The push and pull between being an insider who wants to change a troubled system, and working inside a system that has helped to sustain American racial inequality created tension for Harris after she ran for and won the California attorney general’s office in 2010, another role once held by Warren.In the attorney general’s office, Harris found herself defending the decisions of what she described as her clients – state agencies – in court. In 2011, that included the corrections department’s decision not to release all prisoners as per a US supreme court order, after evidence of malnutrition and dangerous levels of overcrowding were found in California’s prisons. Governing magazine found that California finally met the court’s mandates in 2015, while Harris was attorney general. What made the difference: voters approved measures reducing the punishment for a number of crimes, prompting prison populations to fall.View image in fullscreenCritics also often point to Harris’s belief that lives could be saved by disrupting the link between truancy and crime. In San Francisco, Harris’s team had discovered that many children missed school not because of their families’ views about education but because they had significant family problems such as no home, no clean clothes, or they needed to babysit an ill sibling so that parents would not miss work. So, they offered these families services that cut truancy by 23% in two years, according to San Francisco school district data reported by the attorney general’s office. But even in this system, some parents were hit with misdemeanor criminal charges, fines and other deterrent measures.Anthony Rackauckas Jr, a “law and order” tough-on-crime district attorney in southern California, used the state truancy law that Harris had championed to have a number of parents, many of them Black, Latino or caring for disabled children, arrested. Harris bore much of the public blame. The law remains in place, as do real differences in the way some district attorneys apply it.In a 2019 interview with HuffPost, Jeff Adachi, a former chief public defender of San Francisco, said: “I think it was a good thing that [Harris] shined a light on [truancy]. There is a correlation between children who fail at school and what happens later in life. [But] the idea of locking parents up, or citing them with a crime because they’re not taking their children to school – it doesn’t address the root of the problem.”Meeting Doug EmhoffIn 2014, at 49, Harris got married for the first time. Harris met Douglas Emhoff, a California lawyer, on a blind date set up by Harris’s best friend. The connection came with habit-aware instructions: you are going on a date. Do not Google him in advance. You will give him a chance. Harris has said she abided by two of the three.Harris discovered that she liked Emhoff almost immediately, she wrote in her book. Emhoff has said that he too was instantly smitten. So, when Harris warned him on that first date that she was a very busy woman, Emhoff went home and emailed a list of dates when he was available for the next few months. People around her noticed the difference Emhoff made.“They would later refer to that era as ‘AD – After Doug’,” Harris wrote. “They loved how much he made me laugh. I did too.”At their August wedding, officiated by Harris’s sister, Harris put a flower garland around Emhoff’s neck, a traditional Indian wedding practice, and he stomped on a covered glass, a Jewish wedding tradition. Harris really liked Emhoff’s kids: his son, Cole, and daughter, Ella, named after John Coltrane and Ella Fitzgerald. Harris instituted a tradition of sit-down Sunday dinners with her new family. Cooking together and talking in the kitchen, Harris has said, features prominently in her memories of her own mother, who died of cancer in 2009.Harris and Emhoff were still newlyweds when the US senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat from California, announced that she would not seek a sixth term in January 2015. One week later, Harris was in the Senate race. Joe Biden, then the vice-president, swore her into office.Family and lots of friends, including Brown and several more of Harris’s AKA sisters, watched Harris become the first Black senator from California and the only Black woman in the US Senate. In fact, Harris was only the second Black woman to become a senator in the US and the first woman of south Asian descent to do so.White House ambitionsWhen Harris decided to launch a 2020 bid for the White House, she’d been in the Senate about three years. Harris had sponsored 164 bills and/or co-sponsored another 1,197. (Twenty-five have since become law, according to federal records.) As a member of the Senate judiciary committee, she had grilled some witnesses – Brett Kavanaugh, the future supreme court justice among them – in ways that had, for a time, captured the country’s attention.But, her 2020 presidential campaign never seemed to gain momentum under the weight of the widespread condemnation of the American criminal justice system that peaked after the murder of George Floyd.The most significant moment of the short-lived campaign probably came on a primary debate stage. Harris asked Biden to acknowledge that during his long tenure in the Senate, his work with avowed segregationists to stymie federal funding that would have facilitated more busing to integrate schools had been wrong. One of those children to whom bussing had brought opportunities, Harris said on stage, “was me”.View image in fullscreenBut just as the broader culture was undergoing an alleged racial reckoning, similar discussions were happening inside politics. Biden wasn’t the only white power player already well over 70 and going nowhere. Black women, long the backbone of the Democratic party’s voter and organizing base remained scarce in senior positions. Outside consultants and party officials often spent money and political capital in the pursuit of white swing voters, a relatively small group. So, when decisions were being made, when policy priorities were being set, few Black women, and few people born after the July 1964 Civil Rights Act, for that matter, were in those rooms. There was a sense that a debt was owed, the bill was due.Political leaders like Karen Finney, a political strategist and former spokesperson for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, and communications director at the Democratic National Committee; Glynda Carr, president and CEO of Higher Heights for America, which works to grow Black women’s political power; Donna Brazile, a political strategist, two-time chair of the Democratic party and the first Black woman to run a presidential campaign; and Minyon Moore, a former Clinton administration official and political consultant, now serving as chair of the 2024 party convention, began to talk about the fact that there were Black women qualified for the vice-president’s job and they should be considered, Finney said.Their recommendation – made in a Zoom meeting with Biden and his team – was Harris.When the story is told by Harris’s opponents, she is the typecasted VP, someone selected in a process that didn’t start with résumés or even political calculus. In reality, just about every vice-president was picked much the same way. Only, time and time again, no Black women had been considered.