KAMALA HARRIS
The number one person in world politics right now is Joe Biden’s number two. But for a woman who has achieved so many ‘firsts’ in her career, can Kamala Harris handle the weight of expectation from people who expect her to be a progressive voice of unity
The number one person in world politics right now is Joe Biden’s number two.
In an era of embellished statements, exaggerated claims, accelerated promises, it’s easy to overstate ideas, policies, people. If 2020 taught us anything, it’s that the mainstream media, ably supported by its slightly younger, infinitely more unruly younger brother, social media, will happily drive home a vision based solely on bias or agenda. We are living in an era of influence, the likes of which has never been seen before. And in the United States, the noise levels emanating from those lucky enough to have a voice and a platform are at their most deafening.
For that reason, it’s worth exercising reasonable caution when someone emerges draped in a veil of promotion, publicity and bluster. In this instance though, the hype coming from the Kamala Harris camp is, for the most part, justified. There are, after all, a multitude of firsts that the new United States vice president can lay claim to. She was the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California, the first Indian American in the US Senate.
She acknowledges her own achievements, yet at the same time hides away from the prefixes. “I will take the title ‘proud American’,” she says. “That is the entirety of who I have been through the election process and my many years in politics that preceded it. A person of colour ... a woman ... none of this defines the job you promise to do, so it’s pointless.”
Harris isn’t the first to have grown tired of the identity demographics that want to position someone based on their gender, their colour, their wealth or, in the case of incoming president Joe Biden, their age.
She is, though, the person who repelled the likening to Barack Obama for their biracial heritage, and then the former president’s direct reference to her as “the bestlooking attorney general in the country”. And yet the truth is neither the Democrats not the Republicans can resist this labelling process; the temptation is too great. “I am working off a much flatter political spectrum,” Harris says. “I think we all need to do that.”
The new vice president, in very simple terms, yearns to be the same game changer at the top table of world politics that she was as attorney general of California and in the US Senate. MiNDFOOD contacted the UK’s leading political blog, Guido Fawkes, which described the 56-year-old California-born politician and attorney as carrying with her all the power and potential to change the US in a positive way; and even the most vested Trump supporter will admit it is a nation looking more divided now than at any time in recent memory.
Guido also pictures Harris as a “young, strong, ambitious woman with serious experience in law and politics; someone used to doing everything on her own. She has already done enough to be remembered in US history, though the position of vice president will empower her to do so much more.”
This is a woman created very much in a matriarchal hierarchy. Her mother, a pioneering breast cancer researcher, rebelled against the white, male-dominated
“TO REALLY START TO SHAKE THINGS UP, THE USA NEEDS A STRUCTURED, UNSPECTACULAR LEADER AND A BUOYANT, LIVELY, AMBITIOUS NUMBER TWO WHO’S NOT AFRAID TO ROCK THE BOAT.”
world she found herself working in, and frequently warned Harris of the sexual imbalance that still existed across a society pretending the opposite.
It is therefore fitting that the endgame for Harris appears to be the greatest position possible: president. It is a position she has clearly already thought herself capable of assuming before a somewhat clumsy pledge for the Democrat candidacy saw her withdraw from the race even before the primary vote in her home state of California.
Throughout the presidential election campaign there was a constant reference to the fact that Biden’s position as the most powerful man in world politics would most likely only last one term.
He is, after all, 78, and in this brutal new world of straight-talking politics, it’s probably not unfair to state that time is not on his side – it was, after all, a key angle of attack by the Republicans.
NEXT GENERATION OF LEADER
The supposition therefore is that by 2024, or sooner, Harris will become the first black female president. The Democrats may need that to happen in order to fend off a successful rebound campaign from Trump. And while it seems
Harris is the first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president.
perverse to be describing the ideas of the recently elected Biden as outdated and formal, Harris, in every way, represents the polished, innovative, engaged politics of the modern era. If and when that happens, we will be witnessing another major sea change in world politics. From the emerging cracks in the fabric of the European Union and the bloody-minded stubbornness of the UK’s exit – a move admired by as many as it is frowned upon – to Trump’s rifling, bombastic approach to power, conducted as much across social media as it was face-to-face, the modus operandi for politics these days doesn’t subscribe to the old rules.
