Kamala Harris pretends to offer change in US presidential debate

September 11, 2024 –
From Socialist Worker (UK)

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Kamala Harris went head to head with Donald Trump in the US presidential debate (Picture: Wikicommons/Gage Skidmore)

Kamala Harris won the US presidential debate, but her victory is far from secure.

Tuesday night’s debate was a hyped-up, gladiatorial contest. Pundits say a victory could path the way to the White House in November. A stumble or a “gotcha” moment could lead to humiliation and defeat.

Beneath the hype, we can see how Harris and Donald Trump hope to win the presidential election in November.

Trump builds his base by posing as an insurgent. He was at pains to remind everyone that he was a victim of a Democratic legal witch hunt. He was shot at because the Democrats had been nasty about him.

Trump was only ever seconds away from a rant about “illegal immigrants”. “Millions of people are pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums,” he claimed.

He repeated the racist lie that migrants are eating people’s dogs in Springfield. The moderator pointed out that there was no evidence for stories about migrants eating dogs.

He claimed crime is going down around the world because all the criminals were flooding into the US. There is a new crime, “Migrant Crime”—and it’s going through the roof. The moderator pointed out that violent crime is falling in the US. But the truth doesn’t matter here.

Harris could have called him out for his racism and bigotry. She could have talked about the huge contribution migrants make. She chose not to. She accused Trump of being boring and tired.

As vice president, Harris attacked migrants coming across the US-Mexico border, saying, “Do not come. Do not come.”

Defending abortion rights is a key issue for millions of US voters.

Trump claimed that the Democrat governor of Virginia sanctioned the execution of babies. The moderator pointed out that there is no state where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born.

How the Democrats paved way for Trump’s return

But Trump—ever the opportunist—wants to win the election more than he hates abortion. He once declared himself “proud to be the most pro-life president in American history”. Now he refused to deny or confirm that he would sign a federal ban on abortion. His running mate JD Vance said Trump would sign it. Trump said Vance did not know much about it.

Harris went along with all the rotten neoliberal, warmongering and racist policies of the Biden administration.

But she wants to corral left wing, liberal and progressive voters behind the Democrats after many became disillusioned with Biden. She hopes to do this by positioning herself as a stalwart defender of abortion rights.

Harris pledged to sign any bill which reinstated the protections of Roe v Wade.

Yet the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022, which recognised the constitutional right to abortion, happened under Biden and Harris’ watch. It was the Biden-Harris administration that failed to pass a nationwide law protecting Roe v Wade—something they promised in their 2020 election campaign.

Trump had a trump card in the election campaign. “She’s going to do all these wonderful things,” he said. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years”.

Trump feeds off the accumulated anger at 30 years of neoliberalism, which depressed working class people’s wages, destroyed decent jobs and fuelled inequalities. He corralled a lot of that anger through whipping up racism, scapegoating migrants and deflecting anger onto “liberal elites” away from the real elite.

Trump says Harris is a Marxist. He says she wants to defund the police, to support transgender operations for illegal immigrants in prison, to ban fracking in Pennsylvania to confiscate guns. If only it were true.

Harris stands for more of the same—pro-capitalist policies at home, pro-imperialist policies abroad.

But she must pretend she offers something new—without offering anything new.

Source: Socialistworker.co.uk