“It’s a political strategy on the part of the Republican party to undermine [Harris] and to undermine her qualifications,” Finney said. “And unfortunately … this is a very typical playbook that’s often used.”Women’s issues? ‘Oh, you mean the economy’In the White House, Biden gave Harris early tasks which, at minimum, must be described as hard. Chief among them: identifying and helping the administration to address the root causes of the increase in undocumented immigration. Getting to the root causes and their solutions by traveling to Guatemala and Mexico was never going to generate photos of Harris hanging out of the top of a tank or standing at the border with a bullhorn. That really wasn’t Harris’s style or the nature of her assignment, either.Harris didn’t stave off the critics. During a sit-down interview, Harris laughed when Lester Holt, the NBC Nightly News anchor, asked when she would visit the US-Mexico border. The causes of illegal immigration don’t begin within a few feet of the Rio Grande and she hadn’t personally visited Europe either, she responded, saying no one was accusing her of ignoring or avoiding issues there. Republican officials pounced. There was, in Trump’s view, an “invasion” at the border. And many Democrats weren’t happy with a directive Harris issued to undocumented immigrants in a subsequent press conference: “Don’t come” – seeking asylum at a US border crossing is a legal act.“We had never had a Black female vice-president,” said Finney. “She was basically doing the job in her own way but it’s a role that was created for white men. So of course she’s not going to be doing it in the same way all the men before her did it.”The rest of Harris’s portfolio has been largely complicated or long-running matters of domestic concern including gun violence, barriers to entrepreneurship and full economic inclusion for all Americans, maternal healthcare and “gender policy”. Harris has said that when people ask her to talk about “women’s issues”, she often replies: “Oh, you mean the economy.”View image in fullscreenAs vice-president in Washington, Harris cast 33 tie-breaking votes in the US Senate, many to complete or move forward Biden’s nominees for various senior-level federal jobs. She also broke ties more than any other vice-president in history. And she has become the administration’s foremost voice on abortion access.She spoke about it in ways that many who weren’t in the meetings on other issues or working in the vice-president’s office began to notice in March when Harris became the first vice-president to visit a healthcare facility offering abortions in St Paul, Minnesota. There, Harris discussed women’s healthcare and the situation emerging in states that have banned abortions, and warned reporters and others there to brace themselves because she was going to use anatomically correct terms and use the “bouquet of microphones” to share women’s experiences. Tim Walz, the governor, was standing right behind her.“When she was given the roles … then she was able to speak, and she did so very confidently, very boldly,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW).The birth of the Harris campaignOn 21 July, Harris’s campaign filed paperwork only hours after Biden’s announcement, making her an official candidate for the White House. By that evening, it was clear: this was different.More than 40,000 Black women gathered for a Zoom meeting that night to recognize the significance of the moment, raise money and start organizing. The volume of interest required an exception to Zoom’s virtual meeting size limits, and $1.6m was raised in a few hours. The concept of extremely frank, in-group conversations – about this moment and the specific responses different groups of voters could have, and the stakes they should contemplate – gained traction. White Dudes for Harris, Black Men for Harris, Evangelicals for Harris and Republicans for Harris have gathered in the weeks since.One participant in the estimated 160,000-person white women’s Zoom said every woman and girl in the country faced real threats under a possible second Trump administration, including a loss of control over their bodies and, with that, their lives. “Your whiteness,” one woman in the same Zoom meeting said, “will not save you.” At the same time, over on social media, Kamala was chartreuse green; Kamala was brat. Supercuts of Kamala captured her dancing with marching bands and confidently delivering lacerating, pro-Harris assessments of Trump, some of them backed by the sound of Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us and Chappell Roan’s Femininomenon.“You can’t buy that,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster and founder of the political strategy firm Brilliant Corners who knows Harris and may be best known for his work on the Obama campaigns. “That’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars and it has to happen organically.”Four days after Harris declared herself a candidate for the presidency, she was in Indianapolis, inside the Indiana convention center to address more than 6,000 members of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Inc, another member of the Divine Nine.“In this moment,” Harris told the people seated at a sea of round tables before her, “I believe that we face a choice between two different visions for our nation, one focused on the future and the other focused on the past. And with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”“Recognize there are those who are trying to take us back,” Harris continued. “But we are not going back.”It was the birth of the Harris campaign. More

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      Democratic national convention: who are the politicians to watch?