“We’ve got to find better ways to talk to each other,” Harris said at her last rally before polling day on 3 November. “We’ve got to start the conversation again with a desire to listen that is greater than the desire to speak. At the moment it feels like there are too many voices, not all of them useful or designed to take us forward.”
In that description she may well surreptitiously be referencing rivals in the political world who have been quick to call her out on past practice. And it follows that for someone who has been in politics for two decades, there will be skeletons in the closet. During her time as California’s attorney general, more than 1,500 people
were imprisoned for marijuana violations; but in a February 2019 interview with The Breakfast Club radio show, she initially laughed off the question as to whether she had ever smoked the drug, before admitting she had. She has also been accused of blocking evidence that would have kept an innocent man (Kevin Cooper) off death row, until the courts forced her to release the information – he has now been in prison for almost three decades and DNA testing is said to be ongoing.
During her years as San Francisco’s top prosecutor, Harris supported raising cash bail costs despite the fact it is proven to impact the poor portion of society most profoundly, while claims of inconsistency hover regarding her views on the death penalty, healthcare, and where on the spectrum between socialism and liberalism she really sits.
What’s more, you only have to look at the fierce Democrat candidate election debates, and the roughshod dismantling of status and policy between Harris and Biden to know that, firstly, there are spectres whose presence will never be fully exorcised; and secondly, perhaps what is made out to be an immaculate unity between the two leaders is actually not as impenetrable as would appear. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg has suggested that the echo of disagreement, even between peers, is no bad thing where politics is concerned. “We have to get away from the ‘yes men’ and ‘yes women’ of politics who toe the line.
“To really start to shake things up, the US needs a structured, unspectacular leader and a buoyant, lively, ambitious number two who’s not afraid to rock the boat. I like the way the Democrats are set up and I think their collective personality will only increase in office.”
It fits that Harris will always stand up for what she believes in – she holds the image of a future ‘prosecutor president’ who wants to see reform, and who vehemently opposes the death penalty, yet in advancing she will have to loosen her grip on the intricacies of the criminal justice system in favour of spreading a net almost impossibly wide over a variety of domains and issues.
She will certainly want to play off of the truly remarkable achievements undertaken as a woman who grew up to an Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan, and Jamaican father, Donald Harris, in Oakland, California – it would be wrong of her not to. It would also appear remiss if she did not use her parents’ immigrant status as a tool for a discussion when self-improvement, racism, open borders and integration are thrown into the mix. Add into that too the family unit – Harris’ parents separated when she was seven and she had to relocate to Montreal, Canada, when her mother found a job there. Already, she has said her first priority is to roll back Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
HAVING HER PHIL
This is also a person in love with culture. She names curry as her favourite meal, with the tikka flavours of North India rating highest, but also says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. She works out daily, and suggested a semi-diverse taste in music when revealing the playlist she had on the go when arrowing around the US on political business, with contributions from Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande, Bob Marley, Khalid, A Tribe Called Quest and ... Phil Collins.
Her two stepchildren, Cole, 26, and Ella, 21, are from husband Doug Emhoff’s first marriage, to Kerstin Mackin, someone Harris counts now as a close friend (and who helped her on her own presidency campaign). That ability to move on from the past and surround herself not with vendettas but simply the best people she can find, will certainly stand her in good stead in the months to come. And while she doesn’t hold grudges, Trump may come down on the wrong side of the line should she firm up her promise to pursue criminal obstruction of justice charges against him for his apparent collusion with Russia as outlined in the Mueller report.
