The US is in the heat of a turbulent presidential election campaign. A second apparent assassination attempt on Republican candidate Donald Trump demonstrates the volatility and polarisation that exists. But who is his Democrat opponent Kamala Harris, recently put in place of outgoing President Joe Biden, and what is her record? Jeff Booth of Independent Socialist Group (CWI supporters in the US) looks at what she stands for.
President Joe Biden’s campaign was on track to crash and burn after his debate with Donald Trump. Despite leading Democrats – including so-called progressive or ‘left’ Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – backing Biden to the bitter end. Press conferences and a high-profile television interview a week after the debate couldn’t save him. Biden’s interview performance reinforced the popular perception that he was losing it – both his mind and the election. These events triggered a sharp pause in big-money donations from corporate execs and other capitalists into the Biden-Harris campaign and Political Action Committees (PACs) supporting it.
Money talks, especially to the Republican and Democratic parties. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) moved quickly to take down Biden, to get the corporate funds flowing again, and to legally use Biden-Harris campaign money already banked. The DNC pushed Harris forward. She was seen as a known quantity, vetted by years of being ‘top cop’ (‘Kopola’) as San Francisco District Attorney, then California attorney general, senator, and US vice-president. Harris is a safe bet, politically and financially, for capitalists backing the Democratic Party.
Kamala Harris: “I’m a capitalist”
While running for the Democratic Party nomination in 2019-20, Harris would often declare to business audiences: “I’m a capitalist”. Harris’s group of well-vetted capitalists and pro-corporate advisers reflect her true nature as a capitalist politician. They include: Tony West, Harris’ brother-in-law, a highly paid senior vice-president and chief legal officer at Uber; Laphonza Butler, a tech lobbyist, former SEIU union officer, and now traitor to the labour movement. West and Butler were instrumental in Uber crushing attempts by drivers at Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash to join or form unions. Democratic Party governor of California, Gavin Newsom, rewarded Butler for betraying workers by appointing her to the Senate seat formerly held by Diane Feinstein.
Other economic advisers to Harris include Mike Pyland and Brian Deese from the Blackrock corporate hierarchy, and Deane Millison, a lobbyist for Ford. Deese was also Director of the Office of Management and Budget when Obama bailed out the big corporations after the 2008 Great Recession. He led the government bailout of the auto industry.
Gaza
Harris is being marketed by the Democrats as somehow ‘better’ than Biden on Gaza. Harris, as a leading Democratic Party politician, is clearly against any arms embargo or cuts to the USA’s record-breaking military aid to Israel. Recent protests in the US in mid-August against the war in Gaza called for “not one more bomb”: an arms embargo against Israel. Harris’s answer through her National Security Adviser: “She does not support an arms embargo.”
Harris released a public statement attacking pro-Palestinian, anti-war protesters, claiming they supported Hamas terrorism, describing “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fuelled rhetoric.” Harris says she supports a “ceasefire” without giving specifics. Biden and the Democratic Party leaders also talk about a ceasefire yet on 13 August, the Biden-Harris administration announced another $23.5 billion for the Israeli military. At a campaign rally, protesters shouted: “Kamala, Kamala you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide.” Harris’s response: “I am speaking now… You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” That sounds a lot like: “Shut up, they might hear you!”
Harris can’t hide from a large number of voters who will remember her active participation in the Democratic Party’s enabling of the Israeli state to invade and occupy Gaza and pursue genocidal policies against the Palestinian people. Harris uses the worn-out rhetoric of lesser evilism to literally shout down any criticism of imperialist policies against the Palestinian people, despite there being no real difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties on supporting the actions of the Israeli state, including the invasion and occupation of Gaza.
Minimum wage
Biden, and now Harris, have campaigned on raising the federal minimum wage. The Biden-Harris administration did nothing to accomplish this, despite controlling the House, Senate, and Presidency for two years. Harris recently promised she would, if elected, support a higher minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is a guaranteed poverty wage: $7.25 an hour, and only $2.13 an hour for tipped workers. 20 states do not have a higher minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has lost 30% in purchasing power over the last 15 years. It’s easy for Harris and her running mate Tim Waltz to promise more at this point, but they still refuse to put forward a number for a federal minimum wage. The reality is that a minimum wage would have to be at least $25 an hour at this point to make up for inflation, with no sub-minimum wage. The Harris campaign, mimicking Trump, calls for no taxes on tips, a good indication that a Harris regime would not try to end the sub-minimum tipped wage.