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      Democrats will gather in Chicago on Monday to kick off their convention, where Kamala Harris will formally accept the party’s presidential nomination. Party members have indicated that the theme of the week will be “passing the torch” to a new generation of leaders, after Joe Biden cleared the way for Harris by abandoning his re-election campaign.Conventions provide a unique opportunity for up-and-coming lawmakers to speak to a national audience and boost their name recognition as they prepare for their own possible presidential campaigns in the future.Although the Democratic National Committee has not yet released the list of convention speakers, here are some of the big names expected to take the stage:Pete ButtigiegView image in fullscreenThe former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, surprised the country in 2020 when he launched a seemingly long-shot presidential bid, but the charismatic Buttigieg turned in strong performances in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. After dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Biden, Buttigieg, 42, joined the administration as transportation secretary.Like other expected speakers at the convention, Buttigieg was named as a potential running mate for Harris before that post went to the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz. The convention will give Buttigieg another chance to build his national profile, as he is widely expected to launch another White House bid in the years to come.Wes MooreMoore, 45, made history in 2022 when he was elected as the first Black governor of Maryland. A former businessman, Moore has proven himself to be an effective surrogate for Biden and now Harris, and his effectiveness on the campaign trail has sparked speculation about his future plans.While introducing the president and vice-president at an event in Maryland on Thursday, Moore said: “In a few minutes, you’re going to hear not just from the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. You’re also going to hear from the 47th president.”The crowd then broke out in chants of “48! 48!” in an apparent reference to Moore’s future campaign to become the 48th president.Gavin NewsomView image in fullscreenThe California governor, 56, has built a reputation as one of the Democratic party’s loudest attack dogs, as he often went toe to toe with Donald Trump during his presidency. His gubernatorial tenure has not been without controversy, as he faced – and overcame – a recall effort in 2021.But Newsom’s ability to punch back against Republicans could be a boon for Democrats’s efforts to draw a clear contrast between Harris and Trump, while also helping to build the governor’s political brand.Alexandria Ocasio-CortezView image in fullscreenOcasio-Cortez, 34, attracted national headlines in 2018, when she pulled off a huge upset to defeat a 10-term incumbent in her Democratic primary. The New York congresswoman has quickly become known as one of progressives’ most engaging communicators on issues like healthcare costs and student loan debt.In a year when Democrats are counting on young voters to turn out at the polls to help them win up and down the ballot, Ocasio-Cortez’s presence on the convention stage could help the party motivate a new generation of Americans.JB PritzkerView image in fullscreenThe 59-year-old governor of Illinois is widely expected to get a prime speaking slot at the convention, as it will be held in his home state. The speech would give Pritzker a chance to flourish his credentials of having codified the right to abortion in Illinois and declaring it a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortions. He has also been strong on gun control, and legalised recreational marijuana.Harris reportedly considered Pritzker to be her running mate before choosing Walz, as the Illinois governor was similarly viewed as a potential asset in the midwestern battleground states like Michigan and Wisconsin. With a reported net worth of $3.5bn, Pritzker would also be the wealthiest lawmaker to address the convention.Josh ShapiroView image in fullscreenShapiro, 51, has been a rising political star in a crucial swing state for years but shot to national prominence in fall 2022 when, as state attorney general, he won the gubernatorial race over an extreme Trumpist Republican.He was one of the two finalists in Harris’s search for a running mate, but progressives raised concerns about his support for Israel and record on private school vouchers. When Walz was announced as the pick, Shapiro said in a statement: “Pennsylvanians elected me to a four-year term as their governor, and my work here is far from finished – there is a lot more stuff I want to get done for the good people of this commonwealth.”Known as a compelling orator who models himself off Barack Obama, a convention speech would give Shapiro the opportunity to push back against some of the criticisms leveled against him during the veepstakes.Gretchen WhitmerView image in fullscreenThe Michigan governor, 52, was on Biden’s running mate shortlist in 2020, and her party’s strong showing in the midterms was in part attributed to her governership. She has been in favor of stricter gun laws, repealing abortion bans and backing universal preschool. Viewed as one of the party’s most promising leaders, Whitmer was also named as a potential running mate for Harris, but the governor withdrew from consideration early.“I have communicated with everyone, including the people of Michigan, that I’m going to stay as governor until the end of my term at the end of 2026,” Whitmer said of her decision.Depending on the outcome in November, Whitmer may have an opportunity to run for the White House in 2028 – or she may wait until 2032 if Harris can pull off a victory. More

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      Rising stars have the chance to shine at Democratic convention