AMERICA MAKING PROGRESS
At the heart of who she is, Harris is a reformist – from organising a neighbourhood protest as a 13-year-old so that kids would be allowed to play on the green spaces in front of their apartment blocks, to attending various rallies and protests as her interest in politics accelerated. Her viewpoint has always been to change things from the inside, rather than on the streets.
Conviction rates leapt under her stewardship as San Francisco district attorney, while her work as attorney general for the state of California saw her oversee justice for nearly 40 million people. And yet, Harris’ battle for respect and recognition really begins now. As far as the mainstream media goes, many believe she has had something approaching a free ride, such was news reporters’ ambivalence towards anything shown to be actively endorsing Trump. “There has been less scrutiny of Harris, less of Biden, less of anything left of centre,” says Piers Morgan, former Daily Mirror editor and a leading Trump commentator in the UK. “When the first job at hand is to rid the nation of the so-called major problem, you can expect the opposition to have an easy ride.
“Only in power will things begin to shift the other way. Suddenly, the criticism cannot be levelled at anyone else, and the Biden/Harris partnership will need to yield results quickly and positively before the dissenters in the media come looking for a story, and a target.”
The point being made here is a salient one, because rarely in living memory have mainstream media so steadfastly nailed their colours to the mast. The narrative being pushed by organisations and publishers as expansive as the BBC, as brazen as Fox News and as left-leaning as The Guardian means any real examination comes only now. Harris will regard that as a good thing, not because of the relatively smooth ride she enjoyed on the way into the White House; more, because after years near the top, she only really wants to be judged on what follows now, not the past; which is probably the least any politician deserves. During the election, Harris was even aided by memos sent out to media groups from a group of Democratic operatives
with suggested reporting policy, and that reminded publishers of Harris’ gender and ethnicity; a move regarded as a ‘go easy’ piece of propaganda. The Washington Times stated that, “The implication of the memo was that any critical coverage deemed unfair (and all would be deemed so) will be declared racist and/or sexist. They even invoke George Floyd’s name for extra impact.” The memo went on to boom, “As we enter a historic moment, we will be watching you,” in a threat that sounded as if it had emerged from page one of one of the future vice president’s prosecutor handbooks.
No doubt, Harris tore into her media department upon its release. She would baulk at the very notion of favourable treatment based on her gender or ethnicity, and wants to make an impact on global politics under her own momentum, character, temperament and ingenuity. The good news is now Harris has her chance, but if there is one thing that will guide her to the place she wants to be quicker than anything else, it’s balance ... the sort of balance bereft of US politics through Trump’s administration and several notable ones before it.
In her persona, her strength and her perception of the average American, she has the ability to talk to anyone from any segment of life in the States, even more so than Biden. Yet that ability to communicate and balance across a wide spectrum of demographics is a curse as much as it is a gift.
For instance, that hard-line prosecutor stance she adopted for so long now doesn’t typically fit the sensibilities of left-wing voters; and yet her notions towards activism aren’t tremendously appealing for those with stronger views on law and order. In other words, whichever way she goes, she runs the risk of alienating a major segment of Democrat voters. “Harris taking the second most influential position in the country after the president will show the world the progress of Americans in their acceptance of females in power,” said Guido Fawkes. “It will be especially refreshing after the four years of Trump’s presidency, his scandals in regards to poor treatment of women, accusations of rape, stories of cheating on his wife, and much more. Though, of course, she has a lot more to bring to the table than just that.”
This is a woman who has broken every glass ceiling put above her, who has transformed, evolved and elevated herself as well as everyone around her. She has bravery, perspective and a huge amount of political intelligence, and she speaks to every corner of American culture. As she begins to assemble her team, it’s clear that if there is someone programmed to succeed in lifting US politics up from the treatment table, it’s Kamala Harris.
And yet, in this new world driven by 24/7 content, we can only hope her ability to realise that potential is determined by her own efforts to create a better society, not by how well she stays in favour with mainstream media’s dangerously overly politicised outlets.