The Democratic convention in Chicago proved to be a gathering in the great revivalist tradition of America with thousands of the party’s political representatives, delegates, supporters and stars converging to proclaim and celebrate their faith in Kamala Harris.
The uplifting atmosphere was, for many of those there, infectious and intoxicating with heady talk of Harris’s candidacy for the Presidency becoming an unstoppable popular movement that will sweep her to victory in November.
The tributes to the woman of the moment were as effusive as they were consistent. Bill Clinton described her as “the president of joy”, while Michell Obama reflected on “the joy of her laughter and her light”. Oprah Winfrey urged voters to “choose joy”.
One delegate on her way to the Convention on the day of Harris’s speech said, breathlessly: “It’s been an amazing week. We loved Joe Biden but the energy and enthusiasm for Kamala is extraordinary. We’re united and confident that we can take the fight to Trump and win.”

The Democrats have certainly discovered their post-Joe mojo and the Harris/Walz ticket has energized the faithful in a way that few could have imagined just six weeks ago. The key question though is whether this Harrismania reflects a wider shift in the wider electorate too.
Has it changed the fundamentals of the 2024 race – or is this just an outpouring of tribal relief among Democrats not now having to campaign for an octogenarian candidate whose low public ratings were threatening not only to lose the White House but also to unseat representatives facing re-election in the House and Senate?
Does it now put Harris on a course for victory in November – or (as some commentators in the UK have suggested) are we at risk of falling for the hype and the noise, not least because of our own hopes and prejudices about what and who the election involves?
The polls are, for now at least, clear that Harris’s candidature has turned around the fortunes of a party that was looking doomed under Biden. Most pollsters agree that, nationally, she now leads Trump having added up to two to three percentage points, and battleground states like Michigan, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina are potentially back in play.
She appears to be playing particularly well with Black, Hispanic, female and young voters, groups her predecessor was struggling to mobilise in anything like the numbers he did in 2020.
Volunteers have been signing up in droves and Harris has been raising lots of money too. In a letter to activists this week, Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Harris/Walz campaign, says that the party has raised more than half a billion dollars in just over a month – “a record for any campaign in history.”
What’s more, Harris has certainly got under Donald Trump’s skin and disrupted his campaign. He has been using his public events over the last few weeks to complain about Biden dropping out and his attacks on his newly crowned Democratic rival have been weak and unfocused.

Yet let’s not get carried away. The boost Harris has given the Democrats has served to make competitive again a race that appeared to be moving away from the party. That’s a big difference to where things stood at the time of the attempted assassination of Trump in July. But it certainly does not represent a decisive shift.
“This election is currently tied,” says Matt Bennett, former Clinton aide and founder of the centre-left think tank, Third Way. “Harris has given us a chance but we need to keep things in perspective. This remains a very tough election to win.”
After all, Trump continues to hold significant leads on key issues voters care about – the economy, inflation and immgration – and senior Democrat strategists remain wary about recent polling, not least because of the experience of 2016 when Trump defied the predictions to beat Hilary Clinton.
This sensible caution appears to have shaped Harris’s own address to the party last week. In a marked contrast to the exuberant joy that had characterised so much of the Chicago convention, her speech was serious in tone and substance, stressing her Presidential credentials.
Dressed in a dark navy suit, she contrasted her approach with that of her maverick opponent who she described as “an unserious man”, and sought to address those issues she is seen as having an electoral vulnerability.
One of those is foreign policy and defence on which she deployed one of her sharpest lines: “As Vice President, I have: confronted threats to our security, negotiated with foreign leaders, strengthened our alliances, and engaged with our brave troops overseas. As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

Labor Day this coming Monday is seen as the time when many voters start to “tune in” to the Presidential election, and the televised debate between Trump and Harris scheduled for 10th September is going to tell us a great deal about how the campaign will play out.
The debate will also represent the first time since her assumption as the Democrat’s Presidential nominee that Harris will have been tested in a live, unscripted environment.
It is scarcely believable that the current Vice President who as operated at the heart of the current administration for most of the last four years has suddenly emerged as the new, disruptive candidate who has thrown open this election. But that’s where we are, and over the next ten weeks we will find out its impact with real voters.
“Irrational exuberance is deadly in politics and we must avoid it,” says Bennett. “But the last month is what a movement campaign looks like. It might not last and we must not count on it. But it is possible that something big is happening.”