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      In 2004, Barack Obama was a relatively unknown state legislator trying to become Illinois’ next senator – until his speech at the Democratic convention. When Democrats gathered in Boston to nominate John Kerry, many Americans heard Obama speak for the first time. And they were mesmerized.“I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible,” Obama said that evening.Four years later, Obama stood on the convention stage to accept the party’s presidential nomination. The 2004 speech offers one of the clearest examples of how convention speeches can elevate a rising political star to national prominence. When Democrats convene in Chicago next week to nominate Kamala Harris, a number of the party’s most promising lawmakers are expected to address the American people as they look to build their national profiles and potentially plan for their own presidential campaigns.“The convention is a really powerful opportunity because tens of millions, if not more – probably hundreds of millions across all the different platforms and social media clips and stuff like that – are going to watch what happens in Chicago over the next week,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of the group Run for Something, which recruits young leaders to run for office.The Democratic National Committee has not yet released its list of convention speakers, but party leaders have emphasized that the theme of the week will be passing the torch to a new generation of leaders, reflecting Harris’s ascension to the nomination after Joe Biden abandoned his presidential campaign last month.Certain lawmakers are widely expected to receive prime speaking slots. Governors like Wes Moore of Maryland, Gavin Newsom of California, JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan will likely have a chance to address the convention crowd. Some of the expected speakers – including Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg – were named as potential running mates for Harris before that position went to Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, who will address the convention on Wednesday.That somewhat awkward dynamic underscores an unexpected challenge facing rising stars in the party. With Harris as the nominee, the dynamic for them has changed. They previously thought they would address a convention where Biden was the nominee. If Biden were still in the race and then won re-election, he could not run again in 2028. But if Harris wins in November, she will have the chance to seek re-election in 2028, meaning the next open Democratic primary may not occur until 2032.With that in mind, up-and-coming leaders will need to balance their promotion of Harris’s campaign with their efforts to grow their national profiles. That delicate dynamic was on display Thursday, when Moore was introducing Biden and Harris at an event in Maryland.“In a few minutes, you’re going to hear not just from the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. You’re also going to hear from the 47th president,” Moore said, nodding to Harris’s campaign.The crowd then broke out in chants of “48! 48!” in an apparent reference to Moore’s future campaign to become the 48th president.While Harris’s elevation complicates speakers’ task, it could also present them with an opportunity.“They can tap into the palpable enthusiasm and excitement that is electrifying not just Chicago but the entire country over the next week,” said Antonio Arellano, vice-president of communications for the youth voting group NextGen. “They can tap into that energy that this change at the top of the ticket has generated and really lean into the fact that the Democratic party is the party of the future. It is a party that is listening to the American people, particularly young voters.”Surveys show that Harris has indeed captivated the Democratic party base since launching her campaign last month. A poll conducted this month by Monmouth University found that 92% of Democratic voters are enthusiastic about having Harris as the party’s nominee, compared to 62% who said the same of Biden back in February.“The American people, especially young voters, have been demanding to turn the page, and the Harris-Walz campaign is delivering on this exciting moment,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive group MoveOn Political Action. “It’s time for a new generation of leaders to take the stage, and the pro-democracy, anti-Trump coalition is fired up to build on the momentum heading into the fall.”And while well-known lawmakers like Newsom and Whitmer will almost certainly get a spotlight at the convention, other rising stars in the party may get a chance to speak as well. Arellano hopes to hear from first-year House members like Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Maxwell Frost of Florida, who is the first gen Z member of Congress. Litman expects that the convention will also bring attention to more junior lawmakers, such as state legislators who have played a key role in the fight over abortion access since the reversal of Roe v Wade in 2022.“There have been really powerful state and local leaders who have done amazing work, and I hope they’ll get a spotlight,” Litman said. “I think they should talk really genuinely and authentically about what they’ve been doing and what they will do, but I expect we’ll hear a lot about reproductive health and abortion access.”Arellano echoed Litman’s expectation that abortion will be a primary focus of the convention, and he expects many speakers will also make a point to outline a progressive vision for the economy. With poll after poll showing that voters rank the economy and the cost of living as two of their top concerns, Democrats need to demonstrate how their agenda will materially improve the lives of Americans, particularly young Americans.“They want to be able to not just get by, but get ahead,” Arellano said. “What they’re wanting to hear are policy proposals, legislative priorities that are going to make sure that we level the playing field for once and for all, that our economy is measured not by how well big corporations are doing, but by how well ordinary Americans are doing.“[The convention] presents an opportunity to really drive home that contrast between a party that is celebrating joy, celebrating enthusiasm, driving excitement about what’s possible in the future, versus a party that’s looking at the past as a source of inspiration and wants to drag our country backwards 50 years.” More