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The Guardian view on the Democratic convention: Kamala Harris must be the candidate of change as well as continuity | Editorial
A month ago, Joe Biden and his aides were beginning to draft a closing speech with which, on Thursday, he would top off this week’s Democratic convention in Chicago. The speech would seal Mr Biden’s bid for a second White House term and send his party out to do battle with Donald Trump in November. Instead, on Monday, Mr Biden did not deliver the convention’s closing address. He delivered his own.Mr Biden’s convention speech is one of his last big moments in the political spotlight, and the start of his withdrawal from the US political field after half a century. From today, the Democratic party belongs to Kamala Harris. It is she who matters now. For the next few days, Mr Biden will not be in Chicago or on the campaign trail, but on holiday.If Mr Biden had not withdrawn from the race, as he did last month, Democrats would undoubtedly have greeted him in Chicago with enthusiasm. But the misgivings about his age, his grasp and his ability to serve four years would never have been far away, not least in the media coverage. Nor would the growing and gut-wrenching expectation of defeat in November’s general election, a defeat that could change the United States – and the world – for ever, in irreparable ways.By stepping down, Mr Biden has turned that situation around, at least for now. Ms Harris has moved smoothly into the campaign driving seat. The party has quickly united behind her and Governor Tim Walz. They have been rewarded with a huge influx of cash and a Democratic poll uptick, both nationally and in swing states. Down-ballot Democrats are relieved too. Mr Trump still seems nonplussed. Expectations of a Democratic defeat have been replaced by expectations of a competitive contest that is winnable once again.All of this will have assured Mr Biden of a hero’s welcome in the appropriately named United Center on Monday night. The cheering comes from the party’s heart, and it is overwhelmingly deserved, the more so because it involved Mr Biden doing something he manifestly did not want to do. But he did the right thing. He deserves the plaudits.It will, however, be Ms Harris, more than Mr Biden, who defines the convention. Both have rightly made Mr Trump’s unquestionable threat to democracy and liberty the centre of their pitches. But the other key question for the week is how well Ms Harris positions herself as the candidate of change as well as continuity.Mr Biden, showcasing his achievements as he passes the baton to Ms Harris, implicitly casts her as the latter. Her own task, while embracing the Biden administration’s record, is to turn the page and become the former. The argument about Gaza, which is dominating Chicago streets as the convention starts, is the most emotive issue where this matters, but it is not the only one. A truncated campaign means Ms Harris arrived in Chicago with enthusiastic backing, but still without a domestic policy manifesto on her campaign website.Mr Biden has been a pivotal figure in the divisive 21st-century politics that emerged out of the Reagan era, 9/11, the banking crash, the rise of China and Black Lives Matter. He is also the man who saved his country once, by standing against Mr Trump in 2020, and may perhaps have done it again, by not standing against him four years later. As he leaves the stage, the US – and the world – should salute him. Ms Harris, however, must use this week to speak to America’s future too. More
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Biden lands in Chicago ahead of Democratic convention speech as thousands protest Gaza war near venue – live
Joe Biden has arrived in Chicago, where he is scheduled to this evening address the Democratic national convention.After arriving on Air Force One at O’Hare international airport, the president flew on the Marine One helicopter to Soldier Field, just south of downtown:Biden’s speech this evening will be one of the last major appearances in his more than half-century career in politics, after he last month opted to end his bid for a second term and allowed Kamala Harris to take his place atop the Democratic ticket.In addition to Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are also scheduled to address the convention in the coming days.The protest march against the Democratic national convention has alighted at a city park within sight of the United Center in Chicago.“What does Harris stand for? Genocide and war. We know what that meeting’s for. Genocide and war”, protesters chanted, facing the convention center. “If we don’t get no justice, then they don’t get no peace.”Speaking to the Guardian after the podcast recording, congresswoman Becca Balint of Vermont said her young constituents are fired up and ready to work to elect Kamala Harris in November.“The people that you should be centering in the work that you do back home are those folks who are going to be the future leaders in those communities and those organizations,” Balint said.Asked whether she thought Harris had done an effective job so far in centering young voices, Balint said that she has been very impressed by the vice-president’s campaign.“It’s remarkable when you think about what they’ve done in just a few weeks time,” Balint said. “I think that they understand that it is about the future.”Three House Democrats – Becca Balint of Vermont, Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Maxwell Frost of Florida – sat down with podcast host Molly Jong-Fast and Skye Perryman, president of the group Democracy Forward, for an interview in Chicago this afternoon.Asked about Project 2025, Crockett said there is “no daylight” between the rightwing manifesto and Donald Trump’s agenda, even though the former president has tried to distance himself from the effort.“I’m not saying that just because I’m a proud Democrat,” Crockett said. “I’m saying that because over 30 people that either worked in his administration or worked on his campaign are the authors of this.”Frost added that young people are fired up about Harris’s campaign in part because they are scared about the policy proposals promoted in Project 2025.Discussing the newfound enthusiasm around Harris’s candidacy, Frost noted that the ranks of new campaign volunteers are “very diverse”.