This article was first published by LabourList on August 31st, 2024

With all potential rivals declaring their support for her nomination within hours of Joe Biden’s dramatic announcement on Sunday, Kamala Harris will be crowned the Democratic Presidential candidate at the party’s convention in Chicago next month.
It’s an extraordinary turnaround for a politician who has struggled to make an impact as Vice President in more than three years and who, until the last few weeks at least, had been all but written off as a future commander-in-chief by most political observers here in Washington.
This appeared to be Biden’s view too. After all, a critical reason why he resisted calls to drop out of the race earlier despite widespread public concerns over his age, was that he was the only person capable of beating Donald Trump.
So, was he wrong, and can his No.2 now step up and win the Presidency with barely three months left until the election on 5 November?
Party unityThe overwhelming sense of relief that has greeted Biden’s announcement, and the desire to unify quickly around Harris, has certainly given the party an early sugar-rush moment. More than $50m was raised within 24 hours from small donors and senior Democrats are flooding TV networks to sing the praises of their soon-to-be candidate.
But this temporary honeymoon cannot hide the fact that the challenge facing the 59-year-old former Californian Senator barely three months before the election on 5 November is huge.
First, she is up against an opponent who, since the TV debate with Biden at the end of June, has gathered crucial momentum in the race for the White House. The assassination attempt and his immediate response, followed by a Convention that showed the Republican Party now totally under his control, has given Trump front-runner status.

Money is now flowing into Republican coffers, not least from the likes of Elon Musk and other billionaires keen to align themselves with a potential President who continues to threaten core features of American democracy and promises to cut taxes, wage war on woke and deport 10 million undocumented immigrants.
Second, Harris will need to win support well beyond the Democrat base, to independents and moderate Republicans, if she is to win swing states in November – and there has been little evidence so far of her ability to do so. Her public ratings as Vice President have been historically low and her bid for the Democrat candidacy in 2020 ended even before the primaries began.
She will rightly be able to claim incumbent credit for the successes of the Biden administration, not least the high performing economy and successful industrial strategy. But Harris faces an electorate still angry at cost of living increases and lack of control at the southern border, the latter a particular vulnerability given her role leading the administration’s “Root Causes Strategy” to tackle the drivers of irregular migration.
Third, she will need to break through the last great glass ceiling here and show that a woman can be elected to the highest office in the US. There are many, not least among many Democrats themselves, who still do not believe that Americans are willing to make this important step, and the defeat of Hilary Clinton to Trump in 2016, remains a deep scar.
Making historyWe can certainly expect the attacks on the first Black woman to occupy the role of Vice President from today’s nativist GOP to be brutal and unforgiving. Even before Biden’s announcement on Sunday, senior Republicans were lining up at their Milwaukee convention to target her record and character.
Yet, as ever in politics, the challenges for Harris present opportunities too.
Trump’s star is currently in the ascendancy. But Democrats have demonstrated in mid-term election victories since 2020 that MAGA populism struggles to win over majority opinion. It is beatable and Harris can draw on her strong record as California’s Attorney General until 2017 to prosecute the argument about the dangers of Trump.
Many of Harris’s Democrat friends speak of her “tenaciousness”, values and “political astuteness”, and she is going to need all of these things and more if she is to compete in November. It is also true that few Vice Presidents – bound by the need for absolute loyalty to their boss – rarely have much space to develop their particular identity. She now has that chance.
Perhaps, also, a female Presidential candidate is uniquely placed to mobilise wide political support following the attacks on women’s reproductive rights that we have seen since the overturning of Roe vs Wade in 2022.
Who Harris chooses as her running mate will tell us a lot about how she will seek to campaign and fight the coming election. Early frontrunners are three male Democrat governors, Andy Beshear (Kentucky), Roy Cooper (North Carolina) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania). All help to reach parts of the electorate she may struggled to connect with.
Party unity, relief at Biden’s departure and the fact that Trump will become the oldest Presidential candidate in history in November, has brought some much-needed cheer to Democrats who have suffered a miserable few weeks. But the true test is only just beginning, and it is going to take the most extraordinary political story in recent years to pass it.

This article was first published by LabourList on July 23rd, 2024

This Thursday, Americans across the country will be enjoying Independence Day with fireworks, barbecues and parties. We can be confident that the festivities will not be punctuated by breaking news from Warrington South, Norwich North or Doncaster Central.

