I’ve been enthusiastically and gleefully promoting Kamala. I was going to say “despite knowing she’s as bad as Biden” but decided not to. I think I’m supporting her because she’s no different from Biden in terms of policy. When the zombie-in-chief is replaced with a living being it will be obvious that it’s the party, not the man, which drives the genocidal policies of the Biden Administration. Replacing the ancient dotard with a giggling Gen-X professional will prove that the Democratic Party is incapable of and unwilling to make anything better for anybody at all.
That’s all the political theater side of things. I’m assuming that she will rely on the same psychos that Biden did, minus his immediate entourage. Or more heavily on the Obama team, like Rahm Emmanuel.
Same shit, different day, new boss.
“Identity”/Race Politics
But outside of the theatrical and political, I think Harris also stands at an interesting historical moment and is an interesting figure because of that.
I’ll throw out a couple examples:
1. Feminist Progress. Girl President represents the completion of the 60s feminist project, just as Black President was supposed to show the success of the 60s Civil Rights movement. These figures demonstrate that women and people of color have entered the ruling class and become peers with white men.
2. Racial Progress. Harris is also a person of color, so the Black President story is repeated and reinforced. Through repetition an idea becomes true, even in the minds of its opponents: racists must resentfully accept the fact that people of color can win the highest office in America. What’s more, Harris is not “fully” Black, she’s “biracial” like Obama – but unlike Obama, neither of her parents were white. Harris would be the first POTUS who isn’t white, deepening the theme of the Black President.
3. Blindsided Racists. Paradoxically this provides Harris with defense against racist politics. Her family background does not evoke the black-and-white pairing that fascinates and disgusts white supremacists.
Americans were immersed in anti-miscegenation ideology for centuries. Millions of white Americans have unconscious anxieties about race and sex; many more fetishize race and sex because it is seen as perverse. Their neuroses about racial cuckoldry and displacement were easily agitated by white supremacists.
A large part of the electorate was driven insane by their revulsion towards Obama. The Tea Party, Birther, and MAGA movements were all attempts to justify their reaction as anything other than racist panic.
That won’t work the same way with Harris, whose parents were black and Indian. She doesn’t represent a “race traitor” to the hard right. Does the Klan care about interracial marriage between non-whites? Republican leaders are confused by Harris’ identity, and the party’s VP nominee is married to an Indian-American woman. America’s Anti-Indian racism is far less developed or consistent than its Anti-Black racism.
But the most important aspect of Harris’ identity is:
4. Blue Lives Matter. She’s Kopmala. This is how she will win over the moderate Republicans permanently to the Democratic Party. Harris’s record as Attorney General is unassailable by Law-and-Order conservatives — she’s one of them. There may be lots of racists on the right wing but they all love the police, even black cops (if they still enforce racist laws). And the GOP can’t beat Harris’ record on immigration; one of her most famous moments is telling refugees not to come to America.
Contradictions in the GOP
The fact that Kamala is not white at all is a decisive factor in American race politics. The hard core of the right is going to be fiercely opposed to her, and can still mask itself well enough to win popular support. The hard right recognizes that White America is not the absolute majority of the population anymore. majority is only a plurality now, the largest racial minority, and (half-secretly) wants to reverse the trend.
The mask is dropping, however. Propaganda about the “Great Replacement” and other “globalist” plots is becoming more commonplace, and far right racist theory is returning to the mainstream.
This stands in contrast to Republicans who, seeing the same reality as their hardline colleagues, decide that this is the flow of business: that’s where the market is and businesses must appeal to diverse consumers. These business-class Republicans can’t access those markets without serving non-white customers, and they can’t access the patronage networks connected to the markets without the Democratic Party.
Of course, this process is already underway. Large sections of the “Moderate Republicans” have been joining the Democrats since Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Business-Class Republicans
These latter-day mugwumps began switching parties because of Donald Trump’s presidency and the wild reactionary forces that he marshaled to his cause. Business elites resent populism, even if it is right wing populism and endorses their policies. Trump has been denounced as a demagogue and his followers as “fans” or a mob. Their activists have taken over many of the party’s local branches and national structures. The events of January 6, 2020 proved how dangerous the MAGA faction is to the Republican establishment, and the subsequent absence of Trump’s leadership left them wild and chaotic. This hasn’t really improved with Trump’s return: the man is washed up and can’t inspire them like he used to.