“That shows that our movement and the vice-president and what she’s doing has gotten to the culture,” Frost said. “And that’s when you have truly untapped movement potential.”Joe and Jill Biden came onto the stage at the United Center, where the Democratic convention is taking place, for a quick sound check ahead of their speech at the convention tonight.Reporters in the room shouted questions at the president, including whether he was ready to pass the torch. Biden replied: “I am.”Asked about what his speech’s message would be, Biden said: “You’ll hear tonight.”Joe Biden has arrived in Chicago, where he is scheduled to this evening address the Democratic national convention.After arriving on Air Force One at O’Hare international airport, the president flew on the Marine One helicopter to Soldier Field, just south of downtown:Biden’s speech this evening will be one of the last major appearances in his more than half-century career in politics, after he last month opted to end his bid for a second term and allowed Kamala Harris to take his place atop the Democratic ticket.In addition to Biden, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are also scheduled to address the convention in the coming days.Thousands of people gathered this afternoon in a Chicago park not far from the venue of the Democratic national convention to protest the party’s stance on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, the Guardian’s George Chidi and Andrew Roth report.The demonstration was one of several expected during the convention over Joe Biden’s policy of supplying Israel with weapons used in the incursion, while pushing for it to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas. Among the protesters was independent presidential candidate Cornel West, as well as people with family members in Gaza.Here’s more:
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.”
Mo 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.”
Read the full story here:Singer-songwriter James Taylor will perform at the Democratic national convention, and was spotted by photographers rehearsing in the hall:In addition to Taylor, the Hollywood Reporter says that Americana star Jason Isbell and country artist Mickey Guyton will also perform at the convention.George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York, pleaded guilty on Monday to criminal corruption charges.Santos pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a minimum two-year prison sentence.Joe Biden was “continuing to fine-tune” his speech tonight at the Democratic national convention, the White House said.The president was in a “great mood” and in “great spirits”, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters as Air Force One landed in Chicago’s O’Hare airport this afternoon.Biden plans to “spend time, continuing to prep for his big night”, she said.Donald Trump has been speaking at a factory plant in York, Pennsylvania, his second campaign stop in the battleground state in less than two days.Addressing workers, Trump said America’s future would be “built right here in Pennsylvania, and it will be built by American workers like you” if he is re-elected to the White House.Kamala Harris is calling for raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, according to her campaign.In a statement shared by NBC News, Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said the Democratic presidential candidate would push for a 28% corporate tax rate, calling it “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share”. The statement added:
As President, Kamala Harris will focus on creating an opportunity economy for the middle class that advances their economic security, stability, and dignity.
Cornel West, the independent presidential candidate, has made a surprise appearance at the protest at Chicago’s Union Park, Semafor’s David Weigel reports:Organizers of the Coalition to March on the DNC had predicted a crowd of tens of thousands as recently as Monday morning, but the Washington Post reports that fewer than 2,000 protesters filled a portion of Chicago’s Union Park by this afternoon.Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, will deliver a speech at the Democratic national convention on Tuesday night.Sanders will speak “to the popularity of a progressive economic agenda that delivers for the working class of America”, a statement from his office said.
The address will also highlight the critical importance of getting big money out of the political process, and ending the greed of the billionaire class.
Sanders is scheduled to speak at 8.30pm CT.Congressional Republicans have accused Joe Biden of “egregious” conduct for which he should be impeached – despite providing no evidence that the president committed a crime – in a 291-page report whose impact has been significantly blunted by his withdrawal from the presidential race.In what was supposed to be a central theme of the GOP’s drive to derail Biden’s re-election effort, the report alleges that he was the architect and beneficiary of a lucrative influence-peddling scheme fronted by his son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.The culmination of a months-long impeachment inquiry conducted by three Republican-led House of Representatives committees – the oversight, judiciary and ways and means panels – the report was timed to coincide with the opening of the Democratic national convention in Chicago, but it is now Kamala Harris, the vice-president, at the top of the ticket, not Biden.“Overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetise his office of public trust to enrich his family,” the report states.
President Biden’s participation in this conspiracy to enrich his family constitutes impeachable conduct.
It added:
The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the Committees is egregious. President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift. In doing so, he abused his office and, by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office, has defrauded the United States to enrich his family.