The truth is that the British general election campaign has barely registered in the US at all. There has been little or no reference to it on the mainstream TV news channels. Even in the politically connected circles of Washington DC, it is not a major topic of conversation or interest.

Think tanks have generally ignored it, and politicians have largely been oblivious to it. What commentary there has been in the quality press has tended to focus more on the near-comic theatre of Rishi Sunak’s “Drowning Street” announcement and his D-Day fiasco than any serious analysis of the poll’s impact on the UK’s future or its relationship with the US.

In part, this lack of interest reflects the fact that UK positions on key foreign and security policy issues like Ukraine are unlikely to change very much whoever enters Downing Street on 5th July. Both Conservative and Labour parties are committed to maintaining essential aspects of the transatlantic alliance.

It’s also the case that the key British political personalities have made little or no impact in the US compared to Tony Blair in the 1990s and 2000s and even, for very different reasons, Boris Johnson.

Rishi Sunak has failed to build generate much of a profile here despite his background as a Stanford alumnus and owner of a £5m penthouse flat in Santa Monica, while Keir Starmer is a virtual unknown having not visited the US at all in the four years he has been leader of the Labour Party.

Of course, British politics (or politics in any other country) is never going to be able to get much of a look-in at a time of wall-to-wall coverage of the impending US Presidential election here, not least in the wake of last week’s televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

As widely reported, the debate was a disaster for Biden who rambled and stuttered his way through this excruciating contest. Often appearing disorientated, he gave the impression of a candidate who might even struggle to last the course of the election campaign never mind another four years in the White House.

The debate has sown panic among many Democrats and created much chatter about the possibility of an “open” convention in Chicago at which the party’s 4,000 delegates would choose a new candidate for President. It looks, however, like they are stuck with the man who will turn 86 before leaving the White House if re-elected for a second term.

The uncomfortable truth
But there is a deeper and more uncomfortable truth that the UK election’s invisibility reflects, and one that sets a significant challenge for a Labour Government. It is that Britain’s influence in Washington is at its lowest it has been for decades, and a Trump White House promises to diminish it further.

The pantomime of British politics over the last decade and the rapid turnover of Tory Prime Ministers has undermined the UK’s reputation as a stable ally here. A combination of Brexit and economic woes have undeniably reduced our status in an American political environment that still loves the Brits for our history and culture but, ultimately, rewards power and impact.

It will be for Keir Starmer to turn this challenge into an opportunity, and securing a sizeable majority on Thursday will win him a rare commodity on the current world stage: a leader with domestic political strength and stability.

Most western leaders in Washington DC next week for the NATO summit are seriously weakened by political events at home. Emmanuel Macron looks set to be forced to share power in France with the far-right, Olaf Scholz’s coalition in Germany is deeply unpopular barely a year before national elections, and Justin Trudeau’s Canadian Liberals are trailing their Conservative opponents by 15 points in national opinion polls.

The summit promises to be Starmer’s first outing on the international stage as Prime Minister. He will use it to reaffirm the UK’s commitment to Ukraine and to begin to build a strong relationship with Joe Biden. There is a lot that connects the current incumbent of the White House to Labour’s leader, not least a shared commitment to using public investment to drive the green transition and industrial growth.

Yet Starmer will be keen to ensure he is well positioned in the event of a Trump election win in November too. David Lammy’s recent visit to Washington DC included meetings with people close to the presumptive Republican nominee, and Starmer himself will want to explore how he can build a productive relationship with him.

There are more than personalities at play here though. It is clear that the primary foreign policy focus of a second Trump Presidency will be on China and not on Russia or Europe. Indeed, some of Trump’s advisers warn that US’s commitments in Europe and the Middle East must be scaled back to strengthen its preparedness for military conflict with the People’s Republic over Taiwan.
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This has profound implications for the future of the war in Ukraine and for wider European security, and will pose Starmer with fundamental questions about where UK’s strategic interests lie. It also presents an opportunity for him to play a pivotal role in helping shape a shared understanding of where European interests lie too.

This article was first published by LabourList on July 3rd, 2024

It’s now just six months before Americans go to the polls to choose their next President. But predicting the election outcome feels like trying to make sense of Alice’s crazy adventures in Wonderland.