This isn’t getting better once Trump is out of the picture for good. The people who had their political awakening under MAGA will not drop out of politics en masse. The Republican Party has become inhospitable to its own left and center wings and this will continue without Trump to give them direction.
Maybe in the future the mugwumps can return to the GOP and retake control, but for now they have to operate as the right wing of the Democratic Party.
White Nationalists
As this process continues to accelerate, the potential electoral base of the hard right continues to shrink. Fewer and fewer places where an outright white supremacist can get elected these days! 😢
The hard right’s goal is, basically, to recreate a white majority in America. For this they need a huge spike in birth rates, barriers to immigration, restricted interracial relationships, and new land to exploit with all that child labor. They want the work done by white people, not slaves or foreign workers, because they want an exclusively white society. Their goal is to recreate segregation.
That’s a political impossibility when their electoral chances keep getting slimmer. They resorted to masks and dog whistles for decades but that’s all falling apart too. Propaganda about the “Great Replacement” and other “globalist” plots is appearing in the mainstream along with weird new expressions of racism (like Mark Robinson, the self-described “black Nazi” running for governor of North Carolina).
The hidden message is becoming overt and is alienating middle class Republicans. For the hard right and its populist supporters the only path to success is white separatism. This is in fact the current goal of the Ku Klux Klan (which now accepts non-white members):
Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona was upset, too. ‘What this guy just did set back everything I’ve been trying to do for years,’ said Ancona, who leads the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. […]
NPR citing CNN
” ‘I believe in racial separation but it doesn’t have to be violent,’ he told CNN. ‘People in the Klan are professional people, business people, working types. We are a legitimate organization.’
If Harris wins the election then the separatists will have four years to whip up the reaction against the “DEI President.” In that time they may finish their takeover of the party at local and state levels, where their politics can be put into actual practice. Some sections of the party may even become open white separatists.
White Separatists and a Democratic President who’s willing to crack down. This really is the age of Clintonian Democracy.
Neoliberal/Neoconservative unity
The debate on September 10th is going to be momentous. It’s the big appeal to the voters and I want to see if Kamala can complete the dialectic of bipartisanship: the conclusion of Clinton’s Third Way.
Thinking bout it in that perspective…. Bill, Barack, and Kamala, all three of them:
-Get their buzz on 🚬💊
-Enjoy music with a groove 🎷🥁
-Like to fool around sometimes 😉👉👌
Since 1992 the Party’s only successful candidates have been Buddy Presidents. Cool guys you’d want to hang out with. Hillary has none of that. Destined loser. Permanent cuckquean. Kerry? Nope. Gore? Come on. They didn’t have what it takes to be leaders under Clintonian Democracy.
But Hillary isn’t a total loser. The former Young Republican and Goldwater volunteer who became a right-wing Democrat and war criminal has won the culture struggle. She paved the way for the Girl President and a new generation of right-wing conservative girlbosses. Harris would be the first president from Generation Hillary.
–Lark O’Dell, 4 September 2024
Updates
On September 6th Harris was endorsed by accomplished war criminal Dick Cheney, and his daughter Liz Cheney has been campaigning for Harris and against MAGA candidates in the GOP.
Debate night came and went. Harris gave a mediocre performance and easily baited washed-up Trump with personal attacks. She outflanked Trump from the right on immigration and foreign policy. Notably, Harris said that she stood for energy independence, a policy which only pursues renewable energy as a means of reducing imports of foreign oil. This was a signature policy of George W. Bush, signed into law as the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.
On September 15th Harris was endorsed by surviving staffers of the Reagan Administration, stating that “Today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery”. They joined 238 Bush, McCain, and Romney staffers who had already endorsed Harris in August.
Liminal States 