However, the report failed to provide evidence that Biden committed a crime and appeared to fall short of the constitutional definition of “high crimes and misdemeanours” required to impeach a sitting president.My colleague Rachel Leingang has been eyeing the merchandise section of the Democratic national convention in Chicago: More - in US Politics
Georgia approves election rule that could delay vote certification
The Georgia state election board approved a new rule on Monday that gives local officials more power to investigate votes after election day, increasing concerns the Republican-controlled body is steamrolling a series of consequential changes that could pave the way for chaos this fall.The rule approved Monday authorizes any member on a county board of election “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections prior to certification of results”. Even though Georgia law still requires certification of the vote by 5pm the Monday after election day, experts are concerned that these maneuvers give election deniers significant leeway to slow down the certification process and create uncertainty.“It provides no safeguards against requests unscrupulously designed to delay or obstruct the lawful certification process,” lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, the watchdog groups Citizens for Responsibilities and Ethics in Washington (Crew) and the Public Rights Project wrote in a letter to the board. “It would empower individual county board members to make unreasonable and vexatious demands for any election-related documents – even ones that have no bearing on certification – without providing any basis for their requests.”The board has moved aggressively to implement new procedures ahead of the election and three Republicans on it have earned public praise from Donald Trump. Earlier this month, it adopted a new rule that gives local boards the power to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into elections before certifying. It does not define what constitutes a “reasonable inquiry.”The new power to request all election-related documents comes as Julie Adams, a Republican on the Fulton county election board, has refused to certify elections in the state’s largest county and has claimed she has been denied access to adequate information. Adams is also suing the county board of the elections and its election director with the backing of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute to require more access to election documents.Adams is connected to a network for election deniers led by Cleta Mitchell, a Trump ally who aided his attempt to try and overturn the election. Several activists in that network helped shape the rule the board adopted on Monday, ProPublica reported.“Trump and his Maga allies have taken over the Georgia state election board to try and give a veneer of legality to their illegal scheme to disrupt the certification of Georgia’s 2024 election results,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, the chief executive of the voter rights organization Fair Fight. “Many of Trump’s key election denier allies are behind these illegal, anti-freedom changes to Georgia election rules, and it’s all with the goal of helping Trump win the ‘Peach State’, even if he doesn’t earn a majority of Georgians’ votes.”The new rule also requires the board of elections in each county to meet no later than 3pm on the Friday after the election to compare the total number of unique voter ID numbers in each precinct with the total number of ballots cast in that precinct. The votes in each precinct can’t be counted until the investigation is resolved. If the results can’t be reconciled, the board is authorized to “determine a method to compute the votes justly”.Several Republicans on the board framed the new rule, which it adopted with a 3-2 vote, as an effort to ensure that only valid votes were cast. “If the board found votes that were made illegally, they should not be counted,” said Janice Johnston, a Republican on the board.But others on the board said it was acting beyond its powers and said the proposal was opening the door to delay certification.“This board is once again exceeding our authority,” said John Fervier, the board’s Republican chairman, who joined the lone Democrat on the board to vote against the rule. “We are not elected officials. And we should not try to create law.”It’s not unusual for there to be small discrepancies between the total numbers of votes cast and the total number of voters. These differences are usually not large enough to affect an election outcome.“The most common cause for a discrepancy is usually if someone leaves with their ballot before casting it,” said Tate Fall, the director of elections in Cobb county in suburban Atlanta. “This would cause there to be one more check-in on the poll pads then there are ballots in the scanner. Typically poll workers catch these discrepancies early as they check the machine counts hourly.” She added that any discrepancies are always explained in a reconciliation report submitted to the Georgia secretary of state’s office after an election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSara Tindall Ghazal, a Democrat on the board, said during Monday’s meeting that voters sometimes will cast a ballot in person after voting by mail because they’re worried their vote won’t count. In those cases, election workers will typically cancel the mail-in vote before tabulation, she said.The board is still considering a proposal to have election workers hand count every ballot cast on election day. The original proposal, submitted by Sharlene Alexander, a Republican election board member in Fayette county, would have required three workers at the precinct to separate ballots into stacks of 50 and count them by hand on election night. After receiving feedback from election officials, Janelle King, a Republican member on the board, amended the proposal to allow counties to begin counting the next day. They would still be required to complete the count by Georgia’s certification deadline.King’s amendment meant that the board had to put off a final vote on the rule until its next meeting in September.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, has heavily criticized the proposed rule changes, saying they would lead to delays in election results and decrease trust in results.“Georgia voters reject this 11th hour chaos, and so should the unelected members of the State Election Board,” he said in a statement last week. “These misguided, last-minute changes from unelected bureaucrats who have never run an election and seem to reject the advice of anyone who ever has could cause serious problems in an election that otherwise will be secure and accurate.” More
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Pro-Palestinian protesters march before Democratic convention: ‘This is about morality’
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
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