Just as one set of polling data points in one direction, so another comes along telling you directly the opposite – and the constant swirl of anecdotes, commentary and opinion throws up a multitude of conflicting versions of how the next six months will pan out.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy is right to hedge his bets, going beyond Democrat relationships by holding recent meetings with Republicans – and stating he would look for “common cause” with a Donald Trump presidency.

On any rational view of politics, President Biden would be a shoo-in for another four years in the White House. Despite a divided Congress, he’s been able to push through important legislation on infrastructure and investment, extended access to affordable healthcare and reduced the burden of student debt.

The economy is doing very well too with 15 million jobs created over the first three years of his term – more than under any President in US history over the same period – and unemployment has held below 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s.

Historically, Americans have tended to give incumbents a second term. Three of the last four Presidents have, in the words of one commentator here, “renewed their vow with the voters”, and – Trump apart – it’s more than three-and-a-half decades since America last chose a one-term Commander-in-Chief.

The fact that his Republican challenger is currently spending more time in US courtrooms than at campaign rallies – facing dozens of criminal charges, any one of which could produce a prison sentence – would, in any normal election, mean this game would already be over. Yet this is not a normal election – or, as Lewis Carroll might have put it, “nothing is because everything isn’t”.

But the President’s poll ratings remain poor to dire. According to a rolling average of opinion polls, Biden trails Trump nationally and is behind by anything from one to seven points in the swing battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

More importantly at this stage of the electoral cycle, fewer than four in ten Americans approve of the way he’s handling the job – the worst score of any first-term president six months out from an election since Dwight Eisenhower, and well below the numbers even Trump himself secured in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.

Biden appears to be winning little public credit for his handling of the economy – Trump retains a clear lead over his Democratic rival on this issue – and concerns about his age (he turns 82 in November) and immigration (about 2.5 million people crossed the southern border in 2023 alone) continue to act as a significant drag on the President’s reelection campaign.

Throw in concern about the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the latter of which appears to be testing support among younger and left-leaning voters, and Biden’s position looks precarious.

Yet, far from being panicked by the polls, senior Democrats exude a quiet confidence that the essential elements are in place for Biden to win.

“The President helped steer our country out of the pandemic, has delivered increases in the living standards of most Americans and is the only candidate who will defend democracy and freedom at home and abroad,” said one long-time Biden aide. “For all the chatter and noise, these are the issues that will determine the election.”

For Simon Rosenberg, a Democrat strategist and author of the Hopium Chronicles, the party’s electoral gains in the mid-term elections in 2022 and 2023 show that when voters are faced with a real choice they reject extreme MAGA Republicans in key seats. “For years now, Democrats have been winning election after election, and we know that large parts of the population who might have once voted for a Republican candidate will never support Trump. That’s unlikely to change soon given how much more extreme he is now.”

For Rosenberg, as the election draws closer and the campaign properly begins, so voters will tune in more to the issues and turn to Biden. He adds that the Democrats are currently better organised, more unified and are raising a lot more cash than their opponents.

But perhaps the biggest single issue that all Democrats agree has changed the political calculus in their favour is reproductive rights. One described the Supreme Court’s ruling in the spring of 2022 overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion as a political “earthquake”.

“The Republican Party is a very different party from the one that lost in 2020 and they have done two things that will keep them out of power for a long time,” the insider said. “They tried to end democracy on January 6th and then they helped strip the rights and freedoms of more than half the population.”

State referendums on abortion have already been confirmed in three states to coincide with the November Presidential election, and another eight look set to follow. Expect this issue – and the future of American democracy – to be front and centre of the Democrats’ election campaign.

President Biden’s State of the Union speech two months ago was a rehearsal of the big themes of the coming campaign – jobs, freedom, democracy – and his strong performance silenced the doubters on his own side about his fitness to lead a campaign for his return to the White House.

The numbers haven’t changed yet. But six months is enough time for them to do so. It’s also enough time for Trump to face more drama in the courthouse and for Biden to slip up, for more deaths and destruction in Gaza and for a slowdown in the US economy.

Democrats will be hoping to see signs that the polls are turning by their summer convention in Chicago in August. But, with so many variables, it’s anyone’s guess how all this will play out. As Alice said: “It would be nice if something made sense for a change.”

This article was first published by LabourList in May 2024
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