Kamala Harris/X

By Jeremy Kinsman

July 27, 2024

I have spent a life longing for a transformational American leader. One who could wrest the republic from the tumult of politics back to its core beliefs of freedom, justice, and humanism; a leader who would cut through the B.S. and lead the great nation forward.

I always fantasized about those lucky enough to work for FDR. My generation in university in the States had for a while the Kennedys for inspiration, before each was tragically snuffed out.

Bobby’s murder in June, 1968, not long after Dr. King’s, suspended my hope for years, until Obama mesmerized the Democratic Convention in 2004, lighting the way to his astounding “Yes, We Can” campaign of 2008. His two-term presidency was hobbled by the powerful residue of white American bias, but he did his best, before America reverted to war and mediocrity.

I spent much of the Obama presidency in California, where I became aware of the state’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, who was tackling issues of crime head-on. She had a curious backstory of high school years spent in Montreal, where her South-Asian born mother was a cancer researcher on a McGill project with the Jewish General Hospital.

Harris was elected to the US Senate in the fateful election of 2016 that put the White House in the hands of a dangerous grifter. In 2019, when Democrats were organizing to defeat Trump’s bid for a second term, when Harris ran to be the nominee, I was excited. But she flubbed it, unsure of how to define herself, without much national vision, and dropped out of the race that Obama’s Vice president, Joe Biden, then won.

His choice of Harris as his running mate in the 2020 election was widely seen as a ticket-balancing play; woman, Black, California. As President Biden didn’t assign his VP to a substantive role, the way Carter had used Mondale, or Clinton had used Gore, or in a sort of perverse way George W. Bush used – or was used by – Dick Cheney. VP Harris did get handed the toxic file of the US Southern border, but without the political and administrative wherewithal to do much to stanch the chaotic migrations from Central America and to prompt serious cooperation with Mexico.

Over 80% of delegates to the Democratic convention in Chicago indicated they wanted Harris as the nominee. The game was over before it began.

Washington media picked on Harris in gossipy items; her unusually high staff churn and redecoration of the VP’s residence, painting her as a superficial prima donna. However, when the Trumpian Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, and 14 states adopted highly restrictive laws on women’s reproductive autonomy and rights, Harris came to the fore as an articulate and forceful litigator of the interests of women, in ways that Joe Biden, as an older white man, never could.

Six months ago, it was conventional Washington wisdom that Harris was nonetheless a drag on the aging Biden’s chances against Trump, a gift to the MAGA crowd who whispered to all who could hear, “If you vote for fragile and failing Joe Biden, you’re more than likely in a year or two to get wacky, radical Kamala Harris.” Most Democrats were hoping Biden would step out of the race, but at the least, would change his VP, while recognizing that it could be problematic with women and the Black caucus her appointment had been meant to please.

Biden’s horrendous June 27 debate sealed his fate as a candidate. The assassination attempt on Trump a few days before his convention in Milwaukee made it more imperative for the Democrats to change the top of the ticket in a hurry. The polls were showing the party’s election losses would extend down the November 5 ballot into congressional seats and state houses. More than two-thirds of registered Democrats wanted another candidate.

Biden’s sudden and belated step-down on July 21 had an extraordinary effect. At least half of Americans felt an instant and giddy release from worry and despondency. The next day’s sobriety changed the subject to Biden’s replacement.

Biden, to his credit, endorsed Vice President Harris right away, not in his July 21 resignation letter to the American people, but in a simultaneous tweet. The form didn’t matter. The swift formation of a consensus that Kamala Harris was the right one to succeed him as nominee seemed as startling and as inevitable as was his decision to step aside.

• Also from Jeremy Kinsman: The Starmer Storm

Kamala Harris had deeply supportive people in the party behind her who activated a prepared instant outreach campaign to seal her nomination. Within 24 hours, all 50 state democratic chairs gave their endorsement, and shortly after, so did all serving Democratic governors (including some plausible alternative candidates). Over 80% of delegates to the Democratic convention August 19-22 in Chicago indicated they wanted Harris as the nominee. The game was over before it began, effectively launching a new campaign.

What convinced them that Harris was now The One? Were they just making a virtue out of the necessity the Democrats not stay divided any longer? Or did they now suddenly get that Kamala Harris had the stuff of a great candidate? Was this a “sugar rush?’

The political arguments suddenly became apparent.

Erstwhile GOP candidate Nikki Haley had hit on a valid argument in her losing campaign to unseat Trump, when she remarked that “The party that dumps its old unpopular leader first, will win.”

Trump’s unpopularity is unprecedented for a candidate. Had he done as he recently promised and veered to the calmer centre, he might have sustained his post-assassination attempt surge. Instead, he chose as his VP not Haley, but the unsettling MAGA born-again enthusiast, JD Vance. Trump’s base-plus support is at its ceiling.

Former Trump press secretary Anthony Scaramucci has drawn attention to a salient demographic fact that ought to – and does – scare thinking Republicans. Since the 2016 election, 20.2 million baby boomers, most of whom voted for Trump, have died. Since then, 40 million Gen X and Millennials became eligible to vote. They are polling 60% Democratic in principle, but were not at all enthused by Biden.

Harris has the personality and profile to bring them back into the game. A New York Times/Siena College poll July 25 already shows a dramatic shift among under-29 and Hispanic voters away from Trump and back to Harris from three weeks ago. Trump’s promises to deport 15 million illegal immigrants come across to Hispanics as a toxic pogrom.

Harris herself needs a VP with executive experience and scope who can help bring young men back into the Democratic fold.

Harris has never played the identity card, but Black voters proudly claim her, as do South Asians. Trump confirms Hilary Clinton’s warnings and now promises he “will not be nice.” His campaign spent $76 million on TV ads Monday to try to define Harris as Trump has, an airhead Marxist, the DEI candidate, and “dumb as a rock.” Nikki Haley warns that is the wrong approach, apt to wean even more women, already strongly anti-Trump, over to the Democrats.

The election will now depend on the performance of Kamala Harris.

Campaigns matter, and we have 100 days to go. I predict she will be surprisingly good. Her style, including her sense of humour — which is actually funny — contrasts with that of Trump, whose father told him never to laugh out loud in public, a “sign of weakness.” She is an excellent speaker, including off-the-cuff, especially on topics she cares deeply about.

She nailed the balance on Israel/Gaza that Biden couldn’t achieve, after her meeting on July 25 with Netanyahu: “Israel has a right to defend itself. And how it does so matters. I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there. (in Gaza) I will not be silent.”

She reminds people she has prosecuted criminals charged with the same crimes of which Trump is accused: “I know his type.” If he does dare to debate her, I predict he’ll become unhinged within the first 20 minutes.

Trump will try to nail her for what he maintains has been the disaster of the Biden administration, and she will defend its positive record more vividly and better than Biden ever did, while proposing variations. Does she own the immigration disaster? She knows a lot about it and can confront it intelligently as the critical issue it is.

She needs to reassure business on her basically centrist economic views.

Harris herself needs a VP with executive experience and scope who can help bring young men back into the Democratic fold. I have long favoured Sen. Mark Kelly, former astronaut, from swing state Arizona. He is also the husband of former Rep. Gaby Giffords, another political assassination target whose own awful experience and subsequent gun control advocacy tempers Trump’s action-hero motif.

I’ll not try to believe that Kamala is today’s Bobby, or Barack. I only need to be sure she can beat Donald Trump, and I am. That’s good enough for now.

Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman served as Canada’s Ambassador to Russia, Italy and the European Union and as High Commissioner to the UK. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.