Abortion rights
Obama and Biden both promised to pass federal laws guaranteeing the right to an abortion. Both had two consecutive years where the Democrats controlled Congress and the Presidency and could have passed a federal abortion rights law. Instead, they refused to pass abortion rights legislation and looked on as many states severely limited reproductive rights. Biden-Harris stood by as Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. The Democrats have used vice-president Harris’s tie-breaking vote 33 times in the Senate for other issues. The Democratic Party didn’t try to organise protests against the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They fear mass protest movements will move beyond Democratic Party control and escalate to make greater demands on the capitalist class.
Housing
In May of this year, the median selling price of an existing home hit a record $419,300. Homelessness increased 12% in 2023, resulting in the highest number of homeless people since 2007, when collecting data first started. The Biden-Harris administration let pandemic relief measures end, including an eviction moratorium and emergency rental assistance. Letting these policies stop is a major contributor to the record homelessness. Over the last two years, rents have far outpaced wage growth in 44 out of the 50 largest United States metros. The absence of mass housing policy under the Biden-Harris administration has made a chronic housing crisis worse, regardless of which corporate party has been in power over the last 40 years of neoliberal policies.
Harris has made some incremental and limited proposals around housing that are a continuation of Biden’s proposals that never went anywhere, including building three million “affordable” homes over the next four years. This is nowhere close to what’s needed. There were already six million houses added in the U.S. since 2020. “Affordable” is not defined. $25,000 in downpayment assistance is mentioned, with qualifiers, for first-time home buyers who have paid their rent on time for at least two years. Given the cost of buying a house now, this proposal is not enough and lacks specifics but it would be the most concrete and substantial of the minimal promises Harris is talking about. Like much of the Biden-Harris spending proposals, Harris’s proposals on housing are painfully incremental, minimalist, and centered around massive payouts to private corporations rather than money for publicly owned programmes.
There’s no mention in Harris and the Democrats’ housing promises about the need for mass construction of public housing, a national freeze on rents and rent control laws, limits on mortgage interest rates, or stopping corporations like Blackstone, FirstKey, and American Homes for Rent from buying massive amounts of single family homes and turning them into expensive rental properties.
Harris’s flip flops
The Biden-Harris administration has already moved to the right (from already conservative positions) on policing, immigration, the environment and many other issues. Harris has followed this path before becoming vice-president, and since. Harris began as a law-and-order Democrat until the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement put some pressure on her. The minute the BLM movement receded she dropped ideas around police reform. Her political career is littered with false promises. She now opposes Medicare for All and the Green New Deal after saying she supported them. She supports fracking and also the death penalty, after opposing both.
The Harris campaign is ramping up its liberal populist promises. For example, they’re promising, like Obama and Biden before them, to pass important reforms around organising workers into unions. Obama and Biden made the same kind of promises and then spit in the face of the labour movement by doing nothing to win the legislation they promised. Harris used this tactic, yet again, at a recent American Federation of Teachers conference saying: “President Joe Biden and I promised to sign the ProAct into law. I promise you, I will keep that promise.” (That’s a lot of promising). The ProAct promise was on the table when the Biden-Harris regime rushed through legislation declaring a potential railroad workers’ strike ‘illegal’ and forced a contract on the workers that they’d already voted against.
The Harris campaign is presenting itself publicly as something new but really offering only repackaged corporate-friendly policies labelled as reforms. Harris’s politics are rooted in the capitalist class, the Democratic Party hierarchy, and policies from the Biden administration. While the two corporate parties are not the same, increased inequality, economic crisis for working people, and imperialist proxy wars will be the core results of a government led by Harris or Trump. There is no way forward for the working class or unions through supporting and voting for Democratic Party or Republican Party politicians.
The Independent Socialist Group calls for a vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein. In states where Stein is not on the ballot for President but Cornel West is, we call for support and a vote for Cornel West’s independent campaign. Breaking with the corporate duopoly of the Republican and Democrat Parties is a crucial, immediate step towards bringing together working-class people to organise for a mass, independent political party with socialist policies.
